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Q&A with Duke Blue Devils coach Mike Krzyzewski

DURHAM, N.C. -- Just a few months removed from his fifth national championship and with his new crop of freshmen due on campus Saturday for summer school, Duke coach Mike Krzyzewski sat down for an interview on a wide range of topics with ESPN.com and Yahoo! Sports -- including what made the national title team so special, why he is excited and curious about the future of college basketball ... and his admission that he has a Twitter alias.

Here are a few excerpts from the interview:

Q: What have the past few months been like for you?

Krzyzewski: At times, you forget that you won. Every once in a while, I'll text my assistants and say, in case you didn't know, we won the national championship. People think all you've been doing is celebrating. We lost more than half our team. ... The intense recruiting we had to do when these guys declared, not that you're not intensely recruiting otherwise, all the avalanche of good things that come from winning -- the requests, honors, things you have to do, along with what you normally have to do -- it's been a big catch-up. I feel this last week I've caught up more because I'm in camp, we're here.

Q: What do you think of some of the new rules changes?

Krzyzewski: What [rules committee chair and Belmont coach] Rick Byrd has done has been magnificent. I called him and told him he's done more for our game in one fell swoop than we've been able to do in the last quarter of a century. He's a magician. There used to be that game, mother may I? So we've had mother may I and never taken any steps. We need to take five giant steps. We probably took two giant steps but [at least] we took two giant steps. There was no momentum. He started momentum. Now we have momentum for change.

Q: Which rules in particular do you favor?

Krzyzewski: I think the 10-second thing is huge, and a coach not being able to call timeout. We don't do that internationally. That's huge. If a player couldn't do it, quite frankly, it would be even better. It makes players make plays. You can't save yourself, and as a result you'll see some plays. They'll have to get themselves out of situations. I like where our game is going. The popularity, the viewing of the championship game ... there's a lot of good stuff.

Hopefully we get this cooperation from the top conferences, along with the top basketball conferences that are not in that Power 5, to have some futuristic thinking, some planning on what to do. I'm not up to date on that. I'm not sure anyone is on everything. Will there be 110 teams like football? That type of thing.

Q: Are you in favor of that?

Krzyzewski: I don't know. There should be somebody studying the impact of that. ... Also, so certain people come to the reality that this could happen so if you're one of the ones below, do you do something more? In other words, let people have time to react instead of hopefully we'd never exclude everybody, but someone is going to be excluded -- so people get a little bit of a picture. Football does that. We don't do that.

Q: Do you feel like we are on a sort of precipice in college basketball?

Krzyzewski: Yeah, yeah. I do. Again, I think the year for the student-athlete was terrific and it's going to keep getting better. We're moving there. The game itself is moving. But the structure, the building, we don't know what building we're in. I don't think we know how many stories it is. That should be exciting though. But I don't know if anybody can talk to that. That's when you need leadership.

Q: In 10 years, do you think the NCAA tournament could look drastically different than it does today?

Krzyzewski: I think however we take it forward, it has to be inclusive of everybody. It may not be as inclusive to the amount of teams, but it touches every part of our country because there's basketball in every part of our country. You still have to have the so-called little guy. We've been beaten by the little guys. The little guys are pretty damned good. Now if this goes the way it is, it will be tough for some of the little guys to be as tough as they've been.

You can never get away from a bracket and you can never get away from March. What do they say in business? Location, location, location. We have a good location. I think [starting the season in January] would be disastrous, as I think it would be if you changed the bracket. Now who you put in those brackets may change, but again, the more inclusive you can be the better it is. It truly is the national tournament.

Q: Was it bittersweet saying goodbye to the nucleus of your team this year?

Krzyzewski: The team I had was so stinking good and close, it kind of gives you more years. It's a joy to be with those kids.

It's all been sweet because we knew Jah [Okafor] was gonna go. I don't think you could have predicted the other two kids, especially in January when Justise [Winslow] was averaging two points a game.

I think I'm on that path of recruiting, and realizing to enjoy the time you have them, and make sure you bring in kids you can enjoy. That was a crazy-special year. Our guys were so good at the end. And we won, which was cool, unbelievably cool.

Q: Your next class has big shoes to fill, not in terms of winning a championship but developing the closeness your previous team did. How can you make that happen again?

Krzyzewski: If we concentrate on them trying to replicate in their own way the cohesiveness, the fun and all that, the other stuff will take care of itself. So, I think we were good because we were close.

Q: So are you on social media?

Krzyzewski: I follow guys. I don't want to be on Twitter because I don't care. I don't want their opinions. I don't need to show that I have X amount of followers. But I follow a lot of people on Twitter, under an alias. I tell my guys I'm following you. Then if I see something, you text them, you gotta watch. But there are a lot of cool things that they do. I do like that they do it.