Coach K makes transition from Olympics to Duke

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Coach K makes transition from Olympics to Duke

Oct 24, 2008

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When Stanford athletics director Bob Bowlsby asked Mike Krzyzewski permission to interview Johnny Dawkins for its head basketball coaching vacancy, Krzyzewski's response answered questions about his own future at Duke.

"I said, 'Well, I'll say this. If I wasn't coaching here, I'd want Johnny Dawkins to coach here,'" remembers Krzyzewski. Bowlsby then asked how Krzyzewski how long he planned to coach at Duke. The hall of fame coach replied, "I think I'm going to coach for a little bit."

Krzyzewski says his experience coaching Team USA to the Olympic gold medal in men's basketball did not drain his energy and focus for Duke. He believes it gave him even more energy.

"I'm not going to forget about the Olympics. That's crazy," he said. "But I'm not going to think about it everyday. I'm going to think about what our team [at Duke] might be able to achieve and use that experience to maybe help us."

The key word is 'experience.' That is something Krzyzewski's Blue Devil players finally have.

"Two years ago, it was like starting over because we only had one junior and no seniors," he said. "Now, we have juniors and seniors. They know what I want. Even though we're doing a few new things, they know the old things quicker."

That allows Krzyzewski to avoid coming into this season with unanswered questions. Now, he is simply fine tuning and finding players around whom he will build the team.

"Right now, we're looking at Gerald Henderson, John Scheyer and Kyle Singler and how do we complement them?" he said.

Krzyzewski admits his team a year ago tightened up in tournament time. After a 22-1 record to start the season, the Blue Devils bowed out in the second round of the NCAA Tournament after losing to West Virginia. The coach believes his team was playing not to lose. His goal this year is to fix that mindset in his players.

"Our culture is back," he said. "That makes it a lot easier for me to coach."

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RE: Coach K makes transition from Olympics to Duke

BG - your post makes no sense. No matter how intelligent you try to be, you always fall short.

RE: Coach K makes transition from Olympics to Duke

don'tpreach, Talent, coaching, and luck are all factors necessary to win the title---in respective order. No one has ever won a title any other way.

OBD, Please stop. You're really bad at it. If you weren't so eager to congratulate yourself, maybe you'd be more convincing.

(That was an excellent point, billygoat! Why thank you, someone other than billygoat who is new to our discussions! You're quite welcome, billygoat. It sure is awesome to be a UNC fan!)

RE: Coach K makes transition from Olympics to Duke

19 - of course, whether or not the ellipsis is appropriate depends on the type of writing that is being written. Please, do tell us whether or not it is appropriate on a message board. Did someone say, "message board"?? Are we seriously talking about proper punctuation, etc in regards to a message board? Seriously, 19, you must be obsessive compulsive, which must be a nightmare for whomever you're married to.

RE: Coach K makes transition from Olympics to Duke

Nice try!

The "three dots" is an ellipsis: Please go to the following site to see that they were used correctly:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ellipsis

This will also explain why the "s" in "same" was not capitalized.

Of course "dukegroup" is not the accurate name of the poster. That changes by the hour.

RE: Coach K makes transition from Olympics to Duke

unstable - very nice post! The world would be better served if there were more Heels fans like you. For some reason, heelsfan19 thinks that this message board is an English class. 90% of her posts are dedicated to correcting grammar, spelling, and punctuation. Quite nauseating, actually. I mean, suppose, for instance, that I decided to correct her post above. I would have to say:

Three dots are not allowed in the middle of a sentence.
"same" should be capitalized since it's the first word of the sentence.
"dukegroup" is not the accurate name of the referenced poster.

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