DURHAM, N.C. -- For a brief moment, Mike Krzyzewski was no longer a 67-year-old head coach, channeling the spirit of his former assistant (and current Marquette head coach) Steve Wojciechowski by slapping the floor to implore his team to play better defense.
"I'm glad I could slap it and get up," Krzyzewski said with a grin after his 994th win. "I broke my watch. I did some Wojo things today. I guess I'd better be careful. Or maybe that's good."
No. 2 Duke (11-0) found itself up just 41-37 on Toledo (7-5). Toledo started off the first half 5-of-19 from the field and hit 11 of its final 15 shots. And in the first three minutes of the second half, the onslaught continued as it went 3-of-4 and scored a quick seven points.
Then after back-to-back dunks by Jahlil Okafor -- the second off of a steal -- Krzyzewski bent down and slapped the floor, hard, as his team ran back on defense. His team followed suit, and the look in their eyes changed.
Senior captain Amile Jefferson saw the look that he wanted to see. It captured a feeling he was searching for in the locker room at halftime.
"When we came in here, it was too quiet. It was a close game and guys were into their own thing, but we needed to be louder, talking more, telling each other what we needed to do better instead of just being quiet, and that's how we were in the first half," Jefferson said.
"In that second half, guys were talking, guys were lunging, guys had a lot more excitement. You could see it in guys' body language. So that's what I mean by excitement."
It can be too easy at times for Duke, because the Blue Devils are absurdly talented. Duke would go on to win 86-69, but it wasn't without a fight, even though they had far and away the best player on the court. Okafor is one of the best -- if not the best -- big men in the country. He was single-covered in this game, and he capitalized with a career-high 27 points on 12-of-15 shooting (16 of which came in the first half).
Okafor said that was probably as much as he'd been single-covered all year. He knew that going in, though, because Toledo players and coaches had been quoted saying that was the route they were going.
"Going into the game, I was expecting to be played man-to-man and they just told me to dominate and do what I do," Okafor said, grinning. "It was kind of fun playing against single-man coverage."
But as with most basketball strategies, if you give something up it's usually to take something else away. Duke attempted just six 3-pointers in the first half and made only two. Okafor finished with just one assist, a low number for him, and Duke started getting stagnant on offense watching Okafor work.
The lethargy seemed to translate to the defensive end, too. Toledo has excellent guards, but the Blue Devils were more passive than they needed to be defensively.
Until, of course, the Krzyzewski floor slap.
Up to that point -- the first 23 minutes -- Toledo had shot 19-of-38 on the game (4-of-9 from 3-land) and had 44 points with just six turnovers. After the floor slap, Toledo was 10-of-23 for 25 points in the final 17 minutes, turning it over seven times.
"I did see that," Jefferson said, grinning, of Krzyzewski's floor slap. "I loved it. That excitement, that shows you what he's about and how he has the most fire, the most energy. If we just follow that we'll be fine. So it was great to see that and I know how passionate he still is about this game and about winning. So when guys saw that, I think it fired our group up."
Duke was more active defensively after that, getting steals and just generally contesting better, defending screens differently and making life more difficult on Toledo's guards. It was the Duke defense the nation has been more used to seeing under Krzyzewski
This isn't the same type of team Krzyzewski has normally had, though. His teams were always characterized by the four-year guys, the ones who knew his system and his defense inside and out and would hustle and fight and scrap as if it were ingrained in their being. And it probably was.
But the last few Krzyzewski teams have been characterized by one-and-done type talent, elite-level recruits who have come to Durham to learn from the guy who coached LeBron James in the Olympics. They're still committed to doing things Krzyzewski's way, of course, but it takes time for even the most talented players to develop the grit needed to be a Krzyzewski-type player.
"You only grow up by being in fights, being in competition," Krzyzewski said. "We're in a constant state of learning. We've got a chance to be much better.
"We were good in the second half, but much more fluid and talking -- like I didn't think we talked well today. We didn't switch until the second half. Things that we were doing in the first eight games instinctively, we didn't do defensively until that sense of urgency in the second half. So yeah, there are a lot of things to work on."
With ACC play looming, Duke has been as impressive as any team in the country.
But Krzyzewski didn't get to the doorstep of 1,000 wins by settling, and he's not about to start. That's the coach who slapped the floor so hard he broke his watch.
"I still want to win. Badly. I want to win badly," Krzyzewski said. "My team deserves emotion, and they got it, and they gave it back, which is cool. It's a cool thing."
