Jack White: Loss to Clemson Was Not Who We Really Are
Jack White spoke to the media in advance of No. 3 Duke’s game against No. 11 Louisville on Saturday night. The senior captain said that the team has been working to make sure it’s ready to match the Cardinals’ intensity.
“(We’ve been working on) the things we can control, first and foremost,” he said. “We’ve got to come in and prepare. We’ve got to know their personnel. With us, it was really putting an emphasis on coming out and playing harder than them, being hungrier, just competing at a higher level. We feel like if we want it more, then good things are going to happen for us, and we feel like that’s being shown throughout the season already. So, really, just coming out hungry. We feel like we’ve got something to prove and just trying to be first to every ball and just win every play.”
The Blue Devils will be eager to get back onto the floor to erase the memory of Tuesday’s loss at Clemson.
“I don’t think it’s been like too different (at practice),” White said. “There’s not really too much we can do. Just try to move on and realize that Tuesday was not who we really are. Full credit to Clemson, but that wasn’t us at our best. The last couple days we’ve just been trying to move onto the next play. There’s only so many games. We’ve got to move on to the next one, no matter if it’s your biggest win or your biggest loss. Just go back into the gym and focus on them how we can beat them.”
Part of that involves knowing Louisville’s personnel.
“They’ve got a few really good three-point shooters, obviously, with [Jordan] Nwora [and Ryan] McMahon,” he said. “So we’ve just got to try to take them out of the game, not give them any good looks to get them going. We really weren’t happy with our defense, obviously, on Tuesday night. We just kind of let their best players roam free and get what they wanted, so just really coming in, really trying to make teams uncomfortable, trying to take them out of their stuff. Be an aggressive defensive team, and really just get back to our identity of what we want to be known as, which is the best defensive team in the country.”
