Coach K: "We're Not a Top-5 Team. We May Not Be Top-25 Right Now"
Duke faces a tough road schedule this week with a game at Michigan State on Tuesday, followed by a game at Virginia Tech—who beat Michigan State last week—on Friday. Coach Mike Krzyzewski knows that the Blue Devils still have a lot of work to do after a rough week last week.
“We’re going to have to work through a bunch of things with this group,” he said. “It’ll take time, and we’re going to try to muck it out. We know we’re not a top five team. We may not be a top 25 team in the country right now. We’ve beaten good teams, and we’ve played well. But now it’s where do we go after a loss and a win this week. It’s a different journey for our fans, for me and it’s a much different journey. We’re not pounding our chests, but we have a great group of kids and they’re working hard. We have a really tough week next week that would be tough even if you were a top-five team.”
Krzyzewski thought his team was putting too much pressure on itself following the Stephen F Austin loss and told his players to play freely.
“When you don’t have a blank stare, I don’t know how you really describe not having confidence. It’s tough for me to put into words,” he said. “You can see it in their eyes. I thought we were putting pressure on ourselves shooting, like we have to make this shot.”
Sophomore Joey Baker was the first to step up and take the coach’s advice.
“At one of the timeouts at either the 12 or eight-minute mark, my whole timeout was ‘Look, we’re squeezing the ball. You guys are putting the weight of the world on yourselves,’” he said. “So I said, ‘Just shoot free.’ Darn it man, Joey came out and he let fly in transition and I said ‘Maybe not that much confidence,’ and boom it went in. God bless him, man.”
