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DURHAM -- No, Mike Krzyzewski said. There was no jet lag. When joy is this great, it tends to blur time zones.

Returning to Duke University after coaching the U.S. national men's basketball team to Olympic gold, Krzyzewski emphatically declared Wednesday that victory brought happiness to the exclusion of anything else. A burden was not lifted; an honor was bestowed.

"At the end of that Spain game," he said, referring to Sunday's championship contest, "most people would say, 'Weren't you relieved?' No. I wasn't. I was exhilarated. It was euphoric. It was the way it should be."

That sentiment, he said, is one of the many things he'll take from the Olympic journey and apply to the job he'll embrace for the 29th straight college season in 2008-09.

"And that's the way it's gonna be for me the rest of my career at Duke," he said. "For the rest of my career I'm not going to get into that 'relief' thing. We're going to go after it. We're going to do it. And if somebody doesn't go to the Final Four during their four years at Duke, then that's just too damn bad.

"Our team is going to have fun and they're going to have an opportunity to grow just like our Olympic team did and just like most of our teams here have done."

He and his Olympians rejected the "Redeem Team" label and sought to focus on the moment and a conventional -- if less catchy -- designation: the U.S. national team. They did not play like a group haunted by the poltergeists of a bronze-medal finish in 2004. They dispensed with most foes by halftime and hung on to beat the Spaniards for the gold, overcoming the distractions of early foul trouble for LeBron James and Kobe Bryant and a late charge by an opponent that was not content to show up and pose for pictures.

The USA Basketball duties took some of Krzyzewski's time for the past three years. He was so intent on winning for its own sake that he didn't call anybody at Duke from the moment the airplane left the country a month ago until he got home Monday evening. He's back now and eager to start home visits with recruits and other duties of a college coach. He'll attend Saturday's home football game, which marks the start of David Cutcliffe's tenure as the Blue Devils' coach. And he'll do it all with an admonition for anybody who suggests the most recent experience was detrimental.

"Doing these two things at the same time afforded me an amazing opportunity to grow," he said. "There's no way I shouldn't have done this. For Duke, for me, for our country, for whatever. For the kids I coach. I'm a better coach and a better person as a result. And I was while I was coaching (the Devils). It's just that because we didn't go to the NCAA Final Four during the last two years -- because we had two young teams and we got beat -- some people said, 'Shame on you.' Well, the people who wrote those things, they were wrong."

He and his program didn't require the exposure the past month has brought, but it's not going to hurt. Three years after he coached the 1984 Olympic team to gold, Bob Knight, Krzyzewski's most celebrated mentor, directed Indiana University to an NCAA crown. Within a few years of the 1976 Games, Dean Smith recruited James Worthy, Sam Perkins, Michael Jordan and a few others of some note to Chapel Hill.

You get the feeling Krzyzewski would like to do the same.

Contact Rob Daniels at 373-7028 or rob.daniels@news-record.com