Coach K: We Haven't Had Many Beautiful Plays, But We Did Today

Duke jumped out to a 10-2 lead over Boston College in Tuesday’s ACC Tournament opener. Coming off of a game against North Carolina where the Blue Devils were on the opposite side of a game-opening blitz, the fast start was important.

“Huge,” agreed coach Mike Krzyzewski. “In the games that we've played well, we haven't turned the ball over and we played good and got good shots, and we haven't started out in a hole. Today, playing like that to begin with, and then we played a really good game. Our perimeter was outstanding. They shared the ball. We had 22 assists. We shot the ball well.”

Duke is not staying in Greensboro due to COVID concerns, busing in from Durham each day, but the Blue Devils made the trip on Monday to practice in the Greensboro Coliseum.

“We came here yesterday,” Coach K said. “We drove in to do our 45-minute practice just to get a good feel because we knew there wouldn't be hardly any warmup for our game. And our kids really … the perimeter really shot the ball well yesterday. Sometimes you do that the day before the game and not the day of, but it seemed to carry over. Obviously our defense was good and we had really good balance scoring. And the contribution from Henry (Coleman, who had four points) was key, real key.”

Duke also had 22 assists on 32 made field goals, continuing a late-season trend of sharing the ball on offense. And the Blue Devils limited their turnovers to 12.

“A couple of the time-outs when we made those shots, what we reminded the guys of is when the guy makes that extra and then an extra pass, you almost always hit that shot,” Krzyzewski said, “because the guy receiving it, it's like, the other guy said, look, I have confidence in you to hit it. I could have taken it but I have confidence in you. Those are beautiful plays, and we haven't had a lot of them, but we had a good number of them today.”

Add us as a preferred source on Google