I could go on and on about the double standard Duke's coach enjoys, but the more important point is that ESPN has chosen to cover for him and build the Duke program up as a paragon of all things wonderful about college hoops. To hear Vitale and Patrick and Bilas tell it, you'd think Duke didn't offer certain majors that attract the majority of its players, that it graduates all its players (it does not, and according to Sports Illustrated its graduation rate is not the highest in the ACC), and that parents have never voiced displeasure with the way their kids were treated while in Durham.

The refs. Krzyzewski used to rail that Dean Smith got calls because he was Dean Smith. Now the rest of America says the same thing about Coach K.

Especially after the 2001 Final Four, when the Dookies seemed to get every favorable whistle against Maryland and Arizona. The sight of Jason Williams, already in foul trouble, body-surfing on the back of Jason Gardner - no call! - remains vivid.

Maryland comes into Cameron tonight as the hottest team in the country, perhaps the hottest team in the nation...

When Richard Brodhead, the dean of Yale College, was selected to be Duke University's next president last December, he jokingly paid homage to his new school's renowned basketball team. "If there are perks to my job," he quipped at the press conference announcing his appointment at Duke, "I presume that the president gets guaranteed tickets to the basketball games."

Last week Brodhead found out the joke was on him. On July 1, Brodhead's first official day as Duke's president, he was greeted with the news that Mike Krzyzewski, the school's revered basketball coach, was considering leaving Duke to coach the NBA's Los Angeles Lakers. You'd like to think that at an institution of higher learning--even one with a top-flight basketball team--this sort of development would be viewed as a bump in the road. But at Duke, where Krzyzewski's nickname, "Coach K," is said with the same reverence as Kim Jong Il's honorific "Dear Leader" is uttered in North Korea, Krzyzewski's possible departure precipitated a full-blown crisis.

Dunleavy, the No. 3 overall pick from Duke in 2002, has been a huge disappointment - hurting with Warriors with everything from poor play and unimpressive athleticism to an uncaring attitude and a tendency to blame teammates for mistakes.

Even the incredibly loyal Warriors fans at Oracle Arena have booed him loudly and regularly this season.

As you may have heard -- it was all over the Pentagon, banner headlined in Stars And Stripes; Don Rumsfeld thought he might copy the trick -- ever since Kapitan K totally humbled his troops, the troops have totally humiliated the opposition. Essentially, stripping the Dookies of the engraved nameplates over their lockers, the action pictures off their walls and the very chairs from under their weary bodies -- which is exactly what Mike Krzyzewski did following that shocking 77-76 loss to Florida State a couple of weeks ago -- has re-invigorated the NCAA's once and future rulers.

According to the Times-Picayune's Josh Peter, in the summer of 2000 Vivian Harper, mother of Duke incoming freshman point guard Chris Duhon, moved from her home in Slidell, La., to a two-bedroom apartment in Durham, N.C. She was given a job at a firm called NCM Capital Management Company, a billion-dollar money management firm owned by a man named Maceo Sloan, among whose possessions is an autographed basketball signed by the 1991 Duke championship team, Coach K's first title squad. Workers at the firm say the job was never posted. They also allege that Harper was given a substantial raise within four months.

There's more. Peters also reports that Carlos Boozer Sr., the then-unemployed father of former Duke star Carlos Boozer, was given a job at GlaxoSmithKline, a pharmaceutical company owned by Robert Ingram, who is a close friend of Coach K's. In order to take the job, the elder Boozer relocated from Alaska.

Coach K? Say it isn't so!

"I hated Wojo," she said. "And now," Beason said, "JJ Redick is starting to be that way. My husband called it. We were watching Duke play Georgia Tech. JJ hit a shot. He started talking so much shit. He was mouthing off while he was running backward. Gary's like, Holy shit, look at Redick talk. He's just like the rest of them. And you know what I say? It's like their birthright. They think that they've got Duke on their chests so they can act how they want. That comes from their coach.

Speaking of Chris Paul's technical against Duke, give Blue Devils guard Patrick Davidson credit for volunteering for "goon duty" Sunday and getting inside Paul's head early. Yes, we heard Duke coach Mike Krzyzewski cite Davidson's hard work as one of the reasons he started against Wake, but does anyone doubt Davidson was sent out to prompt some type of retaliation as he bumped and slapped and hacked Paul?

As an obviously irritated Wake Forest coach Skip Prosser said after the game, the strategy was "curious." So what's the difference between Duke's strategy and Temple coach John Chaney's decision Tuesday to put a "goon" in against Saint Joseph's?

The Owls sent in a 6-foot-8, 250-pound forward to fling his elbows around for four minutes and pick up five hard fouls, including one that broke the right forearm of Hawks co-captain John Bryant. Duke chose to send its message with a 6-foot, 190-pound walk-on who -- we're not making this up -- focuses before games by listening to Norah Jones.

Duke even had other big guys in mind while recruiting Collison. KU's All-America candidate grinned when recalling his phone call to Krzyzewski informing him he'd chosen KU.

'Actually, when I called to tell him I was going to Kansas, he was like, 'I don't care. We got a commitment from Casey Sanders anyway,' Collison said of Sanders, a 6-foot-11 senior from Tampa, Fla., who averages 4.6 points and 5.2 boards a game compared to Collison's 18.5 scoring, 9.3 rebounding marks.

The blame lies solely with Snyder. Either his naivety or blatant disregard for the rules put Mizzou in this situation, and only he can fix it.

Repairing the program's reputation is no 'minor' task.

Myong Akins was involved in a fight at Duke's Cameron Indoor Stadium recently when she was returning to her seat behind the Tech bench, slipped and fell and all hell broke loose. She claims a Duke student grabbed her by the hair on the way down, causing Ms. Akins to come up punching.

Daddy can't help you. Can't nobody help you, you're out there on your own."

