COLLEGE BASKETBALL / GENE WOJCIECHOWSKI : Krzyzewski, Duke Go Out With Class

ST. LOUIS — Duke Dynasty--the epilogue.

In an era where too many coaches preen and perform for the camera, where self-promotion is the accepted way and sincerity is in short supply, Mike Krzyzewski’s misty-eyed postgame soliloquy last Saturday night was worthy of applause.

Krzyzewski is no saint. He has a temper. He has a working knowledge of the most popular four-letter words. He doesn’t suffer fools gladly.

But few coaches care more about the integrity of their profession and of the game itself than Krzyzewski. Even fewer coaches are willing to actually speak their minds, to say nothing of revealing an inner self.

Krzyzewski sees no weakness in tears, which is why he sat in front of a room full of mostly strangers and minicams and bared his soul after the Midwest Regional loss to California.

“All this stuff . . . when people talk about college sports and things being bad,” he said that night, his voice cracking with emotion, “I want to whack everybody who says that. College sports are great. They’re OK when you yell at each other, when you hug each other, when you live.”

And then, in so many words, he all but admitted what some Duke doubters had said since season’s beginning: that the Blue Devils didn’t quite have enough talent for a three-peat.

“We had a really good year,” Krzyzewski said. “I feel like this group of kids . . . gave me about as much as they could give me the whole year long. They’ve been getting everybody’s best shot. I love them. I wish we could have advanced further, but we got beat by a team that deserved to win. We didn’t lose this basketball game, Cal won it. The fact that we won the last two national championships . . . I mean, I never think about losing, but now that we’ve lost, if we’re going to go out I’d rather go out with somebody who won the ballgame and we didn’t give them the ballgame.”

An example:

On television, you could only see, but not hear what happened when Duke point guard Bobby Hurley forced a five-second call on the Cal player he was defending midway through the first half.

Immediately after Duke was awarded the ball on the smothering defensive play, Hurley pumped his fist, all the time yelling, “Yeah! Yeah!”

The nearest game official, who obviously had nothing better to do, told Hurley to pipe down.

Incredulous about the silly reprimand, Hurley looked at the official and said, “Hey, I’m working my . . . off here!”

This was the Hurley way and the Duke way, too. You might have grown bored with their many victories over the past seven years, but they were a program that did college basketball proud. They won games. More important, they won respect.

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Before he was named California interim head coach Feb. 8, it wasn’t unusual for Todd Bozeman to occasionally compete in Golden Bear scrimmages if enough players weren’t available for practice that day.

A former guard at Rhode Island (Class of 1986), Bozeman impressed no one with his current playing skills.

“I kill him from the outside,” Cal center Brian Hendrick said. “That shows where his guard game went.”

And one time Bozeman found himself assigned to the gifted Jason Kidd, the freshman point guard whose quickness and ballhandling talents have earned rave reviews. Things did not go well for the 29-year-old coach.

“After about a couple of minutes, (Bozeman) needed to sit out,” Hendrick said.

By the way, forget all rumors regarding Kidd’s possible transfer from Cal at season’s end. Bozeman said the star freshman no longer was contemplating a change of scenery.

“Jason’s not going anywhere,” he said.

And one other Cal note: Golden Bear senior forward Richard Branham is the brother of George Branham, a member of the Professional Bowlers Assn. Less than two weeks ago, Branham won the Baltimore Open and a $24,000 paycheck--his first victory on the tour.

This week Richard finds himself in St. Louis. His hotel is about a mile from the PBA Hall of Fame.

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The next time Iowa State Coach Johnny Orr campaigns for seven NCAA tournament berths--as he repeatedly did this season--simply remind him of the Big Eight Conference belly flop of 1992-93.

Of the six Big Eight teams invited, only Kansas remains. Of course, that’s one team better than the snooty Big East, the Western Athletic Conference, the Big West Conference, the Midwestern Collegiate Conference and the dismal Southwest Conference.

The Pacific 10 Conference has nothing to apologize for--unless you count Arizona. Cal has been impressive and UCLA has been UCLA, which is to say, just good enough to break your heart.

