GREENVILLE, S.C. — In his very first victory as a head coach, Mike Krzyzewski, West Point man, made poor Lehigh wish it had never taken up the sport at the turn of the 20th century. His Army players guarded their opponents as if their academy appointments depended on it, pursued every loose ball with reckless abandon, and all but chased the overwhelmed Engineers out of the old field house down by the Hudson River.

Army scored 56 points on that historic Friday night, Nov. 28, 1975. Lehigh had 10 points at halftime and never made it to 30.

“I got what I wanted,” Krzyzewski said afterward. “Full effort.”

Nearly 47 years later, with a chance to earn victory No. 1,200 before he exits stage left, the retiring coach is still demanding the same thing from his team.

“We played pretty good defense that night,” Krzyzewski recalled Saturday. “Twenty-nine points. I was hoping they’d all be that way.”

Nothing in basketball or in life ever comes that easily. To carry 1,199 career victories into Sunday’s second-round NCAA Tournament matchup with an old frenemy, Tom Izzo of Michigan State, Krzyzewski had to constantly adapt and evolve in ways that his mentor, Bob Knight, never did.

He also had to heed the advice of two of Knight’s own wise men, Hall of Fame coaches Hank Iba and Pete Newell. Coach K mentioned Saturday that Iba and Newell had told him many years ago to be true to himself and to avoid trying to duplicate another coach’s approach. “Take good lessons from a number of people,” they said, “but don’t try to be anyone else.”

Krzyzewski left out the little nugget that the wise men were at least partly referring to the volcanic Knight, who hired his former Army point guard as a grad assistant at Indiana in 1974 and showed him to run a powerhouse Division I program — and how not to run a powerhouse Division I program. When he later recommended Krzyzewski for the Duke job, Knight admitted to the athletic director who would make the hire, Tom Butters, that the candidate possessed “all of my good qualities and none of my bad ones.”

Though he could berate a player with the best of ’em, and though his profanity puts a drunken sailor’s to shame, Krzyzewski became more user-friendly over the years, at least when it came to pursuing and managing talent. His experience coaching the Kobe Bryants and LeBron Jameses at the Olympics inspired him to embrace the sport’s one-and-done realities, and to accept the fact he couldn’t be the one always asking the other party in the coach-player relationship to change. Krzyzewski had to change too, as each generation of recruit presented fresh challenges.

“We were 111-106 in my first eight years … five at West Point and three at Duke,” Krzyzewski said. “I learned a lot during that time, and I was able to get a higher level of talent to be able to teach, and pretty much I’ve been able to do that again and again, and that’s made me better.

“But it also has given me an opportunity to think how to use that talent in different ways. I love that. Especially the last decade, every team’s different. You have to come up with a system that fits their personality and be agile enough to allow for growth during that time.”

At Michigan State for the better part of three decades, Izzo has had a front-row seat for Krzyzewski’s growth. Though the Spartans handed Coach K one of his most devastating defeats three years ago, preventing his Zion Williamson-RJ Barrett team from reaching the Final Four, Krzyzewski is 12-3 against him, and beat him in 2011 to break Knight’s all-time victories record with his 903rd.

“That was in Madison Square Garden,” Izzo recalled. “So maybe the NCAA decides I’m the sacrificial lamb or something.”

Izzo joked Krzyzewski has more career victories than he’s had career practices. “Getting 1,200 wins or 1,199 wins is just unbelievable,” he said.

“Man, if that record’s broken — and I know they’re all meant to be broken — but someone’s going to have to start right out of the womb to break that record.”

In other words, good luck with that.

Krzyzewski maintained he doesn’t care about his successful history against Izzo or anyone else because “you don’t put a banner up by your record against a certain team or a certain coach.” But still, even if they don’t admit it for public consumption, the greats know where they stand on the legacy scoreboard at all times.

Coach K’s 1,199 and counting looks pretty good compared to Knight’s 902 victories, Dean Smith’s 879, John Wooden’s 664 and Tom Izzo’s 666.

“I’ve got to be his favorite coach because he’s beaten us like a drum,” Izzo said.

He credited his signature opponent for making countless adjustments over his iconic 47-year career as a head coach. And yes, that’s how you get from a blowout opening-night victory over Lehigh in 1975 to a shot at No. 1,200 over Michigan State in 2022.