Responding to a Loss: How Coach K Brought Duke Back, Part Two

Duke got blown out by NC State in an 88-66 loss last Wednesday. The late-season loss could send a team into a spiral at the worst possible time.

Coach Mike Krzyzewski and the Duke staff had a little over two days to right the ship. In part one, we looked at the message Coach K sent to the team after the game. Now we hit the practice floor.

The team understood what went wrong against State. "This is who we are," Krzyzewski told them.

Then it was time to build, not punish.

"We’re going to go on the court now," Krzyzewski told the Blue Devils on Thursday. "There's not going to be animal drills or anything like that or crazy-ass things. What they’re going to be are things that we need to improve on. We had a really hard, good practice."

"We couldn’t have the same practice Friday, or else we’d be dead (for the game)," he continued. "So we now, on Friday, went through scouting, but before we went through scouting, we talked about attitude and belief. Whenever there’s adversity, the single greatest gift that God has given to you is attitude. You are in control of attitude, no one else. It’s on you. So in order to change things around, you’ve got to have attitude. Second thing you have to have is belief. You have to have belief in yourself and your group. On that day, we talked about attitude and we believe in them. You have to believe in each other. The third thing is preparation. So now, we're going to go on the court, and we’re going to prepare. Then the final is (game day). It's executing, and you turn adversity or something that was bad into an opportunity that makes you better."

The next day, Duke bounced back with an 88-64 blowout of the Hokies.

"I think we grew as a group this week," Krzyzewski said. "Sometimes, you have to get punched and knocked out, but then you get up and figure out why you got knocked out. That's what we did. Hopefully, we don’t get knocked out again, but if we do before the tournament, we’re going to do the same thing. We're not going to thorw them under the bus. We're not going to say they're not good. We're not going to say we don't believe (in) them. We're not going to say they're idiots or whatever. We're going to tell them the truth, and we’re going to move on."