Coach K on the college basketball season: ‘I don’t think it feels right to anyone’ | Yahoo Sports College Podcast

Yahoo Sports’ Dan Wetzel and Pete Thamel, and Sports Illustrated’s Pat Forde discuss Duke coach Mike Krzyzewski’s comments about the college basketball season being played during the COVID-19 pandemic, and whether the NCAA should adjust the schedule for the future.

Video Transcript

DAN WETZEL: Duke played Illinois on Tuesday night and lost by 15 points. Coach Mike Krzyzewski was asked if it felt right to be playing college basketball during a pandemic. He came up with this statement, I don't think it feels right to anyone. I mean, everyone is concerned. You know, we made an assessment. I'm not sure who leads college basketball. You know it's done by committee. You have an oversight committee. You have this committee and anything led by committee is not agile in handling a situation, so we made an assessment and there was a consensus.

It wasn't, like, well planned that we're going to start November 25. That was made without knowing whether there's going to be a vaccine, how many cases. Basically, is was just the mentality of get as many games in as possible. And he just, basically, said we're just plowing through this. He acknowledged that people will probably look and dismiss him because his team isn't any good this year. Conveniently, Coach K might want to shut down the season when Duke isn't so good.

I know K is going to get a lot of criticism for what he said but it kind of was reflective of what I'm hearing from college basketball coaches. Like, what are we doing this? This is absurd. And the restrictions we have to put the players on. I think, Tom Izzo-- and don't overreact to the comparison-- but he compared it to, like, putting the guys almost in jail, in what they have to do. And he acknowledged that it's not jail. You know, what are you guys hearing on the Coach K comments?

PAT FORDE: Basketball coaches are less afraid to announce their misgivings than the football coaches have been. The idea to rush into playing, I guess you would say, November 25, as opposed to trying to wait and back end this thing, has not been very well received. I mean, Jeff Capel-- former longtime Mike Krzyzewski's assistant and former player for him-- came out and said what, I think, a lot of people think. Certainly, what I think. Earlier this week, he said, let's just not even call these guys student athletes. They're basically employees.

They're basically under almost lock and key, house arrest on their campuses, which are deserted except for them for weeks, and weeks, and weeks, and weeks. And your job is to churn out TV inventory in that time. And yeah, you may want to play but the circumstances surrounding this are ugly and just a terrible, terrible look and a terrible execution really, so far, I think, by college basketball.

PETE THAMEL: Yeah. And here's the thing. Like, a bunch of college basketball coaches I've talked to, think it's a sputtering mess and want things pushed back. The option here-- Pat wrote in August. I wrote it a couple of weeks ago-- is to move March Madness to May by then, God willing, the vaccine is widely available. We're just starting to feel the post Thanksgiving spike in America, and it's only going to get worse.

So do you just look around, read the country right now, hit pause? Or just say, you know what, let's go January 15, bubbled sites for leagues, create an environment where there's not this chaos. And, again, kids want to play, coaches want to play, everyone wants to play. They need the inventory, that's been very clear.

So, I just think, like a lot of things with the NCAA, they're just going to like stick their hands over their ears and go, la, la, la and hope for the best. That's been the strategy so far. It's been a strategy of hope, and they're going to continue to hope because it does not appear that the organization is built to have alternative strategies.

DAN WETZEL: And the challenge we talked-- well, this was in football-- but the challenge in basketball of keeping your guys motivated. And I don't think that's a secret that that's why Kentucky and Duke aren't any good. These guys are like, I'm going to league. And you're seeing Iowa, and Illinois, and some of these other clubs are playing a lot better together. It is a year where just about anybody could win the championship, which I guess is something.