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Quotes: Duke 76, Gonzaga 41
12/19/2009 6:30:00 PM | Men's Basketball
Duke Head Coach Mike Krzyzewski
On Jon Scheyer:
"Jon is just a really smart, good player. He doesn't have position. He is just a good basketball player."
On the lulls in offense:
"I worry about it, no question. You can't let offense dictate defense. Because we have veteran players, they understand defense. This is the first team in seven or eight years that really understands our defense so well, not individually, but together. Lance (Thomas) played a great game today. The kid (Elias) Harris, I thing he is a really good player, and Lance did a great job on him. Obviously, (Matt) Bouldin is a great player and Kyle (Singler) did a great job on him."
On the defense:
"They talk it out. It is not a new assignment. They actually talk to each other when we go through a walk through. It is kind of like, not on that level, how our Olympic team is. They have been in these situations a lot. They talk about defense. It is just a very mature way of doing that. The kid who really hasn't gotten much attention for us, is (Brian) Zoubek. Brian has had a hell of a year so far. Our veteran guys, they just know how to play. That veteran group, in the first half, did not let them score when we got that double-digit lead."
On tonight's game:
"They are a good team. They weren't able to run some of the things they normally do. (Matt) Bouldin and (Steven) Gray get a lot of threes. Half of their shots are threes so they didn't get many open looks."
On Nolan Smith:
"Nolan is a natural scorer. When he played in high school, he played in the same backcourt with (Ty) Lawson and then (Brandon) Jennings. It is not like he had the ball a lot. That is a great decision because those two guys are great. Nolan is a little bit more comfortable in that scoring role but then we try to alternate with him and Jon (Scheyer) bringing the ball up so we don't wear out either one of them."
Gonzaga Head Coach Mark Few
On tonight's game:
"I thought we got throttled in every aspect of basketball. Their physical play bothered us as far as finishing shots around the rim. They out-rebounded us, we turned the ball over. They made more free throws than us. An old fashioned, take you out to the woodshed and beat you down."
On Duke's defense:
"I thought Duke's defense, their pressure defense was good and their concepts were good. They really came to take us out of some things and option A wasn't there and we didn't do a great job exploring other options and that had a lot to do with Duke's defense. It was as good as we've played against this year, by far."
More on tonight's game:
"Obviously if you're going to play a schedule like we play you're going to have to put yourself in a position to win...we did that at Michigan State and we certainly did that in Maui, but Duke was just far better than we were today. They had everything and I think they deserve the credit for that."
On the rest of the season:
"We gotta put this one out of our minds. We don't need to dwell on this. This one was an aberration. This team has not played or competed like this, they've been great at competing when there were challengers there. Stepping up and rising to it. ...I don't want to take anything out of this, I just want to forget this as quickly as possible."
On Western Conferences:
"Unfortunately, we still have a tough regional game at home against Eastern Washington, Oklahoma and then Illinois, so we don't get to move to the Western Conference yet. Saint Mary looks to have yet another really solid club, it looks probably, maybe NCAA worthy. Some of the other teams have played pretty well. Loyola beat Notre Dame. San Diego beat Oklahoma. Stanford is good. We have to take a break, get to our families, get a rest. We have been going pretty hard since October and then ramp up, we have three important games."
Players Mentioned
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