DURHAM -- A week's time has not dulled Austin Rivers' assessment of Duke's performance in its 85-63 loss to Ohio State.
In the locker room after the Blue Devils' Nov. 29 defeat, Duke's standout freshman used words such as "awful" and "embarrassing" to describe the team's effort against the Buckeyes, who jumped out to a quick 11-0 lead and never looked back.
"We lost by 22 points - in our minds, it felt like more," Rivers said Monday. "I didn't say, 'We were embarrassing' or 'We're an awful team' - we're a great team. We just played bad.
"It was just a game where we played bad, and they played great. They made a lot of shots. They came out very excited. They punched us, and we didn't punch back."
No. 7 Duke (7-1) will hope to come out swinging tonight when it hosts Colorado State (5-3) at Cameron Indoor Stadium (ESPN2, 7 p.m.). More than anything, the Blue Devils want to display a sense of urgency they felt was lacking against the Buckeyes.
"We have to be able to count on everyone, every day," Duke junior Ryan Kelly said. "When we came out against Ohio State, everybody wasn't ready to contribute and to help us win. Not everybody on the floor was doing everything to win the basketball game. We need everybody to be great and to win championships."
After allowing Ohio State to shoot almost 60 percent from the floor and to make 8-of-14 3-point attempts, the Blue Devils not surprisingly spent much of the last week working on their defense. On-the-ball pressure and help rotations have been a particular emphasis.
Duke has only four games in December - after tonight, the Blue Devils travel to New York on Saturday to face Washington before games against UNC Greensboro and Western Michigan over the holidays - but the light schedule doesn't diminish the month's importance.
After an active travel itinerary took Duke from New York to Hawaii to Columbus, the time in Durham will afford the Blue Devils a chance to work out kinks.
"This is as big a month as any for our team, because now we've been in big games, we've had big-game experience - now we know, this is what we're good at, this is what we need to get better at," junior forward Mason Plumlee said. "It'll be huge for us this month, especially with the Christmas break, because we don't have as much class to really get time on the court and go over some things."
It's not as if the first weeks of the season showed Duke that it has dramatically more to work on than any of the other top teams in the country.
Rivers pointed out that the Blue Devils have won seven of eight games.
"And our schedule has by far been the toughest of any other school in the nation," Rivers said. "We'll be in OK shape, and we'll bounce back."
That's the process the Blue Devils hope to start tonight.
"We've been dying for another game," Plumlee said.
