Coach K Warned Duke a Loss in Miami Was Coming

Krzyzewski said team didn't compete like it needed to

Coach Mike Krzyzewski saw in practice that the Blue Devils didn’t have the intensity they needed leading up to the game at Miami. He couldn’t fix the issue, however, and Duke lost to the Hurricanes in an upset.

"You need to hit it at the moment you see it,” he said. “We saw it yesterday. You took care of it yesterday; you don't take care of it during a ball game.”

Krzyzewski gave his team a warning, which turned out to be prescient.

“I told them if you come down to Miami to play, we will lose,” he said. “If you come down to Miami to compete, we will win.”

With a young Blue Devils’ team, Krzyzewski knows that he needs complete effort from the players in order to win in the ACC.

“We're just a good basketball team,” he said. “We don't have the old—we have talent, don't get me wrong. We have to really play hard to win, and if we don't play hard, we're going to lose. If we play hard, we still might lose. We're going to get better and go after it, but we didn't play hard tonight. It's sad. It really is sad. Coming off those two games—again, you play three games in six days and we're not tired, don't get me wrong in that, but you have to be mature enough to handle three games in that period of time and be prepared for each one.”

Krzyzewski told his team that the game of basketball demand full effort.

“That single game is the most selfish thing in our game,” he said, “and it's selfish because it does not care what you did in the previous game. It doesn't care what you're going to do in a future game and if you don't come completely immersed in it, it will not reward you. That's what I've talked to them about. You have to handle this game and the game will hold you accountable and obviously your opponent will, too. ... I believe in all that stuff. That's what I try to teach each one of our teams and we'll still continue to try and teach this team."