2002-03

Season Overview

The numbers were staggering and not in Duke’s favor. Only 49.4% of minutes played and 34.0% of scoring returned from the 2001-02 roster. Jay Williams (second overall pick), Mike Dunleavy Jr. (third overall), and Carlos Boozer (35th) were all gone to the NBA. Senior Casey Sanders graduated. In a single offseason, Duke lost three All-Americans and its starting center. It was the most talent-depleted roster K had fielded since the post-foundation year of 1987.

The rebuild centered on junior point guard Chris Duhon, who had been the steady backup behind Williams for two years and now inherited the keys. Dahntay Jones, a Rutgers transfer who had sat out the 2001-02 season per NCAA transfer rules while being allowed to practice, emerged as the team’s leading scorer. Jones was a 6-foot-6 wing, but K moved him to power forward because Duke’s frontcourt was so thin — making him perhaps the most undersized starting four in major conference basketball. The gamble worked. Jones averaged approximately 17 points per game in January and was the team’s emotional engine.

The freshman class was transformative, though nobody fully appreciated it at the time. J.J. Redick, a pudgy shooting guard from Roanoke, Virginia, who had watched Laettner hit The Shot on television as a child and told his father he was going to play at Duke, arrived as the nation’s #11 recruit. Shelden Williams, a 6-foot-9 center from Oklahoma City, brought rim protection and physicality. Shavlik Randolph added depth in the frontcourt. Daniel Ewing, a sophomore guard, was growing into a reliable two-way player.

The season had its share of struggles. Duke’s six-year streak of 12-win ACC seasons ended at 11-5, good for second place (tied with Wake Forest) behind a Maryland team that was riding the Juan Dixon-led wave to its own national championship a year earlier. The Blue Devils lost on the road at Florida State, at Wake Forest, and at North Carolina — environments where the post depth and interior toughness that Williams, Boozer, and Dunleavy had provided were sorely missed. Krzyzewski himself noted the absence of vocal leaders, saying after one loss: “We don’t have Battier and Dunleavy talking.”

But the season produced two signature moments that previewed what was coming.

The first was the retirement of Jason Williams’ #22 jersey at Cameron Indoor Stadium during the February 5 game against UNC. Grant Hill and Williams himself were in the crowd. It was an emotional ceremony that reminded everyone of what had been — and what this current team was trying to sustain without those players. Duke won the game 83-74, with Jones scoring 23 points and grabbing 13 rebounds in front of the former greats. The game also featured an early confrontation between Jones and UNC coach Matt Doherty — Jones backed into Doherty after making a three-pointer, words were exchanged, and K and Doherty had to be separated by officials. And a fully blue-painted streaker ran baseline to baseline before being arrested.

The second signature moment was the ACC Tournament championship game — and specifically, the arrival of J.J. Redick as a star. NC State, coached by Herb Sendek, built a 15-point lead in the second half of the title game. Duke looked dead. Then Redick went supernova, scoring 23 of his 30 points in the final 10 minutes and 5 seconds of the game. He hit four critical three-pointers and iced a free throw with 2:51 left that gave Duke the lead for good. The Blue Devils won 84-77, claiming a record fifth consecutive ACC Tournament championship — a streak that may never be matched in the modern era. It was the game where everyone watching understood that Redick wasn’t just a shooter. He was a closer. He was the future.

The regular season finale at Chapel Hill was the most heated Duke-UNC game in years. With 8:17 remaining and the game tied at 63, Dahntay Jones elbowed Raymond Felton while going for a rebound, bloodying the freshman point guard. As Doherty rushed over to check on Felton near the Duke bench, Duke assistant coach Chris Collins began jawing at Doherty. Reserve Andre Buckner then shoved the UNC head coach, and both benches nearly erupted into a full brawl before officials restored order. Rashad McCants scored 26 and Felton had 18 points, 8 rebounds, and 10 assists as Carolina won 82-79, snapping Duke’s six-game winning streak in the rivalry. Jones’ 30-foot three-pointer that would have tied it was waved off for coming after the buzzer. It was UNC’s first victory over Duke since 2001, and it was Doherty’s last stand — he would be forced to resign weeks later, paving the way for Roy Williams to finally come home from Kansas.

In the NCAA Tournament, Duke was a #3 seed in the West Region. The Blue Devils handled Colorado State 67-57 and Central Michigan 86-60 (Redick scored 26) before meeting #2 Kansas in the Sweet Sixteen in Anaheim. Nick Collison — the player Roy Williams had promised he’d stay at Kansas for — dominated with 33 points and 19 rebounds, one of the most dominant individual performances in tournament history. Redick, the hero of the ACC Tournament two weeks earlier, shot 2-of-16. Duke fell 69-65, ending the season at 26-7.

The record looks modest by Duke standards. But what K accomplished with this roster — a fifth straight ACC Tournament title with only 34% of the previous year’s scoring, a Sweet Sixteen appearance with freshmen playing 40% of the minutes, and the development of Redick and Shelden Williams into the stars who would carry the next four years — was one of his finest coaching jobs. The 2002-03 season is the bridge between the Williams-Boozer-Dunleavy dynasty and the Redick-Shelden Williams era. Every great program needs a bridge year. Not every bridge year produces a conference tournament championship.

Nobody expected this team to be here. Duke had lost three All-Americans to the NBA Draft and returned just 34% of its scoring. The Blue Devils were a #3 seed in the West Region, not a #1 for the first time in five years. They had lost seven games. And now, in the ACC Tournament championship against NC State, they trailed by 15 points in the second half.

Herb Sendek’s Wolfpack were playing with fury, led by their interior presence and riding the emotion of a potential upset. Duke looked exhausted. The run was over.

Then J.J. Redick happened.

The freshman from Roanoke, Virginia — still baby-faced, still carrying the extra weight he’d shed by his sophomore year — simply took over the game. He scored 23 of his 30 points in the final 10 minutes and 5 seconds. He hit four three-pointers in the stretch, each one bigger than the last. His free throw with 2:51 remaining gave Duke the lead for good. NC State’s bench, which had been celebrating minutes earlier, went silent. Sendek, watching his lead evaporate in real time, grew increasingly animated on the sideline before the camera caught him looking utterly defeated.

Duke won 84-77. Fifth consecutive ACC Tournament championship. No program in ACC history had ever done it, and none has done it since. The streak — 1999, 2000, 2001, 2002, 2003 — spanned the Langdon-Brand era, the Carrawell year, the Battier championship, the Williams-Boozer-Dunleavy Big Three, and now a team with three freshmen in the rotation. That’s not a streak. That’s a dynasty.

Redick would go on to score 2,769 career points at Duke, become a two-time National Player of the Year, and play 15 NBA seasons before becoming the head coach of the Los Angeles Lakers. But the ACC Tournament championship game against NC State was the moment everyone first saw what he would become: a player who rises when the stakes are highest, who hits shots that no one else on the floor would dare attempt, and who refuses to let a season end on someone else’s terms.

“That’s the reason I came to Duke,” Redick said after the game, “to continue the tradition of being one of the top programs in the country.” He was eighteen years old.