THE BIGS The number one reason was that


they used their experiences in the past as underclassmen in the Duke program to develop a mind-set that they were going to go out on top. And as good as they were in games, the biggest key was practice. I thought our practices and indi- vidual work really enforced what we thought were our greatest strengths, which were defense and the ability to rebound the ball. Our staff recog- nized those two things: if we could get outstanding play on the defen- sive end and develop a mind-set to dominate the boards to go with our


an atmosphere in practice that was going to be tougher than the games, you have an advantage against your opponents mentally because you’ve invested a lot. The more you invest, the harder it is to give up something. I think this created a great mind-set for all of our post guys every time they walked on the floor in competi- tion. It also developed strong habits so they were well-trained to do the things they were going to be asked to do in a game. A lot was made about our team lacking depth, but we had great depth in the post. Because all four of


“If there was a rebound there, Brian and I were fighting for it. I didn’t see the opposing team going for the rebounds like we did. When you do drills everyday, it’s me, Brian, Mason, Miles, we’re the ones fighting each other every day. Literally, there were times when we were about to get in fistfights with each other doing certain drills. That type of camaraderie helped develop the edge we had as a team and it started with our frontcourt. We just had that mind-set that it was us vs. them and we were going to go for it.” LANCE THOMAS


strong perimeter, we could compete with or beat anyone that we came up against. Throughout the course of a season,


we start the year with a bunch of practices, but then really cut down on our practice time as a team. Instead of having the end of prac- tice as a cutoff point, each day after practice we would do workouts with our bigs to reinforce habits that we would need to be successful in the game. These post-practice ses- sions included tough things like defensive and rebounding workouts in competition. We really honed in on what they could do offensively to help our team. And each day there were battles. If you could create


those guys (Brian, Lance, Miles and Mason) are really capable players, we were in a great position to use that to our advantage, positioning those guys where they never had to pace themselves. We could offer 40 minutes of hard-nosed, tough, ag- gressive basketball together between those four guys. We wanted those four guys to be like four starters, and all of them were very important to the success of our team. By being in that group, I think Miles and Mason made huge strides over the course of the year to figure out how to be the players that they’re capable of being. I think Miles in particular over the last month of the season really crossed the bridge to


158 DUKE 2010


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