The biggest surprise isn’t the play of the Atlantic Coast Conference, which has four of its six invited teams in the Sweet 16, or even the Atlantic 10, which has two of its four invited teams in the regional semifinals. Anyone with ESPN during the last month of the season could see that the ACC and Atlantic 10 were stacked with quality clubs.

What catches your attention is the postseason success of the Southeastern Conference, which was considered a one-team league at season’s start. Now look at it: Kentucky, the preseason favorite, is still alive, as are Vanderbilt and Arkansas. Only Louisiana State has been eliminated.

The Sweet 16 scorecard for conferences: ACC (4), SEC (3), Atlantic 10 (2), Big Ten (2), Metro (1), Pac-10 (1), Sun Belt (1), Great Midwest (1), Big Eight (1).

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With a 13-point halftime lead against Michigan, UCLA Coach Jim Harrick was overheard by a Chicago Tribune correspondent as telling CBS announcer and former Notre Dame Coach Digger Phelps, “Help me, help me, I don’t know what to do now.” Harrick was kidding, of course. He and Phelps are longtime friends. . . . As an official Nick Van Exel honk, it is our sad duty to report the Cincinnati point guard’s shooting statistics for the first two NCAA tournament games: four of 20 (20%) from the field, one of nine (11.1%) from the three-point line. Against New Mexico State in the West Regional quarterfinal, Van Exel scored three points, to lower his tournament average to 5.0. He entered the NCAAs with a 19.1-point average. . . . The most likely replacement for Bobby Cremins at Georgia Tech is Tulane’s Perry Clark, a member of Cremins’ Yellow Jacket staff before accepting the Green Wave offer in 1988. . . . If nothing else, Seton Hall Coach P.J. Carlesimo is honest. Taking a page from the Lute Olson School of Media Relations, Carlesimo, as well as nearly every other Big East coach, lectured reporters on the unappreciated strength of the league. That was before the second-seeded Pirates were beaten by Western Kentucky in the Southeast Regional quarterfinals and before the Big East failed to send a team to the Sweet 16 for the first time since 1986. Asked later if the loss signaled the temporary end of the Big East’s reign, Carlesimo told reporters: “I would have to admit it does. We were one of the best teams in the country and we didn’t do it.”

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Now that Xavier is gone from the tournament, Musketeer Coach Pete Gillen offered this appraisal of the Indiana-Louisville matchup in tonight’s Midwest Regional semifinal: “It will be a great game,” he said. “Two Hall of Fame coaches (Bob Knight and Denny Crum). It’d be a tossup. If you put a gun to my head, I’d go with Indiana in a war, because of (All-American forward) Calbert Cheaney. Now (Louisville forward) Dwayne Morton, who’s a superstar, if he steps up, anything can happen. But I haven’t picked a winner since Moby Dick was a minnow.” Gillen on Indiana’s roster, as told to the Indianapolis Star: “They’ve got the best. They’re like Noah’s Ark. They’ve only got nine players, but they’ve got two of everything.” And Gillen on the Hoosier Dome, the supposed neutral site of this season’s Midwest Regional early rounds: “The crowd’s a 10-point advantage. They’re going to have 35,000 Indiana fans and we’ll have a couple of guys from Xavier who got lost on a business trip.”

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Doomed once again to lose the annual office pool, our sheet includes 11 of the Sweet 16 teams. The miserable pre-tournament picks for the Great Eight: Arizona (woof) and Michigan in the West, Kentucky and Florida State in the Southeast, Duke and Indiana in the Midwest and North Carolina and Cincinnati in the East. Final Four choices: Arizona (alert the kennel), Kentucky, Duke and North Carolina. Championship game matchup: Kentucky vs. North Carolina. Winner: Kentucky. Our advice: In future NCAA tournaments, take whoever plays Arizona.

Top 10 As selected by staff writer Gene Wojciechowski

No. Team Record 1. Kentucky 28-3 2. North Carolina 30-4 3. Indiana 30-3 4. Kansas 27-6 5. California 21-8 6. Michigan 28-4 7. Vanderbilt 28-5 8. Cincinnati 26-4 9. Florida State 24-9 10. Arkansas 23-8

Waiting list: Western Kentucky (26-5), Louisville (22-8), Wake Forest (21-8), George Washington (21-8), Temple (19-12).