Coach K on non-conference scheduling: "I personally would rather play Gonzaga and not necessarily have to go to Maui to play them"

Krzyzewski wants more non-conference freedom with expanded ACC schedule

Coach Mike Krzyzewski doesn’t mind the 20-game ACC schedule, but he’d like to see it coupled with more flexibility in non-conference scheduling.

“I don’t like the conference games being right out of the chute,” he said, “but I would like to see them—since we’ve gone to 20 games, and we have the ACC/Big Ten (Challenge) and whatever--what they do with exempts.”

Exempts refer to the NCAA rules on scheduling. Teams can play 27 regular season games before their conference tournament. But they can add another four games that don’t count against that limit (i.e, they’re exempt) by playing in an early-season tournament.

“Instead of having (a tournament) just give the games to a school. Add the number of games,” Krzyzewski said. “Maybe you don’t get into tournaments. Maybe you schedule some of the non-conference opponents you’re not able to schedule now because of so many conference games.”

“I’d like them to say, ‘Okay, these are your games now.’ I personally would rather play Gonzaga in a big game wherever and not necessarily have to go to Maui to play them,” he said. “Nothing against Maui. I love Maui. I just think we should change accordingly. We’re changing the number of conference games. We should look at other things. Either that or make the ACC/Big Ten an exempt game. Why not? Something where we get more freedom.”

Duke has been criticized by some for not playing true road games in non-conference play. Would a change to exempts mean they’d schedule more of those?

“All I know is when I got into the league in the 80s, we scheduled like crazy. All the teams were in monster games. That added to the stature of our conference. There’s no question. We were the conference that did that.”

“The more conference games, yeah, but flexibility. That’s why I’d like if you’re gonna do that, then give us the other ones so we can do them the way we want to do them.”