Coach K and his Devils on what it takes to win on the road
Tents lined up outside the arena. Former player reunions. Tee-shirt night. A sold-out crowd. A local spike in the sale of body paint. Students sporting a variety of creative, random and unusual costumes (including a toothpaste tube?). A national TV audience. One of the loudest and the most hostile crowd of the year for the home team.
As Clemson Head Coach Oliver Purnell said on ESPN before his team faced the Blue Devils, “When they’ve got Duke across their chest, it gets your attention.”
Duke certainly isn’t the only team to receive elaborate and intense greetings on the road, but no program over the past year, decade or past 20 years has been as consistently “welcomed” as the Blue Devils. As a result, the process of playing (and winning) on the road has to be learned, experienced and coached independent of the typical X’s and O’s, focus and preparation required to play winning basketball.
Said Brian Zoubek, “We have a target on our back every single game and everyone circles our game on their schedule. It’s a huge game for them. They are going to play their best, their hardest, and we have to prepare for that. It shows how much they care about beating us, but it doesn’t make you feel better about losing.”
Added Lance Thomas, “It’s every team’s day in the sun and honestly it boils my blood to see that. I know how hard we work, how good we are. For other teams to celebrate and us walking off as losers, I have a problem with that.”
Outside of March Madness, college basketball presents no feeling better than strolling out of an arena packed with fans who lost their voices screaming all the reasons they love their home town team and don’t love Duke. To get the coveted road win, then, Coach K suggests that you have to embrace and be energized by the opportunity waiting for you when the clock strikes 0:00 in the second half.
“You have to enjoy the challenge of playing someone on their home court knowing that they are going to have a psychological and emotional advantage,” said the NCAA’s active leader in road wins (196). Then, how do you bring your energy and psyche to the level where you enjoy it, you want to be there and you want that challenge.”
Welcoming the road challenge begins with unwavering toughness, strong faces, and a passion to get stops on the defensive end to discourage the offensive plays that send the crowd into a frenzy.
“You have to be tougher on the road,” said Lance. “You have to want to get consecutive stops. You can’t just depend on offense because when everything changes in the game, the momentum will favor the home team. With the momentum in their favor, shots that usually don’t go in, will go in. If you can’t string together stops and have a tough mentality the whole game, the end result may not be good.”
With Duke in the building, the passion of the crowd can elevate the home team to new levels of play and competitiveness they potentially haven’t quite reached in previous games or practice. In turn, our opponent looks different than the one our team observed during scouting and preparation for the game. Zoubs claims that the response to these unknown and unpredictable variables is harder play.
“You have to play every play harder because they’re going to play every play harder,” said the seven-foot Blue Devil center. “You have to get used to it, it’s going to be a fight every game.”
Coach K compares the home team’s potentially enhanced level of play to various players he has coached against with USA Basketball. Said the Duke Hall of Famer, “I liken it to playing internationally. When international players in the NBA play for their home countries, they are just better. They are playing for their home. You need a tough team, a tough-minded team to do it. I think you have to come in with a great defensive effort.”
In addition to a stout defensive focus, winning on the road requires a connected and consistent effort from the whole team. Junior Steve Johnson, a road veteran, suggests the key is staying together and rallying in the face of the animosity towards Duke.
“Togetherness is key on the road and with that comes communication. When an opposing crowd is hostile and everyone is going crazy and the environment in there is just so anti-Duke, we have to step up and fight that with talk, communication and being a together team. In that environment it’s easy to get away from that and feel alone out there, when maybe you can’t talk to a teammate because the crowd is so loud.”
During the trip to Clemson, Coach K repeatedly told his team on the bus and in meetings that it would be “our night” and “we travel together, play together, win together and leave together.” During huddles in practice and in the game, the team locked arms. Coach K even jumped into huddles on the floor of Littlejohn and draped his arms on and around his guys in situations where you almost never see the head coach in with his players. Clearly, Coach K was hoping to foster a united environment all trip so when the Clemson faithful was rocking, the Blue Devils wouldn’t stop communicating and resort to individual play on the court where even one weak link is exposed.
The team responded with its best road performance of the year, maintaining great composure all game and silencing the Tiger crowd with a pair of game-changing second-half runs. Walking off the court, with ESPN’s Erin Andrews seeking an interview with Nolan Smith and the crowd shuffling quietly for the exits, the Blue Devils had earned that best feeling in basketball outside of winning a championship. Standing tall and smiling on the inside, the Duke team wasn’t in a huge rush to leave the court. The team did, however, have a sense of urgency to re-create the feeling as soon as possible.
“Winning on the road is a combination of guys wanting to do it and then the coaching staff putting out the challenge and excitement of meeting that challenge,” stated Coach K. “It’s a learned experience. We’ve tried to teach it over the years at Duke. You have to show that you enjoy it — Silencing their crowd, beating somebody at their best on their home court — what a way to get better.”
Tags: "road"
