The entire sports world is struggling to function as the world is dealing with the COVID-19 pandemic, and college basketball has been one of the hardest hit. On December 8, 2020, Duke lost to Illinois in the ACC-Big Ten Competition and went into an attack in the post-match press conference. He feels the season needs to be paused because the student-athletes have to deal with a lot of things just to get these games. Part of his comment:
“It’s basically a mentality, ‘Get in as many games as you can.’ And I think I just want, just for the safety, the mental health and physical health of our players and staff, to be there… like judging where we are. You know, in our country today, 2,000 people die every day. You know, you had 200,000 cases, a million and a half last week. You have people who say the next six weeks are going to be the worst. For me, it was pretty bad. And on the other side of it are the vaccines that are coming, it is said that by the end of the month 20 million shots of the vaccine will be given, especially to take care of our health, to those who need it. And by the end of January or February, another 100 million. Well, shouldn’t we re-evaluate that? You know, just see what would be best? ”
In his comments, he even admitted that times are looking bad as Duke is about to lose and their 2-2 record is so bad. At that time, the match against Gardner-Webb was postponed and the match against Elon was cancelled. Two days after the Illinois game, Krzyzewski announced that Duke would be canceling its remaining non-conference games, drawing groans from fans of the sport. While there’s certainly a lot of merit to what he’s saying, many people don’t like the timing of these announcements and how his appearance is different from what other shows are doing.
It doesn’t get better for Duke. They saw heavily touted freshman Jalen Johnson leave the team mid-season, the team hit a record 7-8 and Cameron Indoor Stadium was eerily quiet, with no fans allowed at matches. Despite placing 10th in the game at the ACC, the Blues would have beaten Boston College and Louisville in the conference tournament before a COVID outbreak on the team caused them to drop their game against Florida State. Duke missed the NCAA tournament for the first time since 1995.