On preparing for his first Duke game: "When I put the jersey on and I was about to go play, I just stared at it for two or three minutes. Then I put on my top and I went into the bathroom and I looked in the mirror and my first thought was, 'That's a sexy man in the mirror.' Then I had to catch my focus. I looked down at my chest and saw the Duke emblem and I really wanted to cry. I knew I couldn't do that before a game, but it just meant so much to me to have the uniform on."

As a '94 graduate of Duke, I'm ashamed that the once witty and creative Duke student body has gotten to the point where their spontaneity and their cleverness is not only canned, but totally void of anything that resembles originality. In fact, the students were duped into ridiculing themselves this past week against Maryland with the "piggy" chants.... Get rid of the cheer sheets, and get back to basics-funny, spontaneous, and if it has to be, downright embarrassing to the opposing players. Duke students are more concerned with the foolery that gets their mugs on TV than actually creating an atmosphere that gets opposing players thinking about something other than drilling three-pointers in the mugs of Dukie students.

Duke has every right to be as bad in football as it desires, just as it is free to retain coach Ted Roof for years to come.

But please, Duke, stop the football masquerade. Just stop it.

Shelden Williams steered clear of the tricky subject.

"A lot of times I don't even know what they're saying,'' Williams said of the Crazies.

Funny, isn't it, how once again, a college coach sees the advantages of exploring his options when he abhors having his players weigh those same options? Not just any coach this time, though, this particular coach. Hope nobody fingers him as being greedy or selfish or shortsighted or disrespectful or untrustworthy (after all, he made a commitment to his players to stick around, didn't he?).

"You'll never convince me that that was a combative blow. Here's what happened. I explained it to (ACC commissioner John) Swofford. He was going to try to block Tyler's shot. Steve Johnson fouled (Hansbrough) before that. Gerald was already up in the air. He was turning and he hits him. Now he was probably going to foul him up high, because in college you're not going to block that shot without fouling. So was he trying to stop him? Absolutely. And he should. Was he trying to hit him? There's no way. No way."

Maryland's players have been serenaded with chants of "Fear the Classroom," a reference to the zero percent graduation rate announced in October (and one Gary Williams tweaks in some way or another at every opportunity). Another sign: "If you can read this, Gary Williams won't recruit you."

''I'm biased, but I don't think there is anywhere in the country where fans are this intense about their team,'' Blaum said. ``We're the fans that all the other fans around the country are trying to copy.''

(on Coach K)

"He's petty and dishonest," said Burgess, father of CHRIS BURGESS. "But he's been successful being that way

"If you aren't on his good side, he doesn't fix that," the elder Burgess added. "If you are, you can do no wrong. It's like SHANE BATTIER - he can't do anything wrong. TRAJAN (LANGDON) couldn't make a mistake. Wojo (former point guard STEVE WOJCIECHOWSKI ) was like that the year before. If he hadn't stuck with Wojo, Duke would have beaten Kentucky" in the 1998 regional finals.

"He has no sons, and he picks one of the boys to be his son, and he can do no wrong. Even the players on the team called Shane 'Shane Krzyzewski.'"

The college basketball world has changed rapidly. Krzyzewski has every intention of establishing a new world order without loosening his grip on command. If that means taking advantage of an opportunity not of his own creation, then so be it. He didn't ask Kupchak to offer him the job. Coach K and his agent, David Falk, just listened (and leaked).

More typical, though, was the banner that rose in the student section when Redick was introduced before the game:

"Cave Spring Hates J.J."

Moser would not give details on student attendance, but it's clear that this year, Krzyzewski and others in the athletic department are urging students to attend. The basketball office spent time with the graduate students, who have a different ticket process, and Bazzani said Krzyzewski challenged the Duke freshmen to get involved and support the team.

As Bazzani recalled, 'Coach said to the freshmen, 'I'm putting this as a challenge to you. We're going to have a policy of no empty seats in Cameron this year. I'm personally challenging you to be Crazies, to be Duke, to be better than anybody who has passed through those stands.

Trust me: the first time Bryant drops a dismissive, contemptuous f-bomb on Krzyzewski during a time out, the resulting Coach K nostril flare -- is that special, special spittle on the corner of his mouth? -- will be well worth your efforts.

Earlier this month, the San Jose Mercury News, examining data from 1994-97 (the last four-year period the NCAA used for documentation of grades and test scores), found that freshmen entering Duke on basketball scholarships during that period had an average SAT score of 968. The average SAT score for Duke's freshman class as a whole is generally in the high 1300s.

Many college venues take great pride in their lack of hospitality for visiting teams. At Duke University the denizens of the Cameron Indoor Stadium, known as the Cameron Crazies, specialize in personal taunts that often cross the line. They once showered condoms on a Maryland player who had been accused of sexual assault. Last season they dangled chicken nuggets on a fishing pole near chunky Tar Heels center Sean May. The Crazies are "an integral part of our success," says Duke assistant athletic director of communication Jon Jackson. "The Crazies have had fun without being abusive." Some fun.

"This isn't all about `I love you,' and `Let's hold hands and skip,'" he says in his latest book (with Donald Phillips), Leading With the Heart: Coach K's Successful Strategies for Basketball Business, and Life (Warner Books, 2000; paperback, March 2001). "It's also about `Get your rear in gear,' `What the hell are you doing?' and `Why aren't you in class?

Criticism of K'ville has been increasing in recent years. Some say the process discourages more time-pressed undergraduates from attending games. Others note the preponderance of first-year students -- the population is about 80 percent freshman and 60 percent male -- many of whom are not fully programmed in Atlantic Coast Conference arcana. This has left some alumni wondering whether the cheering that made the Crazies despised throughout college basketball has lost its insolent snap.

The team's rebounding struggles, for example, can't be blamed on a lack of effort. During the last four years, including two teams with Shelden Williams, the Blue Devils struggled on the glass, giving up 177 more offensive rebounds than they corralled. In part, it has to do with defensive strategy, as pressure on the wings forces Duke's big men to help on penetration, leaving them out of position to box out. Exhibit A: Saturday, when West Virginia pulled down 19 offensive rebounds en route to winning the board battle 47-27.

