INDIANAPOLIS -- Duke basketball coach Mike Krzyzewski was not amused.
A newspaper had done a cartoon of the nation's most successful collegiate hoops boss wearing devil horns, a depiction that Coach K labeled "juvenile. My seven grandkids didn't enjoy looking at it. That's not Papi."
Then he got really upset during Friday's Final Four news conference to promote the NCAA tournament's second semifinal tonight between his Blue Devils and West Virginia's Mountaineers.
"If we're going to be despised or hated by anybody because we go to school and we want to win, you know what, that's your problem," Krzyzewski said. "If you don't like it, keep drawing pictures. Just draw them better next time."
Given that Duke is the only remaining No. 1 seed among this Final Four of the Blue Devils (33-5), Mountaineers (31-6), Butler (32-4) and Michigan State (28-8), perhaps the tournament selection committee needs to draw the brackets better next time.
But that doesn't mean the illustration was wrong to paint the Blue Devils as this Final Four's least favorite team, if only because they've been the most successful the past 20 years. In that time Duke has won three national championships and reached 11 Final Fours, though it last reached this point in 2004.
Michigan State is the next most successful in the semifinals with six Final Fours and one title for coach Tom Izzo in the past 12 years. Neither Butler nor West Virginia has won the tournament.
And to the extent that Duke tends to be disliked as a brand rather than individual players, Krzyzewski seems somewhat OK with that.
"College basketball has its own market," he added. "And it should always be promoted in that way, you know, the team, the tradition. ... In college you are still always playing -- it's an old expression -- for the name on the front of the jersey."
All four of these coaches have emotional reasons to coach for the front of their respective jerseys. Coach K because he's spent the last 30 years of his 35-year career at Duke. Butler coach Brad Stevens because it's the only school he's ever worked for. Izzo because he's pretty much spent his entire professional career at MSU, having served as an assistant to Jud Heathcote before taking over 15 years ago. And West Virginia's Bob Huggins because he played for the Mountaineers before returning there as head coach three years ago.
"I can remember sitting on my grandfather's lap listening to West Virginia football and basketball games," said the 56-year-old Huggins. "I think a large part, if not all of the state of West Virginia, grew up like that. It's unlike any place that I've ever been. The passion that the people of West Virginia have for Mountaineer athletics is unparalleled."
That passion was never more in evidence on the court than when the Mountaineers blistered the Blue Devils in the second round of the 2008 NCAA tourney, the final margin of 73-67 hardly indicative of WVU's domination.
There was at least a wee bit of trash-talking and Mountaineers point guard Joe Mazzulla slapped his hands on the floor a couple of times, long a Duke tradition.
"A spur-of-the-moment thing," Mazzulla said. "You don't get a chance to play Duke that often in your career."
So would he slap the floor again tonight?
"Depends on how the game goes," he said with a smile.
They are clearly a contrast in styles and tradition, the blueblood Blue Devils against the hillbilly Mountaineers.
Or as senior Da'Sean Butler, the star of West Virginia's win over Kentucky noted concerning the Wildcats last week, "I looked at Ashley Judd and (rapper) Drake sitting (with UK). We've got a couple of war veterans and a couple of guys who played in the NBA in the '50s. We don't have the hippest people in the crowd."
But within the white lines of a basketball game, the Mountaineers and Blue Devils are more alike than different, both glued to their defense-wins-championships priorities and their coaches' beliefs that good passing leads to good offense, whether it's inside (WVU) or outside (Duke).
However, West Virginia's coach does appreciate a funny cartoon when he sees it, horns or no horns.
Said Huggins: "We're on TV more than Homer Simpson."