Duke basketball coach Mike Krzyzewski will undergo lower-back surgery on Jan. 6 and could be sidelined for as long as four weeks while he recovers. In Krzyzewski’s absence, assistant Jeff Capel will serve as the team’s head coach.
Mike Krzyzewski will take leave of absence from Duke basketball after back surgery
A strange 2016-17 season for preseason national title favorite Duke just keeps getting stranger.
Michael Shroyer-USA TODAY Sports
“Dr. William Richardson, Dr. Friedman, and our medical team have worked tirelessly to help manage this issue for several weeks,” Krzyzewski said in a press release. “Together, we have determined that surgery is the best course of action at this time. During my recovery process, the team will be in the capable hands of Coach Capel, Coach James and Coach Scheyer. As soon as the doctors clear me to do so, I look forward to returning and giving our team 100% of my energy and attention, which is certainly something that they deserve.”
“To be sure, the entire Duke community is supportive and eager to get Mike back as soon as possible,” said Duke Vice President and Director of Athletics Kevin White. “His health is paramount, and he will get the best possible care in the world by the Duke medical team. With the proper recovery time, we look forward to Mike doing what he does best -- leading and teaching -- very soon.”
The operation on Krzyzewski will be to remove a fragment of a herniated disc that has reportedly been bothering Coach K for more than a month. He will coach the team Wednesday night against Georgia Tech before handing the reins to Capel in front of the team’s Saturday tilt against Boston College.
This will be the second time that Krzyzewski has been forced to sit out an extended period of time in the middle of a season because of a back injury. In Jan. of 1995, Coach K announced that he would miss the rest of the season because of complications from back surgery he had undergone the previous October. That Duke team finished with 18 losses, still the most ever by a Blue Devil squad.
Monday’s news is just the latest unexpected twist in what has already been a bizarre 2016-17 season for a Duke team that was a near-unanimous preseason No. 1.
First, the Blue Devils were forced to play the first several games of the season without the services of five-star freshmen Harry Giles, Jayson Tatum, and Marques Bolden, who were all sidelined with injuries and are still working their way towards getting back to 100 percent. Next, there was the latest in a string of tripping incidents featuring Grayson Allen, the preseason national Player of the Year who remains indefinitely suspended and was most recently stripped of his captaincy. Most recently, there was the team kicking off ACC play on New Year's Day and getting throttled on the road by Virginia Tech, 89-75.
There’s still plenty of time between now and March for Duke to get itself together, but the days of discussing the Blue Devils in terms of being a “super team” seem like a thing of the distant past.
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