The team's lack of developed big men seems to have a lot to do with recruiting techniques, as well. There's an obvious theme in the list of recent Duke forwards Eric Boateng, Brian Zoubek, Jamal Boykin, Lance Thomas and Dave McClure. None of these players had polished offensive games when they came to campus, most likely in an effort to keep Blue Devils from jumping ship to the NBA. But while here, none has developed a passable offensive game and two seemed to feel they could develop better elsewhere. Even the nation's top recruit of two years ago, Josh McRoberts, had few discernible post skills.

The frequent complaint is that 5-foot-10 former point guard Steve Wojciechowski is Duke's big-man coach, making it difficult for the Blue Devils to attract and develop NBA-quality post players.

Of all the "Sweet Christ, Billy Packer is so full of equine excrement" moments, we have to say, the "Just Going For The Ball!" foul from Gerald Henderson on Tyler Hansbrough at the end of the Duke-UNC game is definitely near the top of the list. Whatever your thoughts on the reason for Henderson's attack on Hansbrough, Packer's willful -- and aggressive; it's obviously he's not going to let Jim Nantz talk on this subject -- refusal to even imagine that a Duke player might have hammered down a cheap, brutal foul veers toward the pathological.

It gets emotional, but the Duke reserve had to be physically restrained from hitting referee Bruce Benedict following the Hoosiers-Blue Devils game. Although we aren't sure Christensen was actually going to punch Benedict, he did sort of throw his fist in rage. Not good. Making it even worse is we are not sure what he was mad about. There was no significant foul on Boozer's shot. If a foul had been whistled on that one the Duke referee conspiracy theory would have to be believed.

Krzyzewski said it was purely coincidental that this new partnership with NCAA president Myles Brand intensified about the time the Lakers came calling.

Oh, sure - wink, wink.

``It was not unrealistic to believe the state of college basketball hung in the balance with his decision,'' said Duke athletic director Joe Alleva. ``He's one of the, if not the one most recognizable name in college basketball today. He takes great pride in his ability to mold not just a player, but a man, and the realities of the game today is that you just don't have the time to achieve these objectives like you once did.''

The calls weren't consistent, and some situations made absolutely no sense

Three weeks ago, Duke's perpetually arrogant fans chanted, "Not our rival," as the Blue Devils beat Maryland by 23 points.

On Sunday, Maryland's team of kids -- with five freshmen and four sophomores -- stuffed those words back down the throat of a powerhouse Duke team that deeply wanted to win its sixth straight ACC tournament. Oh, the Blue Devils have a rival now, whether they like it or not. Its name is Maryland.

Duke fans so accustomed to seeing the Blue Devils win basketball games at Cameron Indoor Stadium saw something more surprising than home losses last season - empty seats in the student sections.

There was something depressing about the football game this Saturday, and it wasn't just the score. It was the low attendance and lack of student support for the team

things got out of hand

One of the minor controversies about this year's NCAA Tournament broadcasts has been the presence of Duke coach Mike Krzyzewski in a series of ubiquitous advertisements for a credit card company (American Express). The commercials, which have aired throughout the tournament, don't have much to do with credit cards. You don't see Coach K and his wife at a convenience story getting a 'much-needed slushy fix.' (That's another company's commercial.)

Instead, a distinguished-looking Coach K walks on a basketball court and talks about how he prepares young men for life, teaching more than dribbles and jump shots. I'm not sure what this has to do with his credit card, although I've never been sure what lizards had to do with beer or what Led Zeppelin had to do with Cadillac SUVs, for that matter.

The critics, and Duke has plenty of critics, have howled that the ads are nothing more than recruiting spiels for Duke, strategically placed for maximum exposure to young basketball players. If the commercials air during the Final Four, as they almost certainly will, that's a dead period in recruiting. In other words, Tubby Smith can't call a kid, but Mike Krzyzewski can appear six times in the kid's living room during the Louisville-Illinois game.

Heck, I almost hope the K-led Lakers win the title. Just so the coach puts out another tome on Coaching From the Heart With the Five People You Meet on Tuesdays in Heaven. I'll gladly buy the book. Then burn it.

"An important part of being a leader is the ability to feel what your players--or employees--feel," he says. "I do a lot of feeling, and my guys know it. I can't dream up plays and defense without knowing how Shane Battier and Jason Williams feel. And it makes me a better coach."

Brilliant work, guys. You clearly have a fine understanding of journalism. And you guys aren't biased at all, given your obsessive fawning of all things Duke-related and your consistent whining about anything that goes on with Maryland. Isn't it remotely possible that incidents at both Maryland AND Duke are bad? Why does Maryland HAVE to be addressed just because Duke is? Ever think that Duke might be a more salient example in this case because a) Many more people are aware of the "Cameron Crazies" and b) The actions of the Crazies are generally accepted, yet potentially leading to the slippery slope of poor fan behavior, and thus important to highlight?

You guys have become caricatures of yourselves. Every day your whining about some different perceived slight in the media. Every month you are complaining again about Maryland. Why don't you stick to creating a new bulletin board every year or so instead of critiquing things about which you know nothing, like journalism.

Oh, I forgot -- James is a self-proclaimed journalist, because he wrote something about a computer in some tech publication once, or something like that.

The Blue Devils are no longer the Blue Devils. They're just another good program. Good, not great. They don't have what Duke is accustomed to having. They haven't for years. When they get into the grown-men rounds of the NCAA tournament, they don't stand a chance.

But one bone of contention that people have with Duke is that it does not acknowledge in any way, shape or form that its championship last season was tainted. That the officiating in the "Final Four" was so slanted in its favor that it caused the crowd in Minneapolis to voice their opposition by booing the officials.

