Upcoming Event: Baseball at East Carolina on April 7, 2026 at 6 p.m.
Baseball
at East Carolina
Coach Mike Krzyzewski Quotes
March 4, 2003
"We're excited. It's March and we're going into the last week of the season. Overall our team has really done a good job and progressed well. We didn't play well against St. John's but in the preceding game against Georgia Tech we did a good job. We have to keep getting better. We have two weeks until the NCAA tournament. Each week we've been trying to get better and we're not going to change our philosophy at this time of the year."
"I don't think there are huge steps forward and backward at this time. I don't think anything that happened on Sunday was X's and O's. You get out of conference and you start thinking that you're a little better than what you are and as a result you stop paying attention to detail. It can happen to any of us, and that's what happened to our team. We played against a team that was having a huge day. [The Duke players] didn't give them the respect that they needed to. If you do that in that ACC or NCAA tournaments, you're gone. We're fortunate that we can learn that lesson now and that we still have games to play."
"If you don't play well throughout the game, don't expect to have a great attitude and then play well at the end of the game. Attitude, hunger, determination-those are the missing ingredients. That's the part of the game that you can't stat and that's the part of the game you can coach. That's what was missing on Sunday."
On whether the four guard line-up causes match-up problems for other teams:
"Obviously it has. We wouldn't be 20-5 if it didn't. Some of the match-ups that that line-up has given us have been beneficial to our team throughout the year. Plus, it's the most experienced line-up we have."
On how to refocus a team after winning the national championship:
"It's not so much a problem, it's just that it's a different set of circumstances. Who do you have back? Do you have most of your team back? A lot of times people win the national championship and then a lot of kids on the team are no longer on the team. Then they have to spend a year saying they're the defending national champions, but they really aren't -- they're a whole new team. You can't fall prey to the talk about predictions and defending. You have to concentrate on coaching your team. The time that [Duke won back to back national championships in '91 and '92] we had a lot of our guys back, especially all of our key guys. They figured out what the ['92] team need to do to win. Last year we had a number of our guys back but we didn't have our leadership back. We could never develop leadership on our team to the level that was worthy of winning a championship. Our kids did a great job, but we just didn't have the leadership."
On the contributions of the seniors:
"In Dahntay's case, he hasn't been here for four years, but he's been here for three years. I think he's really grown as a person and as a player. He's become a really good, dependable player. We're really lucky to have him in our program. He's been overall our best player this year. I wouldn't have predicted that when he transferred in.
Casey is an example of what you want most kids to understand: you make a commitment to a school, to yourself, to the coaching staff, that you're going to learn for four years. Sometimes that race takes a full four years. For him to be a starter and a key contributor in our program right now and playing the best basketball of his career -- I love that. Everyone talks about the guys going early but the Casey Sanders of the world are more the common man who's worked hard and earned it and been successful.
Andre Buckner has fulfilled what we wanted him to be and has actually gone beyond expectations. When we recruited him, we knew he would not be a player who would get significant playing minutes, but we thought that he would work hard and handle our practice team really well. He's done that, but been an even better leader. Behind the scenes, he's been instrumental in a lot of the success we've had in our program."
"In the history of our conference, the Greensboro Coliseum has been the place that you think of when you think of the ACC Tournament. The city of Greensboro really opens up its arms each year to welcome basketball. To me, they've been terrific. I've said since I got here after learning about Greensboro that is one of my favorite cities because of how it's supported our conference. I look for them to do it again when we all go there next weekend to play for the conference championship."
