Coach K on This Year's Duke Team: All 10 of My Guys Can Play

Krzyzewski expects his final Blue Devils team to be good

Coach Mike Krzyzewski met with the media as he opened his annual K Academy fantasy camp for Duke fans. He took the time to give his thoughts on the 2021-22 Blue Devils, which will be his final Blue Devils team as head coach.

“What we try to do is work on individual development and relationships,” he said. “We did some team bonding things, but I got to know them as individual players. We’re bigger. You’ll see right away when we do warmup lines that [we have] more physically mature, bigger guys.”

Krzyzewski also made a move with his grandson—Michael Savarino—offering scholarships to him and fellow longtime walk-on Keenan Worthington.

“They’ve earned it, they’re both juniors,” he said.

Krzyzewski is also excited about his recruited scholarship players.

“I think all 10 of my guys can play,” he said. “They all give something a little bit different, and I like that. I’ve seen a really big improvement in Wendell [Moore Jr.], just his athleticism and the amount of time he spent in the spring working on not just his game but becoming an even better athlete. Our guys are stronger. They really like one another. They say they like me – hopefully that’s true. We’re going to be a bigger team. We were not a very physical team last year, and I think we can be a physical team and a more mature team.”

While Krzyzewski is stepping down, it won’t be the end of K Academy.

“It won’t be the last,” he said. “We’re going to continue to run K Academy. [Future head coach Jon] Scheyer tried to turn it into the ‘S-Academy,’ and I was able to negotiate while I still have some leverage here to make sure it’s still the K-Academy. It works to help our basketball budget and we make a lot of connections. It’s really been an important part of our program. We have a Legacy Fund, which you have to pay a million dollars to be in it, two million to be a permanent member. That’s raised almost $175 million for our program and probably $50 million has come from people who have participated in the K Academy. We never knew that would happen, but it has

and it’s really created a lot of great networking opportunities for not just the campers but for our former players.”