Coach K Rips Duke's Effort: "They Thought They Were Going to Win"
Coach Mike Krzyzewski did not mince words when discussing Duke’s loss to Stephen F. Austin at Cameron Indoor Stadium (special thanks to Carolina Blitz for their help. You can see K’s full interview here.
“I want to congratulate Stephen F. Austin,” Coach K said. “They were better. Bottom line. They were tougher than we were. They played with great poise, and we helped them. You can’t give up 64 points in the paint. We don’t even give up 64 points and we gave up so many lay-ups. You go 11- for-24 from the foul line in the second half, it’s just a recipe to lose. We weren’t deserving of winning. That team was deserving of winning, and they won. To win in overtime on that last play – the last play was really symbolic of eight or nine plays that they had where they had free lay-ups.”
After being Cal and Georgetown in Madison Square Garden, Duke came out flat at home.
“We did not respond well to winning at New York,” he said, “and no matter what we said to our team, my feeling is they thought they were going to win. I’m not going to say they thought it was going to be easy, because nothing is ever easy, but they just assume you’re going to win instead of being in a fight to win. … We didn’t respond at timeouts or halftime to a different level of emotion, and we lost. It’s a very difficult loss, but if we would have won we would not have been deserving of winning.”
