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Quotes: Duke 68, Kansas 61
11/24/2011 10:42:00 AM | Men's Basketball
Head coach Mike Krzyzewski
Opening statement:
"It was just a great basketball game. Both teams were so deserving of winning, and that's what makes a great basketball game where so many kids are making big plays. The physicality, clean physicality of the game, the crowd, the kids responded from both teams. I thought our defense really picked up in the second half."
On the play of junior forward Mason Plumlee:
"I thought the key guy to the game was Mason. You know, Mason really played like such a man with physicality and size. When you're playing with a guy that's playing that hard and that demonstrative, it gives you confidence. It gives you a lot of confidence. I think it started with him. It's tough to single out anybody else, but I'm telling you just effort‑wise, I've done this a long time, that was the key to the game. I know he didn't make the all‑tournament team or whatever, but he made my team. We don't win this championship without him."
On the play of sophomore guard Tyler Thornton:
"I thought his three to put us up by two...[Elijah] Johnson made such a big shot, and it could have knocked you out. Instead we came down, and Tyler just drained that three. The shot he hit at the end of the clock ‑‑ there have been about five times in the last two games or in the last five seconds of the shot clock we have a color that we call out that you've just got to get a shot off. We call a color, and he always had the ball. Four of the five times we scored, and the fifth time I thought he might have even gotten a foul. But the last one we called the color, and it's a dream shot. I mean, we're lucky. People say it's a lucky shot, but I will tell you I'm lucky to have him on my team to shoot the shot. Sometimes you're just on a bus with a guy who deserves to win, and for that moment we were on his bus. Thank goodness he knew how to drive it."
On playing in Maui and why Duke does so well in this event:
"This was as good an atmosphere as you could have, really. Unless you're at someone's home court for that home team. That's what makes Maui. You can watch these other tournaments, and it's never full, right? I mean, it's good basketball, but the atmosphere just isn't there, and that's why it's been a real honor for us to be here. You have to be a little bit fortunate to win five of these and win all the games. It means a lot of our guys have made good plays. I'm happy for Ryan [Kelly], for the big guys. They can now tell Wojo he's not the only Duke player on the wall. Ryan can kind of ‑‑ I'm not sure he'll have guts to do that though. We've loved being in the tournament. It's so well run and classy all the way."
On how he fired his team up for the second half:
"I want to win. I wanted them to see that I haven't retired yet. It's important for me and for them, for us, for this team. They see me emotional a number of times, but with this emotion, it was all for them. Sometimes it's against them or fighting something that they're not doing well. But we were all together tonight. It was a cool thing. I loved the way we played in the second half and competed. It was such a bond there tonight. That's the beauty of basketball when that happens. Win or lose, it was a good thing for our team today."
On Ryan Kelly earning MVP honors for the Maui Invitational:
"I really think Ryan's going to be one of the best players when he finishes up. He's going to be a pro. I didn't know. I was just hoping he'd win some games here. You don't know if you're going to win the whole thing, so I don't think of MVP and that. But any of the guys that start for us, because we're balanced, could have been. Ryan I think was deserving for three straight days in what he did, but he wouldn't be MVP if Mason didn't play well tonight. If we didn't win, he wouldn't be MVP. So that's the kind of balance we have on our team, and he knows that, and these guys know it too. But they're happy for him. They're really happy for him."
Sophomor guard Tyler Thornton
On the final shot he took that put Duke up 66-61:
"When Seth [Curry] kicked me the ball, I looked at the shot clock. It was three seconds, and I just tried to get up a good shot. Once it left my hands, I kind of thought it was going to be good and luckily it was. There were a lot of plays leading up to that play that we did on defensive ends. That was very important."
On where he gets his confidence from to take shots when he comes off the bench:
"We shoot those shots every day in practice. I don't get as many opportunities to shoot those, but I'm always ready whenever the opportunity comes and I'm open, I knock those shots down."
Junior forward Mason Plumlee
"Well, like Coach said, we wouldn't have won if it wasn't for everybody. It's a great feeling. We couldn't be happier. I think the thing that's neat about our team is everybody's happy for each other. There's not one guy that wouldn't say they're ecstatic about Ryan [Kelly] making MVP and Austin [Rivers] making All‑Tournament team. There is not one more guy on the team that was more deserving of hitting those shots than Tyler [Thornton]. Seth [Curry] had a great week. It was such a great three days. I felt like we knew a little bit about ourselves coming here, but this couldn't have been a better tournament for our team not just in terms of winning it, but the way we played and the way we finished, it was just awesome. It was fun to be a part of."
Players Mentioned
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