College Basketball

Duke University coach Mike Krzyzewski reached a marvelous milestone never before achieved in men’s college basketball.

When his team knocked off St. John’s 77-68 at a sold-out Madison Square Garden in New York on Sunday, he posted the 1,000th victory of his career.

“To win the 1,000th here, you need to be a lucky guy,” Krzyzewski said.

Lucky? Good as well. It was at the Garden in 2011 when he won his 903rd game, breaking the record set by his friend and mentor, Bob Knight.

It wasn’t easy on Sunday. No. 5 Duke trailed by 10 with 8:15 to play, but rallied with an 18-2 stretch run.

“It’s a remarkable accomplishment to win as many games as Mike has as a coach,” Knight said in a statement. “However, being able to coach as well as he has for as many years as he has is even more remarkable.”

Coach K coached at Army from 1975-80 and then moved to Duke, where his teams have won four national titles. He has a career record of 1,000-308.

Also in college basketball: No. 8 Notre Dame topped North Carolina State 81-78, No. 2 Virginia nipped rival Virginia Tech 50-47 and No. 13 Maryland defeated Northwestern 68-67 on Dez Wells’ last-second putback. Maryland didn’t lead until the final 21 seconds.

Baseball

 
New commissioner Rob Manfred took over for the retired Bud Selig, whose tenure lasted 22 years. Manfred has worked for Major League Baseball since 1998.

Selig grew the game after bouts of labor issues, a strike-cancelled World Series in 1994 and a steroids crisis. Manfred says his mandate is to make the game more popular with a younger audience. TV ratings tend to be strong locally and weak nationally, especially for the World Series.

ALL-STAR GAMES

 
The NHL and NFL staged their talent shows on Sunday with pick’em teams designed to pique fan interest. Neither the NHL All-Star Game nor the NFL’s Pro Bowl, which also had pick’em rosters, looks anything like the real game.

Scoring was rampant in the NHL shooting festival, with the winning team walking away with a 17-12 decision. In the Pro Bowl, Team Irvin (captained by Michael Irvin) beat Team Carter (under Cris Carter’s auspices) 32-28. The NFL experimented with narrower goal posts and longer extra point tries in using this contest as a laboratory for possible future rules changes. The Pro Bowl kicks off Super Bowl week, a media feeding frenzy and surely more talk of DeflateGate.
 
 
Post By: Larry Weisman, a longtime sportswriter for USA TODAY, blogs for Twistity.com. Follow him on Twitter @MrLarryWeisman .