Coach K: Good Things Happened When Vernon Carey Touched the Ball

Duke coach impressed with freshman center

Coach Mike Krzyzewski was pleased with his team’s public scrimmage following Duke’s Countdown to Craziness event.

“I think they’re exhausted after one minute because they’re so hyped up,” he said. “It’s kind of like when you play a big game here, you better have subs because they use emotional energy right away. But good stuff, we’ve had really good practices. This is our 17th practice, so today is a practice and we’ve been stressing defense and we think that because we don’t have the separation on this team that we’ve had in the past few years. So that’s not bad, if there’s enough guys who can play and we have enough guys who can play and they don’t have to play tired. And so, we feel that will help us on the defensive end and the kids have worked real hard.”

Freshman center Vernon Carey Jr. stood out for Coach K.

“I’ll say what’s obvious to me, it may not be obvious to a few of you, that Vernon Carey played really well and he’s really come on,” he said. “You know, he never really played inside in high school and so he’s really learning the game and every time he touched the ball tonight, the next thing that happened was good. He actually was a guy that you could play through tonight, and that was something really good to see and as a result his team didn’t take as many threes, you had more assists, it kind of gave a rhythm to his team and that was good.”