Coach K: "Carolina Played An A+ Game"

Mike Krzyzewski marched into the media room for his post-game interview and seemed to start talking even before he sat down and had a glass with iced Diet Coke placed adjacent to him. He didn't touch the soda for the duration of the press conference—he would barely stop talking over the next eight minutes.

In short, Krzyzewski was far from displeased with his team's performance, despite giving up more points than any other Duke team since 2000. The Blue Devils simply couldn't keep up with their neighbors across 15-501, and Krzyzewski, surprisingly chatty after the loss, wasn't afraid to say it.

“[North Carolina] played a great game, and I thought our kids played their butts off," he said. "Our guys were ready to play, but I thought Carolina had an A+ game tonight. They were incredibly efficient offensively, from the field, from the foul line, to get that many points with that amount of shots.... Carolina played great. And we didn’t play poorly, we played hard. I thought overall we played well, but we’re not as good as they are right now. They’re better than us, and sometimes a team that’s better doesn’t play as well as that, but they played that way too. It’s going to be difficult to beat them. We just have to keep getting better. We’ve come a long away from last Wednesday, and we just have to keep improving.”

Some more notable morsels from the press conference, as I prepare to write my second story:

• On Lawson: "He’s going to play basketball for a long time. He’s just really strong, and he’s strong with the ball. He’s in incredible shape. Even when you’re trying to corral him, he keeps the ball so low so he’s strong low. A lot of people aren’t strong low. He’s really good with the ball. He’s good, he’s really good, and he played a great game tonight. It was almost impossible for us to defend him on every exchange, and he gets it down there so fast that even if you try to change a defense or whatever, he beats your defense down. He’s a great weapon, because he makes other weapons better.”
• On the Tar Heels' prowess: "I don’t have fault with my team tonight. We were not as good as they were, but that doesn’t mean we weren’t good. Just have to keep going at it. It’s February 11, just have to keep going at it.”

Plenty more later.