Calling himself a “very lucky guy,” Duke coach Mike Krzyzewski formally announced Thursday at Cameron Indoor Stadium that the upcoming season will be his last.

College basketball’s winningest coach is retiring after what will be his 47th year as a head coach, but he stressed there’s nothing driving him from the game. 

“This is not about health. … It's not about COVID or saying, ‘Why, that year was so bad. … It's not about that,” he said. “It's certainly not about what's going on with college basketball, where, boy, the game's changing. All right. I've been in it for 46 years. I mean, the game's never changed? You know, in the progression of the game, we've always had to adapt to the changes in culture, the changes in roles, the changes in the world.”

Coach K, 74, said instead that he and his wife, Mickie, simply made a decision together that “the journey is going to be over in a year.”

Krzyzewski — who has 1,170 career wins and counting, 1,097 of them at Duke — said he will continue to be a part of the Blue Devils program after his retirement, although it wasn’t clear what his role might be. He added that he’s not interested in serving as any sort of college basketball czar.

“To me, one of the first things is going to be, what does Duke need for me in that new role?” he said. “I will always be connected with the game.”

Added Duke President Vincent Price: “There will always be a place for Coach K at Duke.”

Blue Devils assistant coach Jon Scheyer, who played for Duke from 2006-10, has been named Krzyzewski’s successor. Scheyer, 33, will be formally introduced as the coach-in-waiting Friday.

Hired in 1980 after five seasons at Army, Krzyzewski turned Duke into one of college basketball’s premier programs, winning five national championships and reaching the Final Four 12 times.

Krzyzewski was a three-time Naismith Coach of the Year winner and inducted into basketball’s Hall of Fame in 2001. He coach 37 All-Americans and 41 NBA first-round draft picks, including Christian Laettner, Grant Hill, J.J. Redick, Elton Brand, Kyrie Irving and Zion Williamson.

Coach K also led Team USA to three Olympic gold medals as head coach.

“I said it often and I mean it in the bottom of my heart, the best word I've come up with is ‘mind-boggling.’ It's absolutely mind boggling. A comparable run will never reoccur,” said outgoing Duke athletic director Kevin White, who called Krzyzewski the greatest college basketball coach of all time.

Krzyzewski said he was fortunate for all the opportunities he was given throughout his career, but also for all the people who believed in him, including his parents and Bob Knight, who coached him at Army and then gave him his start in coaching on his staff at Indiana.

The Blue Devils coach also got emotional when talking about former Duke President Keith Brodie and former athletic director Tom Butters, both of whom died in 2016. 

Krzyzewski said Butters continued to believe in him when many people wanted him fired after his first three seasons at Duke, two of which ended with losing records. When Krzyzewski nearly stepped down in 1994 due to severe back issues, it was Butters who talked him out of it.

Coach K called Brodie “the best person I’ve ever known” in his 41 years at the university.

“He believed in me when in one of my darkest hours,” Krzyzewski said, also referring to his back issues. “For those months of rehabbing and getting better, he believed in me every day.

“Throughout the years, it was a little bit easier to believe in me — championships — and I'm glad that a lot of recruits believed in me because they've made me a heck of a lot better coach,” he added. “Some of the great players in the history of college basketball played right here.”

Last season, Duke failed to qualify for the NCAA tournament for the first time since 1995 — not counting, of course, the 2020 tournament that was canceled by the COVID-19 pandemic.

Krzyzewski indicated he’s eyeing not only a bounce-back season but a sixth national title in his farewell year.

“We're going to go for it as much as possible, as much as we can this year, and we're going to try to return this place into being what it’s supposed to be. And then we'll be able to walk away,” he said.