being an outstanding player where you trusted him every second he was on the floor. That bodes well for their futures, and they know the level of commitment and dedication that it takes to be good players because of the example that Brian and Lance set. I’ve never been around better
teammates than Brian and Lance. They were completely selfless throughout their entire time at Duke. We asked them to do some incred- ibly tough things in what I think is the toughest position in college basketball. In the college game, it’s so physical in the post and there’s so much riding on good post play to be successful. Those guys never once batted an eye, they were never
tion defender, and he was our best communicator on the defensive end. Our guys who were on the floor with him drew strength from that. His rebounding numbers were better than anyone’s in the country on a per minute basis. You knew what you were going to get from him. He was dependable and he continued to improve. As he improved and his confidence improved, our team improved and our team’s confidence improved. Brian’s taking the oppor- tunity to start and really entering the starting lineup with an exclamation point was huge for our team. There are a couple of great mo- ments among many from the season working with our post guys that stand out to me. One was hugging
“We knew that if we wanted to get to where we are now, we would have to base our game on hard work and dirty work and defense. Rebounding goes along with that. Those are the tough things about this game. If you have that every night, you’ll always be in a position to win.” BRIAN ZOUBEK
jealous, and they created an atmo- sphere that was conducive for suc- cess. They also created a day-to-day interaction with the rest of the team that allowed everybody to feel good about what they were doing. They embraced their roles on the floor and they embraced their roles as team- mates about as well as you could possibly do it.
Brian had an outstanding year
from start to finish, but there is no question when he was in the starting lineup that he added another dimen- sion to our team. I think we went from a very good team to a team that was capable of winning a national championship. He provided us with an amazing presence. First of all, on the defensive end he protected the basket. He’s an outstanding posi-
159 WORTHY CHAMPS
Brian right after we won the national championship. It was a great mo- ment, and I was so happy for Brian. He had a ton of adversity early in his career mainly because he had health problems. He had broken feet and there’s nothing that you can do about it. Then he had adversity with a lot of unfair negative press. Through- out those challenges, he remained positive, he worked incredibly hard, and he served as an example for everyone in our program that when you meet adversity you push through it. For him to have such good things happen, and for him to be such an important part of a national champi- onship team, I was really happy for him to go out like that. With Lance, we had an intense moment in the Elite Eight during a
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