Coach K Pulls All the Right Strings to Ignite Duke's Bounce Back at Louisville

LOUISVILLE — Less than 24 hours before Saturday’s 63-52 victory over Louisville, a handful of Duke Blue Devils took part in a different type of game in an empty KFC Yum! Center.

And this one involved their Hall of Fame coach.

As guards Quinn Cook and Rasheed Sulaimon attempted to rattle him from a few feet away, 67-year-old Mike Krzyzewski toed the line and repeatedly sank foul shots during an impromptu free-throw contest at the end of Duke’s shootaround.

“He beat me,” Cook chuckled after Saturday’s win, “but that kind of thing was exactly what we needed.”

To lighten the mood, perhaps?

“Exactly,” Cook said.

Indeed, it’d been an intense few days back in Durham, where angst and frustration permeated throughout campus following back-to-back double-digit losses against unranked North Carolina State and Miami. One week earlier, the Blue Devils were 14-0 and ranked No. 2 in America.
 “Then, just like that, everyone started saying, ‘What’s wrong with Duke?’” point guard Tyus Jones said.

Clever as it was to keep his players loose on the eve of their biggest game to date, Friday’s shooting contest wasn’t even the best tactic Krzyzewski employed to help Duke end its slide.

The bigger move came Thursday, when Krzyzewski marched into a morning meeting and informed his team that it would abandon its trademark man-to-man defense and attack Louisville with a zone.

The decision paid off.

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A Louisville backcourt that generates most of its points by penetrating and attacking the paint was mostly forced to settle for outside jumpers. The Cardinals connected on just 29.5 percent of their field-goal attempts and missed all but four of their 25 shots from beyond the arc.

Rick Pitino’s squad trailed 30-20 at intermission after clanking 14 of its final 15 shots. It never pulled within single digits in the second half, when Duke’s cushion bulged to as many as 21 points.

“I just think Coach felt comfortable playing [zone] against this team,” Cook said. “Coach is a genius. He’s the best ever. Whatever he wanted, that’s what we’d do.”

Switching to zone was an out-of-character decision by Krzyzewski, who has long been referred to as “stubborn” for his refusal to mix things up defensively. According to ESPN Stats & Info, Duke had played zone on just 3.7 percent of opponents’ possessions before Saturday. Last season, that number was 0.7 percent.

But after what happened in last week’s blowout losses, he didn’t have much choice.

N.C. State and Miami—who tout two of the ACC’s top backcourts—each shot better than 50 percent from the field against the Blue Devils and were a combined 20-of-36 from three-point range.

The fear was that quick-burst Louisville guards Chris Jones and Terry Rozier, who combined to average 30.2 points entering Saturday's game, could expose the Blue Devils, too.

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“We needed to do something new,” forward Amile Jefferson said. “We needed a fresh start after those two losses. That’s what we all said we’re going to do. We [said we] were going to be 0-0 and not worry about what happened. Coach put in some new stuff coming into this game. We followed it to a T.”

The win couldn’t have come at a better time for Duke.

Saturday’s meeting against No. 6 Louisville was the first tilt in a brutal five-game stretch that includes road matchups with St. John’s, No. 12 Notre Dame and No. 2 Virginia.

In hospital terms, the Blue Devils were in critical condition with future surgeries possible. But by switching to zone and beating Louisville, Duke stopped the bleeding and appears well on the road to recovery.

“I don’t think we were desperate,” Cook said. “But with the success that came after we won all of those games, we’d lost our edge a little bit.

“Now we’ve got it back.”

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Pleased as he was with the victory, Krzyzewski was hesitant to say that all of his team’s problems have been solved. He said he’ll remind the Blue Devils that the rest of the season is a “journey” and that Saturday was “only one stop.”

Still, for the first time in more than a month, Krzyzewski said it was refreshing to see the Blue Devils having fun again. Saturday marked victory No. 998 for Krzyzewski, and media attention has been intense for his quest for No. 1,000.

Krzyzewski said the situation has been “an albatross” around his neck. He can’t help but wonder if his players have been affected.

“It’s a burden,” Krzyzewski said. “'How many wins do you have? Where’s Coach K right now?' I wish I was Coach W right now.

“It’s kind of unfair to them, because they get scrutinized so much. I’m trying to lessen that as much as I can.”

Whether it was switching to a zone defense or lightening the mood with a free-throw contest the night before the game, Krzyzewski did a masterful job of that this week. Frustrating as the losses to N.C. State and Miami may have been, the Blue Devils said they never got down.

Their coach wouldn’t let them.

“In basketball today, it’s so easy to get access to us,” Cook said. “Fans are telling us we’re the greatest thing, but then we lose two games and people are angry, telling us we can’t do this or that.

“It’s easy to lose confidence, especially for our young guys. But Coach kept telling us, ‘I believe in you. I believe in you.’ That’s why he’s the best.”

Jason King covers college sports for Bleacher Report. You can follow him on Twitter @JasonKingBR.