Duke University men’s basketball coach Mike Krzyzewski says his recent outburst at Duke’s “Cameron Crazies” for a seemingly innocuous chant about Pittsburgh coach Jeff Capel was brought on by Krzyzewski’s state of mind following the shocking death of Kobe Bryant.
During Tuesday’s game, fans told Capel, who served as a Duke assistant from 2001 to 2018, to “sit with us” — which is a common chant for ex-players. Krzyzewski was not happy with the student section, walking over to them during halftime, pounding his chest and unleashing a passionate outburst, telling them to “shut up” and that Capel is “one of us.”
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The next day, Krzyzewski held a surprise speech for about 40 to 50 students, according to a report from the Duke Chronicle, explaining that he reacted that way due to his “fragile emotional state” caused by Bryant’s sudden death in a helicopter crash on Sunday. The report goes on to say that throughout the 30-minute speech Krzyzewski “went into significant detail” about his own relationship with Bryant, as well as Capel’s relationship with Bryant. He even showed a brief clip of Cameron Crazies in the past to instruct students on how to act in the future, Duke senior Robert Lane told the Chronicle.
Additionally, a history of Duke’s student section jeering Capel when he played at Duke in the 1990s also enraged Krzyzewski.
“Coach K said that him and Capel were really close because Capel was a guy who was part of their program when they were having a tough time building the program,” Lane said. “Apparently Capel was having a really tough time when he was a senior because he was trying to figure out what he was going to do after graduation, and people actually were booing Capel for the first half of the season because he was doing so poorly. And he started figuring stuff out, but Coach K has just been defensive after hearing stuff about Capel, so that’s why he got mad at the student section [Tuesday].”
“Today was about sort of clearing the air between Coach and the tenters, if there was any air that needed to be cleared,” co-head line monitor Ben Succop told the student newspaper. “Just to kind of bury the issue and grow and move past it.”
The meeting was set up by Krzyzewski’s daughter, Debbie Savarino, who is an assistant director of athletics at Duke as well as the mother of freshman guard Michael Savarino. Succop said he immediately called Savarino during halftime of Tuesday’s game and said she “wanted to handle things with the respective folks on each side kind of to communicate the message.”
Krzyzewski apologized for his outburst after Tuesday’s game, but stood by his belief that the chant was poorly timed. “I thought it was something personal,” he told reporters. “I apologize to the students for that. I don’t apologize for the timing. You shouldn’t say that in the middle of the first half of an ACC game.”
“It was a mistake on my part, but I’d rather make a mistake in protection of my guy.”
Photo credit: Grant Halverson / Stringer / Getty
