Duke coaching legend Mike Krzyzewski analyzed all the Sweet 16 matchups of the NCAA tournament Tuesday on his Sirius/XM show “Basketball and Beyond with Coach K,” and of course, that meant he discussed the Blue Devils’ opponent in the East Region on Thursday night — Arizona.
The No. 1-seeded Blue Devils (33-3) defeated No. 4 Arizona (24-12) by a score of 69-55 at McKale Center four months ago, only four games into the season. They play again Thursday at 6:39 p.m. at Newark, N.J., for the right to advance to the Elite Eight on Saturday.
“I think going into this Sweet 16, the team that’s best positioned for the Final Four is Duke,” Krzyzewski said. “That doesn’t mean it’s going to be easy because Arizona is different (from the Nov. 22 game). They were having whatever problems in November and December. They’re not having problems now.
“You want to make sure that the Duke team doesn’t remember the team they beat … This is a different Arizona team.”
Krzyzewski is impressed by Caleb Love and Arizona’s offensive flow. He knows all about Love’s ability to score, scheming against him when Duke played North Carolina. Love had 28 points when North Carolina defeated Duke in the 2022 Final Four, Krzyzewski’s last game as a head coach.
“In Caleb Love, they have a five-year top-notch player,” Krzyzewski said. “He just went for 29 in the last game (Sunday’s victory over Oregon in a second-round matchup). And they’re a really good offensive team.”
Revisiting the storied Arizona-Duke rivalry with the elite programs playing each other in the Sweet 16 Thursday at Newark, N.J. Did you know Arizona is one of only a handful of programs that Hall of Fame coach Mike Krzyzewski had a losing record against?
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Duke’s defense limited Arizona to 26 points below its average of 81.7 points in the victory at McKale Center.
Love had only eight points in that game on 3-of-13 shooting from the field, 1 of 9 from 3-point range.
Motiejus Krivas started that game at the post two weeks before he was lost for the season because of a foot injury. KJ Lewis was a starter at that time. Trey Townsend produced only four points as a starter, trying to get acclimated to Tommy Lloyd’s system after transferring from Oakland.
Arizona’s bench production from Carter Bryant, Henri Veesaar, Anthony Dell’Orso and Tobe Awaka performed in stark contrast to how they have played over the last half of the season.
The foursome combined for only eight points on 2 of 7 shooting from the field, 2 of 5 from 3-point range, with nine rebounds, two assists and one steal against Duke.
In the victory over Oregon on Sunday, they scored 32 points on 11 of 22 shooting from the field, 3 of 8 from 3-point range, with 22 rebounds, three assists and three steals.
“We didn’t shoot the ball well at home (39.6 percent from the field, 26.1 percent from 3-point range in the loss to Duke),” Love said in a video press conference Tuesday with local media. “We put ourselves in a position to win multiple times throughout the game. They just made more plays than us at that time.
“We were such a different team early on. We’re so much more connected on both ends of the floor now. Our offense has changed. Our defense has taken a jump. Going into this Duke game, we have to be more physical than them. We’ve got to hit on all cylinders on the offensive end as far as executing our plays to a T. With that team, you can’t make too many mistakes as far as defensive assignments, turning the ball over and things like that because they’ll make you pay.”
Love added that the Wildcats are going into the game “with a fresh mindset, knowing that they got us early on, but we’re totally a different team now.”
‘So what, now what?’ For Arizona, it’s on to the Sweet 16 to face Duke in NJ https://t.co/HWTFRt6QKU
— Steve Rivera (@SteveRivera95) March 24, 2025
In terms of the offensive improvement, Love mentioned that Arizona’s movement and the players’ decisions on the “pre-catch” has improved. He added that the utilization of different schemes and sets has enhanced production.
Krzyzewski believes Duke — in its third year under his replacement Jon Scheyer — is in the best position to advance to the Final Four because of the Blue Devils’ defense, particularly the inside presence of freshman post players Khaman Maluach (7-foot-2 and 250 pounds) and Patrick Ngonba II (6-11 and 250).
