Krzyzewski Won’t Mind ACC Growing to 16 at BetLM

Krzyzewski Won’t Mind ACC Growing to 16

DURHAM, N.C. —Mike Krzyzewski sup­ports the Atlantic Coast Conference’s recent expan­sion to 14 teams—and wouldn’t mind if the league keeps growing.

The Hall of Fame coach at Duke offered his opin­ions Wednes­day dur­ing a wide-ranging press con­fer­ence as part of his team’s media day in which he dis­cussed the chang­ing faces of both his ros­ter and the ACC.

“I think you have to con­tinue to explore” expan­sion ques­tions, Krzyzewski said. “Is 14 the right num­ber? Will 16 be? I don’t know if I’m in the minor­ity, majority—I don’t talk to any­body about this—but (it) seems to me that if you’re going to go 14, then you should go 16.”

The ACC last month announced it would add Pitts­burgh and Syra­cuse from the Big East to reach 14 mem­bers, and Com­mis­sioner John Swof­ford has said the league is com­fort­able at that number.

Swof­ford said that the league is mov­ing for­ward with plans for sched­ul­ing and divi­sional align­ments for a 14-team league, and that could include divi­sions for men’s bas­ket­ball for the first time.

If the ACC does stop at 14, Krzyzewski said he would sup­port divi­sions of seven teams apiece and a 19-game con­fer­ence sched­ule in which schools would play divi­sional oppo­nents twice and cross-divisional oppo­nents once. Krzyzewski says the idea of four-team pods “makes me vomit” because “you’ve got to be care­ful about split­ting up your brand too much and region­al­iz­ing within your region.

“You’ve always got to main­tain your brand of a con­fer­ence and not get caught up with, ‘Oh, what about my rivalry with this one school?”‘ Krzyzewski said. “Although we should always have the rivalry with Duke and (North) Car­olina. Don’t get me wrong on that. But when you’re expand­ing, you’ve got to develop rival­ries with everybody.”

It’s not clear when Pitt and Syra­cuse will begin play­ing, because of the com­pli­cated terms sur­round­ing their exit from the Big East.

But when they do, it sure sounds like the 64-year-old Krzyzewski will be around for it.

Krzyzewski enters his 37th sea­son as a head coach with a record of 900–284— two wins shy of Bob Knight, his col­lege coach and men­tor who holds the Divi­sion I men’s record. He could catch Knight at home Nov. 12 against Pres­by­ter­ian and pass him three nights later against Michi­gan State at Madi­son Square Garden.

Krzyzewski cer­tainly sounded excited about his cur­rent chal­lenge of retool­ing a Duke lineup that will be with­out four-year stars Nolan Smith and Kyle Sin­gler, who have grad­u­ated and moved to NBA ros­ters. They also lost one-and-done point guard Kyrie Irv­ing, the No. 1 over­all pick in the NBA draft who missed all but 11 games of his col­lege career with a nag­ging toe injury.

Replac­ing Irv­ing with another fresh­man phenom—guard Austin Rivers, the son of Boston Celtics coach Doc Rivers—sounds eas­ier than it prob­a­bly will be. Krzyzewski said Rivers is “not as ready as Kyrie” because they play dif­fer­ent posi­tions in the back­court. Irv­ing is a true point guard, but Rivers won’t be asked to han­dle the ball quite as often.

“We’re both play­mak­ers. We both can score but at the same time give up the ball,” Rivers said of Irv­ing. “That’s where we’re sim­i­lar, that’s why a lot of peo­ple com­pare us. We both come in with a lot of acco­lades from high school and all that, and peo­ple are going to try to see what I can do. I’m not really even wor­ried about it. … Kyrie’s always told me to just go out there and just play my game. That’s what I’m going to do.”

The play­ers on last year’s team had a knack for cre­at­ing their own shots; this year’s group likely will have to rely on each other to gen­er­ate good looks at the bas­ket, he said.

“I think that’s what makes col­lege bas­ket­ball so good, that you really have a dif­fer­ent team every year or at least every two years, and try­ing to fig­ure it out,” Krzyzewski said. “I think over the time I’ve been here, we’ve adjusted fairly well, espe­cially offen­sively, in putting together an offense that’s suited for the strengths of our per­son­nel, to be cre­ated in what you’re doing in that regard.”

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