Coach K: We Were Ready to Get Knocked Out

Blue Devils dug deep to pull out win over FSU

Duke coach Mike Krzyzewski was thrilled with his team’s win over Florida State after a short turnaround.

The Blue Devils knocked off the No. 8 Seminoles two days after winning an overtime war with UNC.

“Well, this has been an incredible 48 hours for our team,” he said. “I got good guys, I got really good kids. We beat a heck of a team tonight after beating a heck of a team in an epic game 48 hours before. I don’t know where they got the energy the whole game to do this, but they did. They listened. They fought. We really played good defense.”

Florida State gave Duke all it could handle and seemed to be on the verge of breaking the game open.

“You could tell (FSU) will tire you out anyway, because they play such good defense, and they have depth, but at the end of the first half, you could tell we were tired, rightfully so,” Krzyzewski said. “And in the second half, we’re kind of holding our own, but when they went ahead 52-50, instead of waiting for the eight minute [timeout], we were ready to get knocked out. So we called a timeout, Alex(O’Connell) came in, and Alex gave us five quick points, and that last 8:29 we were terrific. We were not tired. They talked. They made plays.”

Several Blue Devils who haven’t had much playing time lately stepped up down the stretch.
“Javin (DeLaurier) was spectacular,” Coach K said. “Matt Hurt, obviously the rebound and the free throws and then inbounding the ball, no mistakes. Wendell (Moore Jr.), who, I don’t think any of you in the audience have hit a winning shot in front of 21,000 people against your archrival, but if you’re 18, how you handle that can be pretty tough. He had a game like a kid 18 until the second half, and then that play he made in the full court just was spectacular. Switching (Jordan) Goldwire to (Trent) Forrest was a key, because Forrest is a big-time player, man. They have big-time, but this kid, he’s a pro-guard. He can defend and get by you, and he’s a veteran, and he and Tre (Jones) were going back and forth, and that’s wearing Tre out. We needed him on offense, and so the switch to put Goldwire on him helped. We did that with Cole Anthony in the last part of the game in Chapel Hill, and that helped us there. So having those two guys being able to have each other’s backs is big. They forced a lot of turnovers. I thought we weren’t as strong as we needed to be, but overall we were pretty damn strong.”