Sports

Krzyzewski, Duke restore order

HOUSTON — At the end, there was the usual flurry of last-second desperation shots, and then a horn that cut through the Reliant Stadium silence, freezing for good the numbers on the scoreboard: Duke 78, Baylor 71. There was a time when this was the most predictable rite of spring, a regional final ending, a Duke team celebrating, cutting down nets, taunting the rest of America to deal with it.

But this was different. As the ball bounded away, as the Duke fans began to celebrate, Mike Krzyzewski rose wearily from his courtside stool, turned and hugged his two top assistants, then walked over to shake hands with Baylor’s Scott Drew. His players celebrated on the court, and the most amazing thing filled their eyes:

Wonder. Amazement. Joy.

COMPLETE MARCH MADNESS COVERAGE

It had been six years since Duke had qualified for the Final Four, which might not seem like such an egregious thing until you consider that it had made 10 of the previous 18. Duke had been the modern UCLA, as close to a college basketball dynasty as the game’s stubborn parity allowed.

But after 2004, after a national semifinal loss to Connecticut, the Blue Devils started losing, and to the damndest teams: West Virginia. LSU. Virginia Commonwealth. Five straight years without a Final Four? It’s like eight straight seasons without a Yankees championship.

The pinstripers rectified that drought last November.

And Duke did the same yesterday.

And so there will be a No. 1 seed in Indianapolis next week, to culminate an NCAA Tournament that was most unfriendly to favorites and traditional powers. There will be Duke, seeking a fourth national championship, surrounded by a coterie of underdogs ranging from West Virginia, its opponent in the national semis on Saturday, to Michigan State, the most recent incarnation of Duke, making its second straight appearance in the Final Four and sixth since 1999, to Butler, the hometown team, the host school, the national darling.

Baylor winning would have satisfied one extreme fantasy of the NCAA Tournament — that anyone truly does have a chance to win it all in this format — and would have given us the most unlikely Final Four in history. It also would have tested the resolve of people who spend most of November and December renouncing the BCS system that’s used to determine the Division I-A football champion.

Those people, after all, beg for playoffs, because the top teams always seem to get every benefit of every doubt from August to January, and there is the annual chorus of angst when the Boise State Du Jour gets left out of the picture, left out of the party. Oh, do we see some championship hand wringing every year whenever the bowls are announced.

Yet we started hearing something else this weekend. We started hearing folks bemoan the potential lack of an outstanding team in Indy, and we were reminded that as much as people might’ve liked George Mason’s run a few years ago in theory, almost nobody watched it in the Final Four. Folks like their stars on the final weekend.

Now they’ll get them, or at least a familiar blue-and-white uniform. Most right-thinking people will still pull for Butler to go all Hickory High on everyone. But Duke will be there too. There is still some order restored to the Final Four. And to the universe.

michael.vaccaro@nypost.com