“This was a really good game for us. [Head coach] Cleo [Hill Jr.] does a great job with his team,” Duke Head Coach Mike Krzyzewski said in an opening statement following the Blue Devils’ 80-66 win over Shaw. “That pair of guards is really good – [Malik] Alvin and [Antonio] Smith. They could play for a lot of teams in Division. I. They’re older, experienced, can really handle the ball. I think they’ll be really good in their league. I thought we did a much better job on them in the last 24 minutes of the game.
“Our ball-screen defense became very good. Our big guys stepped in aggressively, made an adjustment on our ball-screen defense. I thought Austin [Rivers] really played Smith well in that second half. I think Smith’s good, really good, and Austin, for a freshman, is wanting to play defense. He’s supposed to be this great scorer. I thought it was a big half for Austin. I thought we left a lot of points on the floor with our free-throw shooting and our inside play. It was good, but we’ve got to complete more plays.
“I thought they played well and I thought we played better than the score, whereas against Bellarmine I don’t think we played as well as the score. I thought we played much better tonight than we did against Bellarmine, even though we didn’t hit shots. The fact that we did get to the line and we did get the ball inside – those are good things. Now we have to hit when we’re on the line and we have to hit inside. We played a lot of guys. So overall I thought it was a good night for us against a very well-coached team with two outstanding guards. If you have good guards, you’re going to give people some problems because you can control the tempo of the game.”
On the play of freshman Austin Rivers:
“I thought he played like a very mature player tonight. I was very impressed with his game. He took what was there offensively and instead of saving his energy on defense, he used his energy on defense. That’s a big growing-up game for him.”
On the roles of his players on offense:
“Seth [Curry]’s got to be our point guard. He and Miles [Plumlee] are our two key guys who have to play a little bit better. They didn’t play poorly tonight, but they’ve got to play a little bit better. They have to have more of an impact on the game. We started Tyler [Thornton] primarily for defense, not for ball handling. So we still want Seth to be out on top, but if Tyler got the ball and brought it up, then you can move Seth up. But I want Seth bringing it up most of the time. Seth can do that. He’ll be more effective doing that.”
On defensive adjustments made during the game:
“We started keeping people in front of us, but when they did the ball screen, instead of what we would call a contact show where you try to stay with the big man too. We basically left the big man and stepped in more aggressively and had the guard become third man – the ball handler, the big and then our third guard. That was better. Our ball screen defense became much more aggressive. They had three or four shots right at the end of the clock, three’s. I thought our defense the last 24 minutes of the game was very good against a team that wants to penetrate a lot.”
On the shooting of Andre Dawkins:
“He’s a veteran player. He should play well. He fits in like a veteran player should. He can start or come off the bench or start in the second half. They went zone and that was right in his wheelhouse because we went to a couple sets. It should get us good shots against the zone. You can get good shots, but a kid’s got to knock them down, and he knocked them down. He should have had that one with a 16-point lead in the second half. We had a three-on-two and we didn’t pass the ball strong enough to him. It should have been a ‘boom boom’, 19-point lead. Our kids have got to learn that. We’ve got to grow with that. He spaces the court well.”
On how he gauges his team’s effort:
“Austin really played hard tonight. Before seeing it, you feel it. You feel how hard a kid is playing. And then if he’s talking off the ball and he’s animated, that’s playing hard too. I thought Ryan [Kelly] did a good job too. I thought he played very hard. We played hard. We played fine tonight. We’ve just got to be more efficient. And we played against a different type of team with those two guards spreading you and driving you the whole time. We made good adjustments and held them to the low 60s. With a lot of guys playing, we just should have scored a few more points.”