Coach K on coaching his grandson

Michael Savarino a walk-on for this year's team

Mike Krzyzewski doesn't play favorites, but one member of this year's Duke team may be an exception.

Michael Savarino, a Blue Devils walk-on, is also Coach K's grandson.

“It’s been great, because he’s not on the team because he’s my grandson," he said. "He’d be a pretty good Division II player, but he wanted to come to Duke, and he could get in. He knows everything. He knows the lay of the land.”

“I think he’s really helped us, and he’s been accepted by his teammates as Michael or Mike or whatever the hell they call him. Knucklehead, probably, sometimes.”

“He’s really a good kid. A tough kid. We do a lot of testing during the summer—medically to make sure we’re good. Then we do—a couple times a year—combine testing like the NBA does. One of the things is the 185 bench press—how many times you can do that.”

“Maybe it says something about the strength of our team, but he did the most. He did 10 of them. Now, guys do more.”

“We do a bunch of things every practice. We measure everything—workload, sprinting speed, distances. We have this Catapault system where I get a report every day. So last week, they played. Tre (Jones) just had an amazing day. He was off the charts in speed. Then I looked at Wendell (Moore). He was off the charts too. He played with Tre. Then I looked at Javin’s (DeLaurier), and he was off the chart.”

“So the next day, Wendell again was up there. I showed it to Mickie (Krzyzewski, his wife). I said, ‘Look, Wendell is developing the habit of playing faster.’ So she’s looking at it, and it has all the guys listed. And she says, ‘Where’s Michael?’ Well, he didn’t play. He’s a walk-on.”

“It’s the first time a grandmother has given me a hard time about playing time. I said, ‘You’ve got to stop. Don’t be asking about Michael.’ Now I’m worried. She’s never looked at those things. I’m waiting for, ‘Where’s the report? He only did this?’ The mother so far has been okay, but we haven’t played any games.”