Duke basketball: Coach K is playing mind games with Jalen Johnson

The second mind game the Duke basketball staff played with Jalen Johnson…

Excessive benching

After being left with no choice but to mostly laud Jalen Johnson following his record-setting debut, Mike Krzyzewski and his assistants decided he would be the only starter to come out of the Michigan State game at the under-16 timeout. At that point, he had only one foul.

Johnson came back in four minutes later. But after another foul with nine minutes to go in the first half (Duke led, 18-11), Krzyzewski stuck him on the bench, except for one 34-second stretch, until the second half (the Blue Devils trailed at the half, 37-33, and would never regain the lead). Plus, despite never picking up a third foul, he was out of action for five of the final 20 minutes.

Then against Bellarmine, after Johnson picked up two fouls within the first three minutes of action, Coach K benched the star and proceeded to keep him on the sideline for the entire remainder of the half. One could say that was a wise move on the 73-year-old’s part. Yet one could also say the intention was to teach the foul-happy youngin a lesson.

Speaking of a lesson, though Johnson drew only one more whistle in the game, he played only 12 minutes after the break and came out permanently with two minutes to play. In this case, his removal came shortly after his errant pass out of bounds, and that brings us to the “mind game” words that appeared to come out of Coach K’s mouth in response…