There is no need to rehash the fact that Williams committed an obvious third foul in the first half against Arizona that was not called. Or the fact that numerous whistles went Duke's way in the semifinals with Maryland before the Terrapins' Terrence Morris was whistled for a questionable fourth foul early in the second half.

Even if Carolina was up 40, Hansbrough didn't deserve to get whacked across the nose like that.

For his part, Hansbrough did absolutely nothing to provoke the incident. There was no escalating physical play, no aggressive move. He wasn't hot dogging or showing anyone up. He was just going up for a shot – while getting hammered, per usual – when Henderson delivered the blow.

Moreover Carolina was set to sub for Hansbrough had he made the free throw (which most people missed).

The only man I hate in America as much as K . . . is Donald Trump. So how fitting is it that he "just loves" Coach K? Let's see, Trump is egomaniacal, narcissistic, win-at-all-costs, an adulterer, a philanthropist for PR purposes only, and often a liar. He and K must have been twins separated at birth. The only difference is that Trump gets former Miss Universes and K gets Mickie.

The media has also increased the average fan's hatred of Duke basketball. I am specifically referring to the one and only Dickie V. Hey Dick, I'm not quite sure, do you think Coach K should be the USA Olympic Coach in 2008? Also, do you think Redick is the best shooter in the country?

The Cameron Crazies are the Clay Aikens of college sports fans-too loud, too geeky, too cute, and terminally annoying. It'll take twenty consecutive losing seasons just to make them tolerable again

Yet it's not just that foul that has those within the Carolina program still agitated to this day. It's the way things were handled in the hours and days that followed, Duke's apology neither prompt nor heartfelt enough for the Tar Heels' liking.

With Hansbrough a bloody mess in the postgame aftermath, Henderson did not come to the Carolina locker room to apologize. No one from Duke did.

Then, of all the things Blue Devils coach Mike Krzyzewski could have said the morning after to ease the tension between the teams, he said this:

'It's unfortunate,' Krzyzewski told reporters on the ACC coaches conference call. 'And the person it's most unfortunate for is G.'

In the end, though, it was the Blue Devils' foul trouble that did them in. All three of their centers - Shelden Williams, Shavlik Randolph and Nick Horvath - fouled out. Krzyzewski was beside himself, and after one late foul, he yelled at referee Ted Hillary: "You cheated us."

But we will confess that we find it strange that the NCAA College Hoops 2K7 video game cover boy this year is none other than JJ Redick, everybody's favorite DWI-ing long-distance specialist. Putting a guy with an arrest so recently on his record seems unusual; that it's perhaps the least popular collegiate athlete -- nationally, at least -- in recent memory makes the decision almost masochistic.

Carlos Boozer's behavior this summer, however, can be described as nothing less than reprehensible in his business dealings with the Cleveland Cavaliers.

On Cleveland local television, young children cried when they learned about Boozer's departure. Boozer read to children in the community and seemed like he really cared about all those around him. In just two years he had become a beloved figure in a city loyal to its hard-working athletes. But Boozer showed everyone that a few bucks was worth more to him than being a hero.

The downside of Hansbrough's automaton intensity? Rookie hazing is no fun for his teammates. He goes about the usual chores of bringing newspapers and donuts, but the trash talk has no impact. And why anger someone who's so eager to dish out punishment in practice?

Even the three former Duke players -- Dunleavy, Josh McRoberts and Dahntay Jones -- have given up.

"He doesn't take crap from anybody, so we'd be wasting our breath," Dunleavy said.

Before a waitress had even showed up to take our drink orders, we had trashed Dick Vitale. "He and all the commentators make Duke out like it's an Ivy League school, the way they handle their athletes," she said. "And we all know it's not. And the kids that are going to Duke, they're not North Carolinians. They get there and basketball becomes their social life. They're more impressed with what they think they contribute to the game as Krzyzewski's 'sixth man' than with what is actually happening on the court."

The truth is a little more gray. You'd know that if you spoke more to the local media outlets in North Carolina, whom Krzyzewski doesn't speak to except for league-mandated conference calls or if you spoke to Atlantic Coast Conference referees, who for years have endured Krzyzewski's often-profane and abusive verbal barrages. Funny how they aren't played up like they are for his current main rival, Maryland's Gary Williams, or Coach K's mentor, Texas Tech's Bob "I invented five curse words last week" Knight.

Duke lost in the first round last season to Virginia Commonwealth, and this narrow victory was yet another sign that the days of the Blue Devils being college basketball's pre-eminent men's program appear to be fading.

The first-year NBA coach, who at one point shouted, "Stop flopping!" at Dunleavy, hardly seemed convinced in the wake of the unimpressive win that he'd stumbled upon a long-term option.

One needs only to look at prestigious Duke University, a member of the aforementioned Atlantic Coast Conference, to see how a sparkling image can be tarnished by the pursuit of athletic glory. It seems that even the athletes at this respected academic institution receive significant special consideration for admission.

At Duke, the average SAT score for incoming freshmen is in the 1460range. This means that to be considered for admittance, a candidate would seemingly need to score at a similar level to that standard. Since a perfect score is 1600, this SAT score makes Duke University one of the more selective in the country.

Last year, Duke won this NCAA basketball tournament for the third time since 1991. Many saw this achievement as truly special, almost as if a Harvard or Yale had accomplished as much on the basketball court as they do traditionally in the classroom.

But recent research has shown that the members of the Duke basketball team do not approach the academic status of their collegiate peers. The basketball team's average SAT score of 960 falls far below the 1460 score mentioned earlier

"He was a different person when he came back. It was a sad thing," Donna Keane, Krzyzewki's long-time administrative assistant, said. "The years I worked for him, he was unbelievable to my family. He did so many things for us. It was such a disappointment to see that person fade away and see someone else in his body."

