Stryker Brigade News

Twenty-six years later, Col. Bob Brown let out a hearty chuckle as he recalled the game in a telephone interview earlier this month from Mosul, Iraq.

Brown is in charge of 8,000 troops in the 1st Brigade of the 25th Infantry Division, known as the Stryker Brigade Combat Team. And as he leads his troops in Iraq, Brown said, he uses the tenets of leadership and teamwork that Krzyzewski helped instill at West Point.

"It was that type of discipline that he demanded," Brown said. "Even if you hit a game-winning shot."

Back in Durham, N.C., Krzyzewski is teaching the same lessons to his current team, No. 7 Duke, which plays St. John's at Madison Square Garden on Saturday.

In a telephone interview Monday, Krzyzewski let out a laugh at Brown's recollection.

"As a defender of freedom right now, I'm glad that the Army has changed him," Krzyzewski said of Brown's defensive shortcomings.

What has not changed is the strong relationship between Krzyzewski and Brown, who played three seasons under Krzyzewski at West Point in the late 1970's.

On his game-day desk at Cameron Indoor Stadium, Krzyzewski keeps a flag that Brown sent him folded military style - in a triangle. The flag went out on patrols in Brown's Stryker armored vehicle. In his office in Iraq, Brown has a copy of the Rudyard Kipling poem "If" that Krzyzewski gave him as a plebe at Army.

The two keep in touch by e-mail and telephone. Krzyzewski said the magnitude of Brown's job helped him keep perspective in the throes of the season, where games are given labels like "must win" and "life or death."

Brown, meanwhile, has used Duke basketball as an occasional escape, waking up before dawn to watch a game or getting a lift from a phone call or note from Krzyzewski.

"Those sorts of moments just really, really mean so much to him," Brown's wife, Patti, said in a telephone interview from Fort Lewis, Wash. "When he gets a 'Hang in there' or 'We're behind you.' Those things mean a whole lot to him."