Former Duke player describes Coach K’s way of dumbing down March Madness bracket into micro tournaments

Looking at 68 teams in a March Madness bracket can be pretty overwhelming, especially for those playing in the tournament.

However, former Duke player Jay Bilas said his legendary former head coach, Mike Krzyzewski, had a brilliant way of dumbing it down to take the pressure off the Blue Devils.

“I played for Coach K at Duke and in 1986, my senior year, that was the second year of the 64-team bracket,” Bilas told Fox News Digital in a recent interview. “And he broke the tournament down to basically a four-team tournament the first weekend. He talked about the opposite side of our bracket, the 32 teams opposite our side and said, ‘Look at all those teams in there,’ and started talking about how good some of them were. And then he goes, ‘Who cares? Only one team is coming out of there. Only one team comes out of there. Whatever happens, fine. We’ll play that one team on Monday night for the championship.’

“And so he gave us a bracket. It was a four-team bracket, and we were playing at Greensboro in the first and second rounds. I think he called it the Greensboro Invitational and said, ‘This is all we got to worry about.’ And we’re like, ‘Geez, we can process that.’ He made it easier. And then the second week, same thing. We played at the Meadowlands – Meadowlands Invitational. We played DePaul, and then David Robinson and Navy was on the other side of that. So we only had to deal with a four-team tournament. Then we get to the Final Four, four-team tournament. And it really made it a lot easier.”

Now, like the rest of us, Bilas watches the tournament as a fan. And this year, he will be enjoying it with some ice-cold Garage Beer, founded by Travis and Jason Kelce.

“I like beer, and I like garages,” Bilas joked, adding that the Kelce brothers are a key reason why he wanted to be a spokesperson for the beverage this March Madness. “I probably shouldn’t be talking about how much I like beer, but I like beer and I like Garage Beer. And there’s nothing better than tournament time, and those two things go together really well. I try to avoid it when I’m on the air, but I’m just like everybody else — when there’s a good game on, I like to crack one open.”

And despite likely being several Garage Beers deep throughout the tournament, there is a good chance that Bilas, a self-proclaimed March Madness “nerd,” will be able to remember just about everything from this tournament.

However, because of Coach K’s bracket practice, that encyclopedia in Bilas’ brain doesn’t have many pages on 1986.

“I can talk to you about games that happened at just about any tournament and remember it. I don’t remember what happened in that 1986 tournament,” Bilas said. “Because all I cared about was what we did. I mean, it’s really kind of remarkable. I don’t really remember anything else because of the way Coach K presented it to us and the way we approached it. And I know a lot of teams do that now, and I, at least speaking for me, I thought that was extraordinarily helpful to us.”

The Blue Devils are the No. 1 overall seed this year and are aiming for their first title since 2015.

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