The time Mike Krzyzewski played against Kentucky as a player

Mike Krzyzewski’s rich coaching legacy at Duke includes two of the signature games in Kentucky Wildcats basketball history.

The first was the epic “Laettner Game,” the 1992 NCAA Tournament East Region finals in which Christian Laettner’s overtime buzzer-beater broke the hearts of UK’s “Unforgettables” in what many consider the greatest men’s college basketball game ever played.

The second came six years later, when Kentucky stirringly rallied from 17 down inside the final 10 minutes to beat Krzyzewski’s Blue Devils in the 1998 South Region finals.

Entering what he announced last week will be his final season on the Duke bench in 2021-22, Krzyzewski has an all-time mark vs. UK of 6-2 as a head coach.

Not many recall, however, that Krzyzewski also faced Kentucky once as a player.

In retrospect, the finals of the 1968-69 University of Kentucky Invitational Tournament drip with historical significance.

When Adolph Rupp sent his star-packed junior class of Dan Issel, Mike Casey and Mike Pratt out Dec. 21, 1968, to seek the UKIT championship, the opponent was the Black Knights of Army.

Manning the sidelines for Army, making the first of what would be 33 head coaching appearances against Kentucky, was a 28-year-old up-and-comer named Robert M. Knight — yes, Bobby Knight.

Starting in the backcourt for Army was a senior team captain out of Chicago, one Michael William Krzyzewski — now all but universally known to basketball fans as “Coach K.”

The prior night, it had been two Krzyzewski free throws with 37 seconds left in the game that broke a tie with Bradley and propelled Army to a 54-52 victory in the UKIT semifinals.

Meanwhile, Issel had poured in 34 points to trump Michigan star Rudy Tomjanovich’s 26 and lead Kentucky to a 112-104 victory over first-year coach Johnny Orr’s Wolverines in the other UKIT semifinal.

That set up a championship battle between Army’s ball-control approach and UK’s uptempo attack.

Kentucky will “try to play as close to their normal game as they can, and we’ll try to play as close to our normal game as we can,” Knight told the media in advance of the game. “(The outcome) will just be a matter of who can set the pattern of play.”

Issel said that he entered that 1968-69 UKIT final very aware of both Knight and Krzyzewski. The Batavia, Ill., product said Knight had tried to recruit him to West Point, and used the presence of another Illinois product, Krzyzewski, as a selling point.

“I really liked Coach Knight,” Issel said last week. “And I was interested that he had a player there with him from Chicago. But after I found out that, after I played basketball for four years at Army, I had to go into (mandatory) military service, I quickly lost interest in that. But I was aware of Mike (Krzyzewski) even before I got to Kentucky because of the connection with Coach Knight.”

In the UKIT finals, the deliberate tempo employed by Knight and Army confounded Rupp’s Wildcats for a half. At intermission, UK led only 33-31.

In the second half, however, Kentucky got the tempo dialed up and pulled away to an 80-65 victory.

“Army’s game, deliberate and stubborn in the style of the traditional service mule, gave way to Kentucky’s race-horse tactics,” the Lexington Herald’s John McGill wrote afterward.

Issel had 22 points, Pratt 20 and Casey 13 to lead the Cats. James Oxley had 18 points to pace Army.

Krzyzewski finished with six points after making two of six shots and both his free-throw attempts. He also had four rebounds.

The Army guard does not appear to have left a lasting impression on his opponents that long ago night in Memorial Coliseum.

“I had no idea I played against him,” said Terry Mills, a UK reserve in 1968-69 who came off the bench to score a field goal against Army. “You know, I’m sure (Krzyzewski) wouldn’t remember me, either.”

Said Issel: “I really don’t remember (Krzyzewski) in particular that much from the game. I do remember playing against a Coach Knight team and guys from a military academy. And I do remember how tough those guys were. They kept coming after you.”

Kentucky would go on to finish 23-5 in 1968-69 and win the Southeastern Conference. The Cats were upset by Marquette in the 1969 NCAA Tournament Mideast Region semifinals.

Army finished 18-10 and won two games in the 1969 NIT before losing to Boston College.

No one could have known it on Dec. 21, 1968, but with its victory that night in the UKIT finals, Kentucky beat two men who would go on to combine for 2,072 men’s college basketball coaching victories (Krzyzewski 1,170 and counting; Knight 902) and eight NCAA titles (Krzyzewski five, Knight three).

So while “Coach K” might be 6-2 vs. UK, “Player K” went 0-1 against the Cats.

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