Duke basketball: Five reasons Coach K needs to lighten up

1. Coach K needs to lighten up because his nervous vibes trickle down to his players

The go-to fan reaction after the Duke basketball team shot itself in the foot against Stephen F. Austin by shooting 11-for-24 from the charity stripe across the second half — 24-for-40 for the game — seems to be concern over whether the Blue Devils are putting up enough reps in practice. Hogwash. No doubt they are.

Another common knee-jerk reaction is the players aren’t clutch — or, put another way, they are just losers. Nope. That’s not it.

So what is it? It appears to be the players’ unnecessary yet unavoidable nervousness primarily stemming from the look in Mike Krzyzewski’s eyes during and prior to these tense moments. He doesn’t look at his guys the way he confidently and enthusiastically looked at Christian Laettner, for instance, before the ice-water-in-veins Blue Devil drained two game-winning free throws against UNLV in 1991.

No, as has increasingly been the case during his program’s three consecutive seasons seeing drops in free throw percentage from the previous season — from 76.2 in 2016-17 to 71.0 the next season to 68.6 last season and now 66.3 this season — Krzyzewski now seems to look at his late-game foul shooters as if he expects them to miss.

Then after the loss to the Lumberjacks, when speaking to the press, opposite the Coach K of old, he had the audacity to essentially dismiss his top weapon’s performance by throwing freshman big man Vernon Carey Jr. under the bus:

"“Some of the free throws, you got to the line for something right by the bucket. We didn’t finish. Vernon [Carey Jr.] was 8-for-10 [from the field], but he got fouled a lot. When you miss on a foul, it doesn’t count as a miss. You start adding free throws and your misses, even if we play the way we played, we win. It’s a matter of toughness. This is not about one play. This is about how we play, which was not very good.”"

Speaking of not very good, let’s talk about the decision to sub in senior forward Jack White for Carey Jr., who had SEVEN BLOCKS and NINE DEFENSIVE REBOUNDS for the game, twice prior to crucial defensive possessions during the final 106 seconds of overtime.

ALSO READ: Vernon Carey Jr. breaks a 20-year-old program record

And let’s talk about not having Carey Jr., who scored a TEAM-HIGH 20 POINTS and provided the only easy offense all night, on the floor for Duke’s final possession — which, by the way, should have included a timeout from Coach K after an offensive rebound by freshman Wendell Moore with 12 seconds remaining.

Talk about a coach losing a game for his team by not trusting in his best player down the stretch. That has to stop.

As for another recent bad habit of Coach K that is working against this Duke basketball team…