On Krzyzewski's first full day back, he scheduled a morning meeting with his staff. Keane joined Gaudet and Brey, Tom Amaker and Chuck Swenson... around the conference table. The boss walked in, sat down, and told them all they had all failed to uphold the standards he had established. He called them all replaceable, said only he was synonymous with Duke basketball and that they were starting all over again.

Coach K is a master psychologist, but the man is fierce

In a recent telephone conference call with reporters, Redick said he once embraced the role of villain -- backpedaling downcourt with his goose-necked arm held high, nodding his head, pounding his chest, talking trash.

Now, granted, Vitale is both legendary and unabashed in his love for Duke Basketball. It is therefore not surprising that at least one Duke player appeared on his list. But what is incredible is that the man would, in any way, suggest that Gerald Henderson "flew under the radar," or that Henderson was somehow short-changed in the publicity department during his freshman year.

After practice, Shavlik Randolph watches sports on TV in the den as he soaks his feet in soothing warm water and Epsom salts. His mother, Kim Randolph, serves Shavlik and his dad, Kenny, their dinner on trays; for Shav, she cuts his steak, prepares his baked potato and pours his two glass of milk.

As Shawn Marion attempted a layup, Memphis' Dahntay Jones pushed him to the ground. An angry Marion landed hard and had to be restrained from going after Jones by teammate Steven Hunter.

Jones, who was called for a flagrant foul, later apologized to Marion, but the Suns were still steaming about the hit after the game.

'It was a dirty foul,' Hunter said. 'He (Marion) was hot, but I wasn't going to let him do anything stupid.'

Suns coach Mike D'Antoni, hearing fans heckling him, turned around and shouted, 'That's not right. That's not basketball.'

No one was angrier than Quentin Richardson, who said he wanted to '(expletive deleted) Jones up.'

'If it had been in the regular season, he would have been in the first row with me on top of him,' Richardson said. 'But we had better things to do than get into it.'

J.J. Redick no longer is the go-to guy. He's not even the guy behind the guy, or the guy behind him.

"I'm the 14th guy on this team, 15th guy," the Orlando Magic rookie said after his career-best NBA night - nine points on 2-of-3 shooting.

That would have been a subpar first half for Redick about this time last year, when he averaged 27 points a game at Duke on his way to becoming a repeat All-American and Associated Press Player of the Year.

Once an immensely popular and reviled (in visiting arenas) figure, Redick now endures a new phenomenon: irrelevance.

Over the years, countless players and coaches have found themselves, like Archey, on the receiving end for nothing more than their appearance.

In the seven seasons since Duke's last national title (2001), college basketball's most publicized program has almost annually seen its weaknesses exposed at the worst possible time: the end.

In reviewing important data from those seasons, one discovers an undeniable trend. Mike Krzyzewski's teams are not nearly as talented as they once were, yet the combination of a deceptively unchallenging schedule and accompanying rise up the polls leads to the same, lofty expectations as always.

These Blue Devils, however, rarely achieve them.

Duke delivers the goods. It's the 007 thumb scanner that grants access to Krzyzewski's campus office. It's floor-slapping Steve Wojciechowski winning national defensive player of the year

Perhaps the funniest thing was one student dressed up in Carolina gear from head to toe and pretended to be Sean May. He had signs that he kept on rotating. They said things like 'feed me,' 'I ate matt doherty,' 'hug me, I'm cuddly' and so forth. Before the game started he stood in front of all the crazies with a sign that said 'Carolina Training' then a boy came out with a fishing rod with a cheeseburger box attached to it. The duke student chased the box as if he were a wild animal. The crowed went nuts. At another point he stuffed his face with cotton candy which also amused the crazies

It was printed in newspapers. It was said on television. Even Dick Vitale mentioned it during an ESPN game.

The word around the Duke campus was that the father of power forward Carlos Boozer Jr. once played at Maryland with John Lucas. But when Lucas, a Terp from 1972-76, was asked about it last week, he drew a blank.

``He didn't play at Maryland when I was there,'' Lucas said of Carlos Boozer Sr.

"As far as the Cameron Crazies are concerned, I think they're a little bit overrated,'' Auriemma said. "I don't think the Cameron Crazies would be as effective if the Duke basketball players weren't as good.''

"The Cameron Crazies are worth about 20 points. There's no way we can win this game,'' the coach added in jest.

It's hard to believe that it took Krzyzewski a weekend of soul-searching to see all this. He could have listened to the Lakers' offer, then quietly and politely declined the same day. But then he wouldn't have been in the headlines for the entire weekend, with each speculative story raising his profile even more, not to mention his public speaking fees and his endorsement possibilities. It wouldn't be surprising if he parlayed the Lakers' interest into a few more perks from the Duke administration. Stretching things out was a great career move. All in all, Coach K played this situation out as masterfully as any game he's ever coached.

In all fairness, there should be an asterisk beside Randolph's name, because he isn't considering leaving Duke for another school but perhaps for a paycheck where maybe his basketball skills will become more consistent and people won't have to wait so long for him to develop.

When the word that Randolph, the 6-10 240-pound senior-to-be at Duke, was making himself available for the June 28 NBA draft, I didn't know whether to laugh or be happy for Iron Dukes everywhere.

The official wording from Duke said "Randolph, a three-year letter winner, declared himself eligible for the NBA draft."

Note the two key words -- "letter winner."

Heck, the last kid on the end of everybody's bench -- that heart-and-soul kid who shows up early to every practice and never is late for a team bus -- gets a letter.

It didn't say Shavlik Randolph, from Raleigh's Broughton High School -- the same school where Pete Maravich practiced tricks with a basketball -- was Duke's leading scorer for three years. Or Duke's leading rebounder, or leader of charges taken, or leader of anything.

For heaven sakes, it said "letter winner.

The scholars took aim at a few Duke fans. Their handmade signs took aim at All-America J.J. Redick ("Hey J.J., Write Me a Poem, Pansy") and the broader Blue Devils culture ("We Support Duke Football").

