Believe it or not, Duke did actually win a basketball game on Saturday. But in the wake of Duke's 83-76 victory over St. John's no one was happy, least of all Duke head coach Mike Krzyzewski. During the post game press conference it was hard to tell that the Blue Devils actually won the game. The same could be said for visiting any Duke fan message board. From the attitudes and comments, it was almost as if they had lost.
At times he was far more complementary of the Red Storm's performance than his own teams and for good reason. Duke did blow a 22 point lead and held on to scrape by a team that started five freshman.
“I didn’t think we played well and St. John’s had something to do with that because they came to play," Krzyzewski said.
That comment is easy to translate and something you often hear in post-game pressers but when you hear that at the beginning of a press conference you'd think that the coach was talking about a loss.
And the simple implication that maybe his team didn't come to play a full 40 minutes was just a little bit bothersome to a hall of fame coach who expects maximum effort each and every play.
"Quite frankly, we should have had over 60 points in the first half I think we had 45."
Krzyzewski was right, Duke should have easily blow the game open in the first half and continued to do so in the second half. It wasn't difficult for Duke's coach to tell you why he thought that was though.
"Well I can tell you, by not playing defensive, not finishing. That’s what the game does, every game, not just in basketball, but in every game, when you have the opportunity to knock someone out; you have to knock them out especially if the other team is going to keep fighting, like St. John’s would."
Defense was something Krzyzewski would harp on during his press conference and it is something that Duke fans have beginning to question a lot recently.
"These kids are more offensive players and they won’t win big unless they become defensive players that can play offense that’s the bottom line. At Maryland, we played really well defensively, first half against Florida State, so we can do it. It’s just not in our nature to do it.”
That is a pretty clear cut statement that shows Krzyzewski knows this team doesn't play very good defense. Duke is allowing opponents to shoot greater than 40 percent from the floor against them. That is not something a traditional Blue Devil team does.
Duke's opponents are averaging greater than 50 percent shooting from the floor in all three of the Blue Devils' loses this season.
What's worse is Duke scores the second most points per game of any team in the ACC and they rank 12 nationally. So if they could simply defend just a little better they'd be winning game a lot more comfortably.
Instead though Duke is simply slipping by teams on the backs of the offense. This is the first time in recent memory that can be said.
This was a win but it wasn't a win that Krzyzewski will mark down as one of his greatest victories and he seemed to almost hesitate to consider it a victory.
"I wanna win and I wanna win by playing great basketball, and to me it was like a loss, I didn’t like today."
"We did enough to win, which almost makes me sick to say, I hate saying that. I hate saying we did enough to win. That’s not who I am and that’s not who this program is. We don’t do enough to win. We play really good basketball and hopefully we win. And that’s the story.”
And while Duke has a really good offensive team its defense is what is preventing it from becoming a really good basketball team and playing the kind of basketball Krzyzewski is talking about?
So when is the last time the Blue Devils were so bad defensively? I can't honestly remember and it might even take Krzyzewski a while to answer that question too.
But one thing is for sure, like Krzyzewski said, unless this team become more defensively minded the ceiling is much lower for an offensive team that occasionally plays defense.
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