Mike Krzyzewski defends decision to start Paolo Banchero following legal dust-up

Duke head coach Mike Krzyzewski snapped back at critics over his decision to start former five-star freshman Paolo Banchero versus Gardner-Webb. Banchero played 26 minutes for the Blue Devils just a couple days after an arrest with his teammate Michael Savarino, Coach K’s grandson, on Sunday.

“We had a violation of our standards,” Krzyzewski started. “We’ll handle that internally. We already are handling it. It’s two entirely different situations, headlines may make it look like it’s the same, but it’s not. The decisions we made are in conjunction with my superiors. We took action and we’ll continue to take action.”

Police pulled over and arrested Banchero and Savarino early Sunday morning. Savarino, the driver, 20, is charged with DWI and due to appear in court on Dec. 9, according to reports. Banchero, 19, is charged with aiding and abetting DWI and is due in court on Dec. 8.

In the 92-52 win over Gardner-Webb, Paolo Banchero posted 10 points with eight boards, two assists, a block, a steal, and one turnover.

Coach K said early on Tuesday that consequences for Banchero over his Sunday morning arrest would come from the athletics director or other university officials.

Banchero is a potential NBA Draft lottery pick and was the ACC Preseason Player of the Year this year. He was a five-star recruit out of Seattle, Washington, according to the On3 Consensus, a complete and equally weighted industry-generated average that utilizes all four major recruiting media companies. He averaged 19.3 points per game through Duke’s first three games.

Savarino has played just four minutes this year, all against Army. His mother is an assistant athletic director at Duke. He was a walk-on until this year when he earned a scholarship.

John Calipari on Paolo Banchero: ‘Make him make basketball plays’

Banchero had quite a game in Duke’s season opener against Kentucky, dropping 22 points to help the Blue Devils to a 79-71 win. Kentucky coach John Calipari, who recruited Banchero, talked about how impressed he was with Duke’s star freshman.

“Really good. Really good. He’s really good,” Calipari said after the game. “Great kid, great family. Really good. You almost, you can’t — we had too much respect for him.

“We backed away and now he shoots. No. Make him make basketball plays. I kept saying it, but we’re afraid, so they kept backing up.”

Calipari also talked about how difficult it was to guard the 6-foot-10 Banchero.

“Now Jacob [Toppin] seemed to go guard him and make him spin and do some stuff. But I even said prior to the game, they’re going to iso him,” Calipari said. “I thought they would short pick and a step-up screen and short roll him to the foul line and let him play there.

“Well they played him on an elbow and they played him in a short corner. It was the same idea. And then we were like, Okay, how are we going to do this. And it was a tough matchup. Keion didn’t play that bad it was a tough matchup. We wanted to try to win the game.”