Coach K's long line of disciples who have become head coaches, and it hasn't been pretty -- just ask Michigan.

Are we reaching here? Not quite. You expect more out of the best. Coach K is the Lombardi of his sport. His aforementioned assistants are working on Phil Bengston status. Together they've been to 13 NCAA Tournaments in 53 seasons. Krzyzewksi has been to 21 by himself.

Is it unfair to expect more than a .540 combined winning percentage from six current/former coaches who have sat at the elbow of The Great One-ski?

Not if that Duke franchise is going to remain untarnished, or at least untaunted by the Heels down the street. Hey, not everybody can have Dean Smith's coaching prodigy.

If you're scoring at home, I believe the Magic now have 11 shooting guards on their roster, and Redick is No. 10 -- one spot behind Nick Anderson, who retired six years ago.
Yet when Smith is asked what the acquisitions of Lee and Pietrus mean for Redick's future in Orlando, he actually replies: "Nothing. . . . I still think the kid can play for us. I feel no differently about him today than I felt yesterday and the day before. I feel he can be a very good backup 2-guard for us."
A backup 2-guard?
That's like an editor telling a young sportswriter, "Kid, if you work really hard, you might someday end up doing the bowling roundup for us."

The early focus of the story, written by former Sports Illustrated writer Curry Kirkpatrick, is that Blue Devil basketball coach Mike Krzyzewski had a big disagreement with Avery and his mother, Terri Simonton, in April before Avery announced he was leaving.

Reportedly, Krzyzewski used an expletive to tell Simonton that her son was going to mess up his program. She said Krzyzewski was 'rude, personal.'

'Coach K is selfish,' Simonton told ESPN The Magazine. 'He talks about a so-called close Duke family. But he just wants to protect his program. He lied to us about where William would go in the draft. Late in the first round? Maybe even second round? Come on. Even I could pick up the papers and read he was going earlier than that.'

Duke's famed student-fans, the Cameron Crazies, routinely distribute pre-game cheat sheets on the other team -- suggested chants, areas to ridicule, etc. It destroys the idea that thousands of students could spontaneously think up such brilliant cheers, but that's not the point.

In 2002, ESPN reported that recruit Sean Dockery, now a sophomore, did not meet NCAA minimum requirements with grades and test scores through his junior year in high school.

In a special on college athletics and academics that questioned the practice of athletes being herded into certain majors, ESPN also highlighted the number of Duke players who have majored in sociology.

In both cases, Krzyzewski publicly objected to the tone and accuracy of the reports.

Wolf faces federal charges, and yet the people who put Clemons and Wolf together are allowed to hire men like Hilliard and claim they didn't know anything.

'In this case, Quin Snyder saying he didn't know is absolute garbage,'Ridpath charges. "That just shows how silly the infractions process is. They'll sanction a Neuheisel or a Jerry Tarkanian if they have to, but if they can, they'll go after a scapegoat because it makes life easier.'

Duke basketball had acquired, along with the heady joys of national championships, a dangerous and destructive tradition called bench burning. After a big win, students dragged the wooden benches outside their dorms into a big bonfire in the middle of Clocktower Quadrangle and got as drunk as possible to heighten the effect. There were serious burns from students falling or being pushed into the fire. There were broken bones from benches dropping on legs and arms. Police officers were hit in the head with bottles.

Guy Who Should Have Come Out Last Year: Josh McRoberts — Actually, he should have come out straight from high school and he would have been a lottery pick. Instead, teams saw terrible body language and a player who didn't want the ball when the game was on the line.

vSteve Wojciechowski, rushing across the court after Duke's 1998 victory over North Carolina, looking for his coach. The coach catching his player's eyes and finding him through a rush of fans streaming on the court to celebrate. Ultimately, the two embrace with tears running down their cheeks, in celebration of the accomplishment and the relationship between coach and player.

This isn't a promo for a Lifetime channel movie of the week. It's a direct quote from the Duke media guide ... and a perfect example of why so many fans love to hate Duke

But rooting against Mike Krzyzewski is also unavoidable. Maybe I'm not speaking for Duke fans -- which means graduates of Duke, parents of graduates of Duke, and front-running ghouls who also root for the Yankees, Steelers and Wal-Mart -- but for everyone else, I'm speaking for you. It's OK.

I know that Duhon learned to slap the floor from Wojo.

Maryland's excitable Gary Williams could get kicked out four or five times and not do anything half as bad as Krzyzewski, who had already gotten one technical foul in the game.

Since Krzyzewski, for all intents and purposes, had dematerialized, Natili perhaps thought he was being insulted by one of those zany "Cameron Crazies." You know, the students majoring in "Elitist, Quasi-Ivy League Snot-Nosing."

Either that, or he looked the other way. So did ESPN broadcasters Mike Patrick and Dick Vitale. This is a tradition in sportscasting, dating back at least to the night when Keith Jackson missed Woody Hayes punching the Clemson.

Shavlik Randolph would have been better off at N.C. State. At this point in the Duke junior's frustrating college basketball career, no one could possibly argue with that assertion.

Then again, Randolph would have been better off at North Carolina. Or Wake Forest. Or Clemson, Miami or South Dakota State.

Given Randolph's seemingly endless run of bad fortune and fruitless performances in Durham, it's difficult not to picture him as being better off if he were somewhere else.

Duke's Cameron Crazies are known for toeing the line with their taunts to opposing players.

Two years ago, they waved their keys at UCLA players who were driving cars rumored to be purchased for them by alumni. That same year, they wore safety goggles to taunt a handful of Tar Heels afflicted with pink eye and brandished tissues after Carolina guard Shammond Williams cried during a timeout. Rumor has it that during the Jordan era at UNC, they even threw tongue depressors onto the court to make fun of Michael's penchant for sticking his tongue out.

