Goodbye to all that

 I suppose this was inevitable, like the man himself so often has been. Sooner or later the Blob had to say something about Mike Krzyzewski -- about this being his farewell tango with winter, and with the weight of numbers that have themselves become inevitable.

Which is to say, Coach K has won and won and won so often he's turned Duke basketball into a natural phenomenon of sorts. The sun rises in the east; Duke wins a national title every six or seven years. And, lord, how everyone outside Durham, N.C., has grown sick to death of the Blue Devils because of it.

The Blob, too, I must admit. But today is K's last home game, and so the inevitable must be observed.

First off, Mike Krzyzewski is the most successful coach in men's college basketball history, a Rushmore guy, right up there with Wooden and Knight and Smith and probably bigger than all of them.

He's done it the way you're supposed to do it most of the time -- Christian Laettner's chest stomp, Grayson Allen's incorrigible goonery and the flagrant purchase of Zion Williamson being obvious exceptions.

Because of that, a certain amount of sanctimony (again: inevitable) has attached itself to K's program. To his credit, Krzyzewski himself has never invited it. But it's there, and most of the loathing for Duke outside Durham springs from it.

It's one thing to be too good for your own good, after all. But when you're both that and too goody two-shoes for your own good ...

Well. No one likes a snob, and Duke often gives off a whiff of snobbery that likely has as much to so with its status as an elite academic institution as it does with the entitled snots on its basketball team. The fact the entitled snots seem to get every break, always, only enhances that.

Almost all of that is perception, mind you. Duke's basketball players, most of them, come from backgrounds that could hardly be described as "entitled." But, dammit, why did Gordon Hayward's desperate heave rim out, back in 2010? How come Laettner wasn't ejected for the chest stomp in the '92 regional final, which would have meant we wouldn't have to watch his winning shot over and over and over ad nauseam?

 And why do the Dukies have to get EVERY DAMN CALL, particularly in Cameron Indoor?

This evening that will no doubt happen again, or at least we'll think it  does. Duke will beat North Carolina, its fiercest rival. K will wave goodbye through a prism of tears. The Cameron Crazies will press pause on their usual obnoxiousness to swipe away a few tears themselves.

Goodbye to all that, and all that.

And you know what?

It will all be perfection. Because of course it will.