SAN FRANCISCO — On the planet for three quarters of a century, Mike Krzyzewski proved he can still connect with a wide circle of kids. The world’s most famous pending retiree is heading to his 13th Final Four because he still knows how to communicate with teenagers, adapt to them, and inspire them.

He still knows how to win with them at the highest level of his sport.

So there he was Saturday night at Chase Center, pumping his fist and waving for Duke fans to give him more noise in the closing seconds as his Blue Devils dispatched Arkansas in the West Region final, 78-69, his 101st career NCAA Tournament victory.

John Wooden’s record of 10 national titles at UCLA will never be broken, so with Krzyzewski only halfway there in his 42nd and final season at Duke, he did the next best thing.

He broke his own tie with Wooden for Final Four appearances, even though the Wizard spent his career needing to win two games to advance to the national semis, before Coach K spent his career needing to win four to get there.

“It’s an honor,” Krzyzewski said. “Coach Wooden, if he kept coaching would probably have 24. [The regional final] is the biggest game a college coach has to coach, because it gets you into the Promised Land. For me to have that 17 times now, that’s a big-time thing for me. I’m so proud of that. My teams have put me in that position, and we’ve won now 13 of them, and whatever happens afterward happens now. It’s a heckuva thing.”

Damn right it is.

Asked to rate this team against his greats of the past, Coach K said: “I don’t rate my daughters or my grandchildren. I’m not going to do that. Obviously this is one of 13 that have gone to a Final Four, so they’re right up there.”

Krzyzewski’s team will face whichever team wins the East Region final on Sunday: Saint Peter’s or North Carolina. Both present surreal matchup possibilities in New Orleans for entirely different reasons.

But that was not a concern during the on-court ceremony Saturday night, when Duke fans chanted, “We want six,” for Coach K’s sixth national crown, as the Blue Devils were being handed the regional trophy. The players dumped buckets of blue and white confetti on Krzyzewski, who gleefully wiped it out of his hair and eyes.

When it was time for Coach K to cut the last strand of net, he carefully climbed the ladder, took the ceremonial last snip, and waved his hands and the net to all corners of the crowd. He climbed down a little less carefully, and walked off the court holding the hand of his wife of 53 years, Mickie, whom he married on his graduation day at West Point.

Freshman AJ Griffin of Archbishop Stepinac in White Plains gave Krzyzewski 18 points, and classmate Paolo Banchero, the West Region’s Most Outstanding Player, gave him 16.

“They did it for us,” Coach K said. “Enough about doing it for the old man here.”

So much for the burdens of Krzyzewski’s victory tour weighing down these Blue Devils, who held a 45-33 halftime lead after Trevor Keels nailed a 3-pointer just before the horn. After Arkansas cut the lead to five with more than 13 minutes to go, Coach K called timeout and ran a play for Banchero, whose driving layup fueled a 10-0 run that effectively sealed the deal.

“Coming into the tournament we wanted to kind of let go of all that,” Banchero had said. “I think we’ve kind of moved past the cloud of just it being his last year, and everything being so much pressure.”

In his 47th season as a head coach, Krzyzewski pushed all the right human buttons to get his team to play at its highest level at the perfect time. After switching from his cherished man-to-man defense to a zone against Texas Tech on Thursday night, he empowered his players by later heeding their pleas to switch back to man. In an equal swap, when Krzyzewski asked his Duke defenders to slap the floor as a nod to program tradition, they did it with great enthusiasm.

As it turned out, Coach K had to reconnect with his team after it cratered in a loss to North Carolina in his farewell-to-Cameron game. First, he said he had “a good meeting with myself” during the ACC Tournament, before a loss to Virginia Tech. For the first time ever, Krzyzewski decided to pull out a chair during halftime against Michigan State and Texas Tech and just calmly talk to his players for five minutes.

The players responded to the old man, and they channeled what Coach K called “a very deep level of adversity” into this spirited postseason run. “Let’s go to New Orleans,” Krzyzewski said at the end of one of the most charmed nights of his professional life.

Krzyzewski loves this group of players, and this group clearly loves him back.

“He’s probably the best person I’ve met in terms of being able to connect and just get you to really want to win with him and win for him,” Banchero said. “He’s a great motivator, a great coach, and just a great person overall.”

And that’s a great endorsement for a 75-year-old teacher to receive from a 19-year-old student on this incredible journey back to the Final Four.