“That’s like a two-headed monster,” Krzyzewski said. “Duke has the best rim protection in the tournament with those two kids. That’s a huge advantage because it keeps the rest of the guys out of foul trouble.
“If you don’t have rim protection and you’re guarding someone who gets close to the rim, you feel like you have to stop them, and that’s where fouls occur. They’ve played with these two big guys long enough where they’re going to block the shot or they’re going to affect the shot.”
Krzyzewski added that because of the lack of fouls called on penetration due to the size around the rim Duke must “win the free-throw battle all the time” to advance to the Final Four and win a championship.
Maluach leads Duke with 44 blocked shots and multi-talented Cooper Flagg is next with 43. Ngonba has 16 blocked shots in his 27 games, all off the bench. He is averaging 10.8 minutes a game.
In the win over Arizona in November, Ngonba did not play and Maluach started and totaled eight points, three rebounds and a blocked shot in 16 minutes.
Flagg (24 points, seven rebounds and three blocked shots) and Kon Knueppel (13 points, seven rebounds and three assists) were difference makers.
Tyrese Proctor, who had 25 points against Baylor on Sunday while making 7 of 8 from 3-point range, struggled with his shot against Arizona (3 of 11 from the field, 2 of 7 from 3-point range and 0 of 2 from the free-throw line).
Krzyzewski added that Duke is more balanced than the previous game with Arizona (which has also shown more production overall from its top eight rotation players).
“They’ve never been completely dependent on Cooper Flagg and Knueppel, but they’re even less dependent on them now,” Krzyzewski said of Duke.
Krzyzewski said he is concerned that Duke was the only No. 1 seed in the NCAA tournament that was not tested in the first two rounds against No. 16 Mount Saint Mary’s (93-49 win) and No. 9 Baylor (89-66).
“That’s a concern because you want to make sure that the guys … I mean, they’re playing great, but when you haven’t been tested, you will be tested now,” he said.
Chris Spatola, the co-host of the “Basketball and Beyond with Coach K” show, asked Krzyzewski how Scheyer will prepare the Blue Devils this week after winning with relative ease last weekend.
“I don’t think you do much physically; you don’t do any body contact this week, just because we — ‘we’ because I’m still with Duke (working out of his office, consulting Scheyer among performing other school-related fund-raising tasks) — we have young guys so their bodies need recovery,” he said. “We can’t afford any injury.
“I think John will try to show them, like during the Baylor game, that there were probably four or five times in that game where (Baylor) missed a really good shot that would have made it single digits. So did we stop them?”
Krzyzewski is very much about the mental approach of a game, paying attention to every detail.
He touched on Scheyer focusing on that aspect this week while preparing for Arizona.
“I think he’ll go through and show during the tournament teams not running the baseline (after a made basket or goaltending call ) — you know, the mental mistakes that teams have made just because they have not been in this situation or haven’t stopped and said, ‘What would you do?'” Krzyzewski said.
“The kids don’t watch all the games so they don’t see. Like, what should they be thinking of right now? Or ask, ‘What do you think Cooper?’ You try to get them sharper intellectually. I think John’s done that throughout the year. Last week, I watched a little bit of their practice, and all they were doing was their end-of-game and end-of-half situations. Just trying to be smarter, and put them in that (situation) because they haven’t been in that.”
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ALLSPORTSTUCSON.com publisher, writer and editor Javier Morales is a former Arizona Press Club award winner. He is a former Arizona Daily Star beat reporter for the Arizona basketball team, including when the Wildcats won the 1996-97 NCAA title. He has also written articles for CollegeAD.com, Bleacher Report, Lindy’s Sports, TucsonCitizen.com, The Arizona Republic, Sporting News and Baseball America, among many other publications. He has also authored the book “The Highest Form of Living”, which is available at Amazon. He became an educator in 2016 and is presently a special education teacher at Sunnyside High School in the Sunnyside Unified School District.
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