Duke opened its 1984 ACC schedule on January 7 in Charlottesville with something to prove. Duke was coming off back-to-back 17-loss seasons and had lost nine straight games to the Virginia Cavaliers. Duke was young-at a time when youth frequently was fatal-and very thin. Duke’s six-player rotation consisted of junior Dan Meagher, sophomores Johnny Dawkins, Mark Alarie, David Henderson and Jay Bilas and freshman Tommy Amaker. Doug McNeely was the only recruited senior and the nominal seventh man. But he averaged only 11 minutes per game.
Dawkins, Alarie, Henderson and Bilas had taken their lumps as freshmen in 1983, going 11-17. That season ended with Duke on the short end of a 109-66 thumping by Virginia, still the worst conference loss in program history.
The Duke coaches and support staff got together after the game. One suggested the toast “here’s to forgetting tonight.” An angry Krzyzewski responded, “here’s to never forgetting tonight.”
He wasn’t the only one. Henderson told me years later that every weight he lifted, every shot he took during the subsequent off season was taken with the memory of that drubbing in mind.
Duke clearly had put the travails of 2013 in the rear-view mirror. They went into Charlottesville 11-1, the only loss to SMU in the Rainbow Classic. But the AP voters weren’t impressed with wins over the likes of South Florida, Ohio, Pacific or Loyola of Maryland and Duke was unranked.
Virginia had lost peerless center Ralph Sampson from 1983. But they returned enough talent to make the 1984 Final Four: Rick Carlisle, Othell Wilson, Tom Sheehey and Jimmy Miller and added freshman center Olden Polynice.
Virginia was 9-0, with a 65-61 win over Detlef Schrempf and Washington.
A capacity crowd of 9,000 filled University Hall, while a regional television audience looked on. They saw a poised and confident Blue Devils team shoot 68 percent from the field in the opening half and rocket to a 40-29 lead at intermission. Virginia coach Terry Holland was not happy with his team’s first-half performance.
“We were not making our shots in the first half on offense,” he said following the game “and then went back and felt sorry for ourselves on defense. That’s what teed me off. We let up instead of playing with more intensity on defense when our shots weren’t falling.”
Still, Virginia was talented and experienced and playing at home. They slowly clawed back into the game, tying it at 58-58.
Carlisle put the home team up 61-58, when he converted a three-point play with 5:55 left.
It was Virginia’s first lead since the opening minute.
Everyone expected the young Blue Devils to give up and go away.
Well, almost everyone.
“Even when we had a one-point lead or the game was tied, we were confident,” Dawkins said. “We don’t fall apart like we did last year.”`
Point guard Tommy Amaker was playing his first ACC game. Amaker grew up in Falls Church, Virginia, a bit more than 100 miles from the Virginia campus and he was a priority Virginia target.
And he wasn’t coming back to his home state to lose. Seconds after Carlisle’s three-point play, Amaker hit a 15-foot jumper, stopping Virginia’s run. Alarie put Duke up 64-63, with two foul shots.
Four and a half minutes left.
Then a crucial sequence started when Carlisle turned it over. Amaker then cut open and Henderson found him with a backdoor pass. Amaker converted inside, drew a foul on Wilson and hit the foul shot.
“I have to take my shot when it’s open,” Amaker said after the game. “Othell turned his head and when he turned back, I was gone. David made a great play.”
It was 67-63.
Krzyzewski called Amaker’s two late baskets “the turning points of the game.”
There was no 3-point shot in 1984, no shot clock. Virginia had some empty possessions and Dawkins, Henderson and Meagher added foul shots and it was 75-66, with a minute left.
The final was 78-72.
Dawkins led everyone with 20 points. Alarie added 16 for Duke, Amaker 13.
Carlisle and Wilson led Virginia with 19 points each, two more than Miller.
Duke ended the game hitting 29 of 47 (61.7% from the field).
Doug McNeely was an unsung hero for Duke. McNeely averaged a modest 2.4 points per game in 1984 but scored eight in this game, including several key buckets down the stretch.
“It’s been an accomplishment for Virginia to dominate the league for four years,” McNeely said. “A win over a club as good as Virginia has been a long time coming and I feel really good about it.”
Krzyzewski said his team “showed a lot of poise and mental toughness.”
Even with this big win, Duke didn’t make the AP poll until February 13, Krzyzewski’s first national ranking. But this win did start what would eventually become a 16-game Duke winning streak over Virginia, one that lasted until February of 1990.
This wasn’t the only breakout game in 1984, which, after all, was Krzyzewski’s breakout season. I’ll take a look at a few more of them down the line.