In four years as Missouri's head coach, Snyder and his staff have committed 16 secondary NCAA infractions. They range from illegal contact with a possible transfer to flying a recruit's parents to Columbia on a charter flight.

Snyder always defends the actions with a 'we didn't know it was a violation' response or a 'everybody else does it' reply. Did Mike Krzyzewski teach Snyder that tactic at Duke when he was a player and later an assistant coach? That's doubtful.

The fire marshals in Durham have said that Duke fans, known as 'Cameron Craziesc for their lack of both manners and common decency, can no longer stand on the floor of their home arena.

The fire marshals say it's a safety issue, but the patron saint of Duke basketball - you know, the guy who does those commercials about honesty and fairness - says it's a blatant effort to keep his fans from affecting the outcome of the game. Translated, that means he's concerned that the boorish insults and loutish behavior of the student body won't intimidate the opposition as effectively as it historically has.

At the end of the day, it seems, Duke is not much different from any other modern factory of higher leaping. "We're about relationship, not winning," Krzyzewski had the nerve to say after his massively favored team did not win the national title last spring. But try selling that to the expatriate Dookies now licking their wounds in Minneapolis, Orlando, Salt Lake City and other relationship rehab centers.

Does ridiculing the other team show team spirit? I doubt it.

Every home crowd loves to win, but the actions at Cameron go beyond anything I've seen elsewhere. They smack of the elitism that is part and parcel of the Duke campus mentality. Duke prides itself on being a high-class institution, and, in many quarters, bills itself as the "Harvard of the South." Yet, go to Harvard, view its institutions and the way its students and fans interact with others, and you'll see they bear no similarity to Duke whatsoever.

"I think we arouse passion," Krzyzewski said. "We're in a different world. I'm not sure we're in a world many people have been on, we just have to learn how to manage it."

Last year, I sat behind the Duke bench during the Blue Devils' Final Four semifinal game with Connecticut, and what I witnessed were 40 of the most vile, profane minutes I've ever spent (with the exception of multiple viewings of "Scarface.") Krzyzewski himself was an unfiltered Chris Rock concert for much of the day, but one of his assistants was worse. During one timeout, with the starters sitting on the bench, gulping Gatorade, this was his idea of "coaching" them:

"You're as bleep, and you're a bleep, and you're a bleeping bleep-bleeper of a bleeper-bleeper. You bleepers don't bleeping deserve to wear the bleeping colors of Duke University! Bleep! Are you bleeping bleeping me? Bleep all of you. Get out of my bleeping faces."

At which point, he was replaced by Krzyzewski, whose assessment was far more succinct: "You bleeping make me bleeping sick."

Duke-haters have long claimed that the Blue Devils enjoy an advantage with the refs. I believe the exact quote is: "Cripes, they get all the calls!!!"

Duke apologists scoff at the claim, but it's harder than ever to dispute it after last night's farce at Boston College, where Duke shot 37 free throws to BC's 13. 37-13!

And B.C. was the home team!

That Duke won by 2 points shouldn't fool anyone. With even a smidgen of better reffing, BC would have won the game. But why should anyone think that Duke will ever stop getting the calls?

Duke, for all the hoopla, isn't immune to the various ills plaguing college athletics- from compromised academic standards in admissions to student-athletes misbehaving once they are admitted.

'Duhon's always saying that everyone's playing for second place, well I guess now he's that guy.'

I remember a TV timeout in a big game a few years ago, a game your team was losing at the time. I remember being behind the Duke bench to hear your right-hand man, Johnny Dawkins, drop screaming F-bombs into players' faces and obscenely impugn the masculinity of every starter in the huddle. Your face indicated that you had no problem with it, perhaps even encouraged it.

Dog-cussing the players within earshot of the stands clearly won't play in the NBA, where the chain of command works a little differently than at your alma mater, West Point.

Mike Krzyzewski. Dick Vitale, Jay Bilas, Billy Packer and all the stooges for the Duke men's basketball coach could not cover up his classless display at the end of the Blue Devils' choke against UConn in the NCAA semifinals.

He blamed the refs for the loss, then followed with the charade of being interested in coaching the L.A. Lakers in order to have the Duke administration prove again how much it loves him.

Duke fans adore Laettner - he was the epitome of toughness and clutch play at Duke. Generally speaking, he was given a pass on foolish behavior. We don't mean that he took advantage of his status in the way many athletes do, but he was often contentious and difficult to deal with. We've heard students who were at Duke at the same time who simultaneously revered his basketball ability and deplored his social behavior. Some of his teammates said the same thing

Hill said his alma mater isn't exactly known for its thuggery. "Are you kidding? I know 'G' [Henderson]. He isn't like that," Hill said. "Gerald played on his high school golf team. He played up to his sophomore year. Come on, he's a golfer."

Krzyzewski is the problem, but he's also the fix.

This has to be a collaborative effort, solving the officiating issues that taint Duke games. And Duke games have definitely become tainted. Along with J.J. Redick's jumper, the impact of officiating is a major storyline whenever Duke plays. And that, people, is terrible for the game.

And that, people, is Krzyzewski's fault. Watch him from start to finish. Watch him work the officials. Watch him spew and curse and sneer. It's ugly.

Matta was asked over and over about how Xavier forward Anthony Myles, who was pounding Duke on the blocks, could pick up four fouls in a six-minute stretch early in the second half, including two fouls in just six seconds. For conspiracy theorists, four of the calls were by Mike Kitts, who works many ACC games.

That's bound to continue now that Brodhead has made it evident just how indebted he is to Krzyzewski. (After all, if Krzyzewski had left, no matter what else Brodhead accomplished at Duke he'd always be known as "the president who lost Coach K.") Indeed, a cynical person might be tempted to think that was exactly what Krzyzewski intended by his flirtation with the Lakers. Perhaps Krzyzewski never seriously considered leaving Duke but, faced with Brodhead's arrival, seized on the Lakers' offer as an opportunity to show his new boss who's really in charge

The person to blame is... oooh boy this is hard to say... Mike Krzyzewski (covering my head for fear of lightning bolts striking me). We had a great opportunity this year. We had a great team. We were one game from being the top-ranked team in the country, and it all fell apart. All those high school All-Americans, all that talent, and we weren't even the top private school in North Carolina (that'd be Davidson). That blame has to be placed on the man in charge.

