Upcoming Event: Men's Basketball versus Countdown to Craziness on October 3, 2025 at 7 p.m.
/
7 p.m.
Men's Basketball
vs Countdown to Craziness
.png&width=24&height=24&type=webp)
Quotes: Duke 99, UNC Asheville 56
12/17/2008 12:00:00 AM | Men's Basketball
Head Coach Mike Krzyzewski
Opening statement:
“I thought with the break that we had with exams, I thought we played well tonight, especially in the second half. Defensively, we didn't turn the ball over when in the first half we turned it over 12 times. It's tough to defend people going down for layups off your turnovers.”
On the different starting lineup:
“We felt that we needed to use the game to take a look at a lot of different kids and situations. We had 11 youngsters play double-digit minutes. I thought that was a good way of doing it, I thought we got better. There's never a thing you do where a message is not intended. The message is that we have confidence in our bench. It's to show confidence in the kids that we need. Maybe this was a little boost, so there are a lot of reasons for doing that.”
On Gerald Henderson's offensive play:
“He can't be just a three-point shooter. He can shoot the three-point shot, but he should be a multi-dimensional scorer ? inside, with offensive rebounds, he needs to get to the line, and he needs to take threes. There should be no order in that, and it should just come about as the offensive exchange comes about. He was more aggressive getting into the paint [tonight] and made some good passes to guys. I don't know what is in [his] nature, but we need to develop a nature. Part of getting good is developing the nature that you need to become good. Forget about what you had. Our team has a lot of improving to do, and we will for a while, but that's OK. It's a long season. We're not even close to what I think we could become and I have to get our team to do that over the course of a season.”
On practice during finals:
“You're trying to do a lot of conditioning and motion stuff on the break. You can't really teach new things during that week. You don't have the whole team. Actually the performance today was pretty good [despite finals].”
Duke Sophomore Kyle Singler
“I thought we shot the ball pretty well. One thing we could've done better in the first half is take care of the ball. We knew we were turning the ball over, but we didn't realize it was that many. It's always good to have that halftime break and come in and kind of regroup. We went out there and knew we had to take care of the ball. We were just making stupid mistakes. It wasn't really because of them. We were just passing them the ball. We had to learn from our mistakes, and that's what we did.”
“We played pretty good defense throughout the whole game. I think maybe they just got worn down a little bit, and when you get tired your offense just kind of goes. After that you break down one-on-one. I don't really know what happened, but we just looked to what we do on defense and we were able to create tough shots for them. I thought we rebounded the ball pretty well too.”
“We wanted to come in here and compete, force tempo and just play the way we can play. I think we did a good job of that ? not a great job. I thought the guys played hard and we shot the ball pretty well.”
“We considered this like an NCAA Tournament game. UNC Asheville is a very good team, the type of team you'd play in the first round. And Xavier, they're a good team, so it's like the NCAA Tournament where you're going to play a good team and then turn around and play another good team. You just have to stay focused. This is a good stepping stone for this team.”
Duke Junior Gerald Henderson
On the starting lineup:
“Coach [Mike Krzyzewski] just felt like the guys that started were the best guys for this game. He's always making the right decisions and that's who he went with. Those guys were playing the best in practice. They did a heck of a job in practice and Coach felt they should start.”
“I think I can be more aggressive offensively, and that's not even just shooting the basketball. That's looking to make plays more, driving the ball better, getting offensive rebounds. There are a lot of ways you can score and I can definitely continue to get better at that. We're winning ? that's the most important thing. The ball going in the basket is not really going to define how I play. Down the road, I'm sure there will be games where guys are struggling and it'll be important for me to assert myself offensively.”
Duke Junior Jon Scheyer
On the upcoming matchup with Xavier:
“I do know they're a great team and ranked high. We were in the same [NCAA Tournament] bracket last year, so we saw a couple of their games. They play really great defense. We know it's going to be a battle and we need to get ready for it.”
On this team's depth:
“It's a big thing for us obviously. We have a lot of guys who can do different things, and tonight was an example showing that. I think one reason we had such a deep bench today is that we really competed in practice and a lot of guys got good reps and felt confident coming in today. The place I notice [the depth] the most is in practice because everybody gets after it. On any day there are definitely different teams that can compete with each other. It's not just one team that's more dominant every day. That's the biggest difference.”
UNC Asheville Head Coach, Eddie Biedenbach
Opening Statement:
“I thought coming out of exams this was an awfully difficult game for us. Anytime you come to Cameron Indoor Stadium you are going to have a tough time. Duke plays hard. They are very aggressive, coming off the loss to Michigan which is uncharacteristic of them but I thought Michigan's style, the gap zone, one-three-one gap zone that Coach Beilein plays was perfect in the way you have to play Duke. We do those things against teams that play that open post motion and gap zone but to go out there and try to do it, it takes away from the natural ability of our players so we didn't play like we are capable of playing but I thought it was the only we could stay in the ball game and give us a chance to win. We didn't play very well, turned it over too much and we didn't battle on the boards like I thought we should have and to Duke's credit they are a very good team that plays extremely hard. I said to some of the reporters before the game watching their tapes Coach K is one of the best coaches there has been in the last 20 to 25 years, but he is an even better coach now with working with the Olympics the last two years. That made it more difficult for us tonight and they beat us pretty badly, pretty soundly.”
On some of the success of tonight's game:
“The thing is we did have some success, but if we had executed it as well as we were supposed to, you know coaches always draw up perfect plans and you can't ask young players and even veteran players to do something uncharacteristic and to walk into Duke and do something that you are not used to doing. That is why you practice over, over and over again doing these things a certain way then change them up for a big game and you shouldn't do that. The best teams in the country play their way and make the other teams adjust to it and that is what Duke does, and we had some success and we learned a lot tonight. We will be able to look at these tapes and see when we space properly, set some picks, flash the high post, we didn't always make the shots, but we got open shots and did some good things. We turned it over and didn't execute so as we go further into this non conference schedule and our conference schedule we'll be a better basketball team because of this game. Four of our last five have been difficult for us and we still play Buffalo and Ohio State. So Duke, Tennessee and North Carolina that is a little ambitious for a little ol' school up in the mountains.”
On continuing the series with Duke:
“Yeah I always want to play schools like this. You know I don't like to ever make excuses. This wouldn't have been a difference in the game, but you don't want to play these kind of games without veteran players and your best players. We have a lot of freshmen out there, and that's because our two senior guards graduated that were pretty good players last year and we didn't do a good enough job recruiting behind them and of course these guys want to play right away. But we also lost Kenny George, and with that difference in there in the middle, I'm not saying that we would have won the game, I never say that ? but we miss him in games like this, and that's just something we have to live with.”
Players Mentioned
G
/ Men's Basketball
G
/ Men's Basketball
F
/ Men's BasketballCoach Scheyer Media Availability
Wednesday, September 24
Jon Scheyer Press Conference: Summer 2025
Tuesday, July 08
Duke vs Houston: Press Conference
Sunday, April 06
Duke vs Alabama: East Region Champions Press Conference
Wednesday, April 02
