Luke DeCock: As Duke and Army celebrate Coach K's career, Dame Sarr makes an impression

WEST POINT, N.Y. — On an evening suffused with patriotism, celebrating the career of a coach with the deepest of ties to both Army and Duke on Veterans Day, Dame Sarr had no obligation to play along.

With Mike Krzyzewski watching from the sideline and a new banner honoring his tenure at Army hanging on one wall, Sarr, the freshman from Italy, had 13 of his career-high 19 points in the opening eight minutes of Duke’s first visit to West Point in 28 years, a 114-59 win.

You have to feel for Army coach Kevin Kuwick, as much as hosting Duke in front of a sellout crowd on national TV was a bonanza for his program. He had a plan for Cameron Boozer, who was held to a tame three field-goal attempts in the first half, and there’s only so much anyone can do when Isaiah Evans gets hot, but then Sarr — who had a total of 10 points in his first two Duke games — gets going early and often.

What’s a coach supposed to do?

“You see him, he’s got good form, he’s long,” Kuwick said. “It’s totally a pick-your-poison kind of thing.”

Army managed to stay within single digits for most of the first half until Duke closed out the first half on a 14-4 run. The second half was more like the latter. The margin of victory in Duke’s last four meetings with Army, all in Durham over the past 12 years, averaged 27.5 points. This crushed the largest of those, which was 42 last season. (Duke earlier beat Army by 62 in December 1996.)

Evans had 17, Patrick Ngongba 16 and Boozer and Darren Harris 15 each for Duke, which hosts Indiana State on Friday before heading back east to play Kansas at Madison Square Garden next week.

“I think we’re learning what it takes to pull away from teams, especially when we’re on the road,” Evans said. “It just comes back to rebounding and guarding the ball.”

On a Duke roster full of known quantities, whether they be relative veterans like Evans and Caleb Foster and Maliq Brown or freshmen whose resumes precede them like the Boozer twins, Sarr remains the wildest of cards.

“I think Dame has really felt the journey that you can be on as a freshman already,” Duke coach Jon Scheyer said. “He was upset the way he played the last game, and the ability to come back the next time and play the way that he did I think says a lot about his character. His ability to guard really stands out, but we’ve known the offensive potential that’s there as well. Tonight he really had it going on both ends.”

Sarr arrived late, as a replacement for Cedric Coward, who transferred to Duke but turned pro before arriving, part of this summer’s unprecedented wave of European pros. Lithe, fast and athletic, the explosiveness he showed early — from inside and outside, on offense and defense — is what Duke was hoping to get from him.

The quick hands were a given. In the second half, he picked Army guard Dayon Polk’s pocket at center court, pure thievery out of nowhere for an easy dunk. That accounted for two of the six points Sarr scored after his opening outburst.

“Whenever I’m focused on defense, then everything else comes by itself,” Sarr said. “So I didn’t try to force it. It just came. And that’s what I’m trying to do every time.”

The game was, in some ways, secondary to the main event. In a pregame ceremony, West Point commandant Gen. Steven Gilland and athletic director Tom Theodorakis joined Krzyzewski, his wife, Mickie, and daughter Debbie Savarino at center court.

Surrounded by several of his former Army players, they watched a video of highlights of Krzyzewski coaching at Army before the academy unfurled a new banner commemorating Krzyzewski’s career as the Duke and Army players watched.

(Not mentioned: On the display in a Christl Arena hallway honoring all of Army’s team captains, in 1968-69, the Army Athletic Association Trophy went to football all-American Charles J. Jarvis, not basketball captain Michael W. Krzyzewski.)

“It was incredibly meaningful to share this with Coach K, and our players, you know, they don’t get a lot of time to be around him,” Scheyer said. “So for me, that was something that was very meaningful for me, for Coach K to share in it with our players.”

Scheyer agreed to play this game in part for an early true road test for his team, with another coming up next month at Michigan State. Given all the distractions inherent in this trip, and the time Duke spent touring the campus on Monday — “When we go other places, you’re not touring the campus,” Scheyer acknowledged — it was fair to wonder whether Duke got out of this game what it needed.

On the contrary, Scheyer said, the more the Devils had to deal with, the better it would serve them in the long term.

“Part of being really good, hopefully you can continue to have a successful season when you’re playing in March, and the further you go, the more distractions there are,” Scheyer said. “So to be able to focus on the details, focus on what your job is when there’s other things happening, when there’s energy you have to put in other places, I thought that was a great lesson for our team.”

His part in the proceedings concluded, Krzyzewski then watched the game from the sideline opposite the Duke bench, a team manager walking across to bring him stat sheets during television timeouts, his loyalties presumably at least a little torn, his old coaching instincts presumably at least a little excited at what he saw from Sarr.