Mike Krzyzewski's program has taken some big hits from the professional ranks in the last half decade, losing eight underclassmen and a top recruit to the draft. The Blue Devils saw both super sophomore Luol Deng, the MVP of last season's Atlanta Regionals, and incoming phenom point guard Shaun Livingston, rated the No. 2 high school prospect in America, picked in the top seven of the 2004 NBA Draft last June. The two losses turned a potential No. 1 team into one that will struggle to finish in the ACC's top three. But the loss of Deng and Livingston was nothing compared to what Duke nearly endured in the off-season. For five days in early July, the engineer of the Blue Devil program very publicly milled over a five-year, $40 million offer from the Los Angeles Lakers. The Lakers head coaching position has been long considered one of the premiere jobs in all of sports, but in the end, Krzyzewski decided he couldn't desert the program he had lifted to such distinction. The Duke faithful spent Independence Day wondering if college basketball's most accomplished active coach would follow so many of his players to the NBA. At the end of the weekend Coach K, as he’s so affectionately called, let the Lakers know that he was going to stay at Duke which told the Blue Devil faithful that their team was going to be good for a long time to come.

So Krzyzewski will return to Cameron for his 25th season-in a year when Duke will celebrate a century of college basketball. And while the school's first 75 years of basketball are nothing to be ashamed of, only under Krzyzewski has Duke joined the true elite of the sport. No team or coach has enjoyed as many triumphs in the 64-team NCAA Tournament era, which started in 1985. In those 20 seasons, Duke has more national titles (three), more championship game appearances (seven), more Final Fours (10), more Sweet 16s (15), more No. 1 Associated Press poll finishes (six), more Tournament wins (64) and more 30-win seasons (eight) than any other NCAA basketball team. The Dukeies have been ranked No. 1 at some point in at least eight seasons, including last year, when the Blue Devils won a very strong 31 games, reached the Final Four and gave Coach K his 10th ACC regular-season title. Yet, for all those accomplishments, the 2003-04 season has a disappointing feel to it as Duke blew late leads in key postseason games on two different occasions. The Devils appeared to be on their way to a record sixth straight ACC Tournament crown when they went up by 12 on Maryland with less than five minutes to play in the final game. But the Terps rallied and won in overtime as four Blue Devils fouled out. Three weeks later, Duke led UConn by eight with around three minutes to play in the first game of the Final Four, but fouls sent all three Blue Devil bigs to the bench, allowing Emeka Okafor to rally the Huskies to a 79-78 win en route to the national title.

The starting five this year for the Blue Devils will still be one of the scarier starting fives in the nation. Starting at point guard will be Sean Dockery (Jr.), at shooting guard will be Daniel Ewing (Sr.), at small forward will be J.J. Redick (Jr.), at the power forward position will be Shavlik Randolph and finishing out the lineup at center will be Shelden Williams. The thing that will keep Coach K up at night is his lack of depth behind his big men. After Randolph and Williams there is only one big that got any kind of playing time last season and that’s Patrick Johnson who only saw the floor for 28 minutes last year. Johnson was a walk-on until this summer where he earned a scholarship and didn’t play high school basketball. Despite all this it was obvious that Krzyzewski would rather be dealing with these problems then dealing with the stars and warm beaches of LA and everyone in Cameron is pretty ok with that.