By the 1989-90 season, it was clear that Mike Krzyzewski’s Duke program had legs. The Blue Devils had been to the NCAA Tournament every year since 1984 and had made the Final Four in 1986 and 1988 and the Sweet Sixteen in 1987.
Duke wasn’t going away.
But it still wasn't the Duke people know and love (or hate) today. There were no national championships and Christian Laettner was just another hungry sophomore. Bobby Hurley was a somewhat anxious freshman and Grant Hill was still in high school in Virginia a year away.
Duke started Laettner, Hurley, Robert Brickey, Alaa Abdelnaby and Phil Henderson, who just a week or so earlier had called his teammates “a bunch of babies” for not having the kind of heart he (rightly) thought they should.