Is Duke Done?

Duke coach Mike Krzyzewski's voice wavered as he spoke of his admiration for his team, his voice heavy with the weight of another early goodbye. To his left, Gerald Henderson wiped both of his hands across his face as if he was trying to push away the whole forgettable night. Next to Henderson, Lance Thomas sat stone-faced.

Each of them looked like they just ran a marathon, only to finish with 10 rounds in the ring and come up losers in both.

And the message was as plain as the scoreboard that read Villanova 77, Duke 54: Even Goliath can get old.

"They were better than we were," Krzyzewski confessed, a strikingly similar admission to the one he offered following Duke's first loss to North Carolina in February. "They played an outstanding basketball game and I want to thank my team for an amazing season and for me, a memorable one."

But as reporters winged questions at the man who has now coached in more NCAA tournament games than any other man, perhaps the most important one went unasked, if it could even have been answered in the first place.

Is Duke done?

For the fifth consecutive year, Duke failed to advance beyond the Sweet 16 and the script seemed oh-so-familiar. The Blue Devils launched a storm of 3-pointers but connected on just five. Two of their top scorers fell into a mathematically improbable funk as Henderson and Jon Scheyer hit just 4-of-32 shots. They were beaten badly on the boards and watched a Villanova layup line blow by again, and again and again.

And it wasn't surprising. Or shocking. Or the kind of headline that needed to scream out from the banner. It was just another Duke loss.

And another moment to wonder if Duke is still Duke.

If it seems like a flawed question after a 30-win season and the school's 17th ACC championship, consider that a testament to how good and how intimidating Duke was in Krzyzewski's first quarter-century on the bench.

If you miss a note in the shower, it's one thing. If Pavarotti can't find the key at the Met, that's another level of disappointment. This was the latter.

"That's also a sign of respect," coach Mike Krzyzewski had said after Duke's second-round win over Texas, responding to the idea that two years was a lengthy absence from the Sweet 16. "They hate talking about what you have done."

Or maybe recently that they've had so little to talk about.

In its heyday, Krzyzewski's Duke was more than just a Goliath. Duke was the guy who took Goliath's lunch money and left the big fella riding the pine. From 1986 to 1994, Duke played in every Final Four except two, winning two national titles. From 1999 to 2004, the Blue Devils went back three times, claiming a title in 2001.

But since 2004, the Devils have entered March like lambs and ended like a sacrifice, no matter how well a season might've seemed to be going. Every year it ended with Krzyzewski bidding his team farewell.

"I'm just disappointed for them, not in them," Krzyzewski said. "They've been a great group of kids."

For the Blue Devils, this dry spell now matches the longest of Krzyzewski's career, dating back to when he still had to give spelling primers on his last name. Only his first five years on the job from 1981 to 1985 featured a bleaker March streak.

So for a program that prides itself on only hanging NCAA banners for Final Four appearances or better, a now historic final weekend drought makes the question all the more relevant..

Is Duke done?

Certainly, the Blue Devils have yet to languish in the way other all-time programs like Indiana and, to a lesser extent, Kentucky have in recent years. But is there any way after the school's lowest offensive output in the NCAA tournament during the shot clock era, during another profound shooting slump, and during the worst postseason loss since UNLV beat Duke by 30 in the 1990 national title game, that Duke is still Duke?

Talk to Krzyzewski long enough and you'll hear the coach refer to his team not as a program but a brand. But even Krzyzewski would admit the Duke brand is at least flirting with the value rack.

"I think we're a brand that has produced good things," Krzyzewski said before the Villanova loss. "And no one has produced a winning championship every year. But really for the most part like we'll play hard. We try to do it the right way."

Effort Duke has, but effort stops being enough somewhere around the time you turn in your little league uniform. Duke is about excellence. And you didn't need to consult the Blue Devils' itinerary to figure out that excellence didn't make the trip to Boston.

Duke's troubles are obvious enough that any sportswriter can diagnose them courtside as the Boston Globe's Bob Ryan did in the press conference, inquiring about the lack of a true post presence. Krzyzewski one-upped him by noting the lack of a true point guard, too.

"It's not like we haven't tried to find them," Krzyzewski said. "A couple of them went to other schools last second. So we were like a three-headed monster on offense. [Henderson, Scheyer and Kyle Singler] sent us a long way, but they played a lot of five against three."

Like his team, Krzyzewski's recruiting problems haven't been from a lack of effort. But Duke's hyper-focused targeting has left the program with hefty roster problems, beginning with its last Final Four appearance in 2004. Before that season, Kris Humphries asked out of his commitment and left for Minnesota where he averaged 22 points and 10 rebounds a game, while Duke lost in the Final Four to UConn after each of its three big men fouled out.

The Blue Devils then watched point guard Shaun Livingston pick the NBA over his Duke commitment, whiffed on Washington native and Husky star Jon Brockman, and brought aboard arguably the school's most disappointing recruiting class in 2005. Ranked second in the nation by Scout.com, that class would feature more players (five) than points scored in Thursday night's farewell (three). Only bench-bound point guard Greg Paulus, ranked No. 1 at his position as a high school senior, scored a bucket -- a lone 3-pointer.

In the following years, Duke would miss on dominant big men Patrick Patterson (Kentucky) in 2007, Greg Monroe (Georgetown) in 2008, as well as elite 2009 point guard Kenny Boynton (Florida).

Somewhere along the way, the Duke brand became less and less exotic.

But there are reasons to think Duke could return to its place atop college basketball even if you don't slap the floor when you wake in the morning. Next year's recruiting class boasts two five-star power forwards with a point guard to follow in 2011. And Krzyzewski has twice lifted his program from much greater depths than a 30-win season, including an even more talent-depleted roster in 1995.

Duke will have to wait another seven months, including an anxious two awaiting Henderson's NBA decision, to see if this recruiting class hits where its 2005 counterpart missed so badly. But the more time passes, the question left unanswered in Boston will only grow bigger.

Is Duke done?