Mike Brey Notebook | Duke Loss
Notre Dame head coach Mike Brey spoke following the 83-61 loss to No. 2 Duke on Monday evening.
On the loss:
“They are really gifted. We’re disappointed we lost. I thought we competed and battled. We needed to because we weren’t happy with that on Saturday. I told them we had the two best teams in the country roll through the building and I liked how we competed against this one tonight.
“Give Duke credit. I don’t know if I’ve seen individual gifted talent like that come through our building at multiple spots.”
On competitiveness on Monday:
“We stuck our nose in there and were physical. We have great kids. They knew they didn’t do that enough on Saturday. I love how they responded. We said we were going to give up threes because the numbers said to let them shoot jump shots. They came out stroking the thing pretty good.
“I thought Prentiss (Hubb) was really solid handling the ball against a good defense. Nate (Laszewski) fought and gave us good minutes tonight. We’ll get Juwan (Durham) back in practice this week and head to Boston.”
On Sunday’s practice:
“We addressed some things. We came in during the morning and competed a little bit. We looked at some non-competitive plays from Virginia. Our guys are critical of themselves and are sharp guys.
“We stuck our nose in there and that’s what I wanted to see. You could have a fundamental block out tonight and it doesn’t even matter. Duke can go up to another level.”
On starting slow:
“We haven’t been able to score early. That’s a deep hole. The two teams we’ve played against were excellent defensively. Duke’s pressure and switching was almost impossible to make a pass. You have to ball screen and someone has to drive and kick. We got to the offensive boards a little bit.
“We could use some other guys making some shots early for us to take some pressure off.”
On schedule coming up:
“Maybe we can get on a run like last February. We looked at January and it was going to be a challenge for us. Everything is hard. We’re going to have to be really good to win on Saturday. I love we’ll be a little deeper than the last time we played them. We’ll keep plugging.”
On forward Juwan Durham’s health:
“He hasn’t practiced yet. He’s been working out with Coach (Ryan) Humphrey and he doesn’t have the soreness as bad the next day. We’re going to ramp him up a lot tomorrow. Wednesday is our off day.
“I looked at him at the four-minute timeout and said ‘Are you ready?’ He said he was ready. We need him. I feel we’re going in the right direction with him.”
On road games:
“I think it’s good to get on the road. It’s good to get out of here. Our crowd was great the last two games. I wish we could have got one for them. They were fabulous and they helped us tonight.
“You get one on the road and you celebrate in the locker room and confidence changes and you feel better about yourself. That’s our goal.”
On John Mooney going after Zion Williamson after a hard foul:
“I like that. We talked a little about that. It was great for John to set the tone. We can foul hard back there too. I thought our fight was there and our competitiveness was there. We didn’t do that after a disappointing Saturday.