David Cutcliffe came into yesterday's media luncheon in his usual suit and tie and gripped the podium.
"I'm holding this thing because I'm tired," he said "My eyes are in a million different places. I'm about as active as this old body can be."
Maybe his lack of sleep brought out an extra dose of frankness. Cutcliffe didn't mince any words, offering honest assessments of his players and a few others:
- "I don't know if I would give anybody a 'great' status yet," Cutcliffe said when asked how many great players are on the Blue Devils squad. "We've got some guys that probably border on good that are striving to be great. They'll strive a little harder. Great players are talked about when their careers are done. We can talk when a guy graduates from here, but I think you have to be very careful to talk about 'great' players before their day is done." Cutfcliffe did go on to say that Duke does have some "exceptional" players.
- Continuing with the good vs. great label debate, when a reporter asked a question about the great Alabama defense, Cutcliffe interrupted him. "Good defense," he said. "I'm not going to call them great. They're a good defense, we found that out last week. We made them look a little better than they were."
- While the coaching staff was "perplexed" by Sean Renfree's sudden rush of turnovers, Cutcliffe isn't putting too much emphasis on one game's mishaps. "I explained to Sean that Forrest Gump supposedly invented this slogan, if y'all remember while he was out running..." he let the sentence hang as laughter filled the room. (In case you're not up on your 90s culture references, the slogan, to borrow CBS's abbreviation for the word, is "$#*! Happens".)
Clearly his lack of sleep is not affecting his affable sense of humor.
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