Duke basketball: Five reasons Coach K needs to lighten up

5. Coach K needs to stop looking so grumpy so as not to damage Duke’s brand

Recruits were surely watching. They may have even been listening to what Mike Krzyzewski said after the game. If so, they were likely not at all impressed by a head coach throwing his four- and five-star freshmen under the bus after a loss he primarily caused with his own poor coaching performance.

Like this fan, recruits were probably wondering why he and his staff looked like they were at a funeral for most of the game rather than what was supposed to be a fun sporting event. They were probably questioning whether they want to play for a guy who nowadays rarely stands up or shows positive emotion during games.

And at the same time, these future stars were probably looking at the other bench and wondering where they could go to play for an enthusiastic, joyful, smiling dude like Lumberjacks head man Kyle Keller.

Look, even Duke losses to highly ranked teams attract loads of national attention and widespread jeering. The loss to Stephen F. Austin — what ESPN is calling the worst loss by a No. 1 team in the past 25 years — will bring haters in by the truckload for many days to come.

What this means, of course, is extra eyeballs will be on the Duke basketball players as they look to bounce back at home against Winthrop on Friday at 7 p.m. And then there are likely to be countless eyeballs on the game at currently No. 3 Michigan State on Dec. 3 at 9:30 p.m.

You better believe recruits will be paying attention to how the Blue Devils respond to Tuesday night’s embarrassment. And you better believe they will be paying special attention to the head honcho’s actions.

In other words, a smile or two from Coach K in the direction of his freshmen — or a show of passion early and often, or at least he or one of his assistants standing up every now and then throughout the game — should go a long way. But as alluded to in the opening slide here, Coach K will surely figure all this out on his own.

This has just been an opinion piece to say it’s OK to find fault with Coach K and sometimes express those observations, especially after he has ripped his players who deserve far less blame than himself for a historically surprising defeat.

After all, Coach K is human just like the rest of us and the players he criticizes. And right now, as is often the case with the rest of us, he should go ahead and step up his game, chop-chop; if not, he’ll provide the Blue Devils no other path but the one that includes losing many more games — a path that ends before April for what would be the fifth year straight despite having hauled in several of the nation’s top recruiting classes as of late.

If Coach K comes to play as a coach for every game here on out, though, while there may be other coaches who beat him, there won’t be any who out-motivate or outcoach him.

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