And this is what our basketball program has come to: me, a Blue Devil for life, publicly skewering a man I've idolized since my youth.

Back to Coach K. He was offered $40 million over five years to coach the Los Angeles Lakers. After 'soul searching,'he turned down the millions and chose to remain at Duke. Right?

Not quite. While haggling over his 'decision,' Duke officials agreed to build the practice facility Coach K wanted. Of course, they said it didn't matter if Coach K was coming back or not.

What's really embarrassing about Gerald Henderson's chop to Tyler Hansbrough's nose is how little losing it takes to bring out the spoiled, whiny, rich (itch) in the Duke basketball program.

Duke athletes are despised because of the holier-than-thou, do-no-wrong attitude of Coach K. He's the symbol, the tone-setter. He's the most powerful man at the university and one of the most powerful men in the state.

He plucks a large percentage of his players from nuclear, stable families. He gives off the air that he turns his nose up at the rest of college basketball, the programs and the coaches who try to win championships while working with the poor and dysfunctional.

You thought this was the sainted Mike Krzyzewski (pronounced ARRO-GANT PHONY), who runs the cleanest program in America, whose basketball players are also Nobel laureates who spend their spare time reading to the blind and turning water into wine (and not just wine, but Chardonay). Well then you've spent too much time listening to the national media, which props up and adores Duke, led by ESPN and Dick Vitale, who often has to wear a slobber bucket around his neck when calling Blue Devils games.

Now, you often hear about all the wonderful Duke student-athletes, like Shane Battier and Christian Laettner, the latter of whom of course never heard of marijuana until he got to the NBA. But you never hear about what many Blue Devils players major in, sociology, which a few years ago the Duke student newspaper (the student newspaper!) exposed as having several fairly fraudulent gimme courses.

"There are a lot of skeptics on the team. Just bad stuff. We need an attitude adjustment. But none of these kids has ever won anything, so they don't know about that. There's not a winner on our team. Name me a winner on our team besides me"

For my part, I hate to see you go. I always pulled for you when you were out on K's sacred court. I was even quoted in an article as begging a referee to take it easy on you. We'll miss your rare ability to pick up fouls like a dog picks up fleas, and your priceless face when you went rigid to take a charge but never got the call. Enjoy the NBA, Shav, and let us know how that guaranteed stardom works out for you.

"It's been said for a while that [the atmosphere has] been down," said Andrew Eimer, a former Crazy from the class of 2003, in a phone interview before the game. "It happens to be a dorkier part of the student population. You realize it more when you're out of school."

You heard that right. The Crazies are now considered nerdy, even by Duke standards

When he left Slidell to go to North Carolina in June, Harper left, too, at Chris' request. She got a job and an apartment in Durham, not so she could dote on Chris but just to be near him for support. The first time Duhon did his own laundry, Harper let him use the washing machine at her apartment. She showed him how to separate clothes, set the machine and do the folding.

When he was finished, Duhon said, "Thanks, Mama."

In the short term, the answer is as clear as high-grade Amoco. That's the extremely short term, as in Monday; the Blue Devils are so confident of winning the NCAA men's basketball tournament that they requested their bonfire permit in October.

Furthermore, the students are so confident of beating Michigan State in the semifinals Saturday that the subject doesn't come up. The only discussions center on who their team will splatter in the final game. In the student bookstore this week, amid stacks of Final Four T-shirts, a young man had a question for a clerk: "When will you start selling the championship shirts?"

A recent national champion, months after winning that title, had on its roster a center who was kicked off his high school team after being investigated for sexual assault. That team also had a shooting guard who would be investigated for marijuana possession, a point guard cited for underage drinking, a backup point guard who confronted an opposing coach during a game and a backup center accused of beating up his girlfriend. Plus it had (gasp) a transfer from another school.

The national champion in question? Duke, 2001.

Redick -- talking like a Dukie still true to his school -- said it looked as if "Carolina was trying to run up the score" and "if his [Hansbrough's] nose didn't start bleeding it wouldn't be a big deal.

Without his K-ness, Duke will revert to run-of-the-mill good: A powerhouse program, to be sure, but no longer the contemptuous evil empire of college hoops, the irritating stand-in for every overachieving valedictorian know-it-all who ran for student body president. Stripped of juggernaut status, the Blue Devils will instead be, well, a lot like rival North Carolina -- a worrisome development, same as the rise of William Hung, but wholly unworthy of all-consuming anathema. Easy and safe to ignore.

Erik Meek-ish, if you will.

Who do we blame? Daniel Ewing for coughing up the ball in the face of the UNC press? J.J. Redick for missing that game-winning shot? Shavlik Randolph for fouling out with three minutes left to play? The refs?

No, this choke was a team effort, so the blame must fall squarely on the shoulders of one man.

Mike Krzyzewski.

The Duke family tree is not a mighty oak. In seven seasons as head coach at Seton Hall and now Michigan, Tommy Amaker has made one NCAA Tournament appearance and has a career winning percentage of .555. Quin Snyder has made four NCAA trips at Missouri, but he also has been named in 17 violations of NCAA by-laws in the organization's investigation of the Tigers program.

That intensity spilled into the stands as Krzyzewski, livid when he heard a Carolina fan yell to him on his way off the court at the end of the half, "You've got (official Larry) Rose in your pocket," had security eject the fan from the arena.

The fan's name: Scott Williams, Roy Williams' son.

For all his newfound awareness that he is a public figure at 18, Shavlik won't give up one thing: his fart machine.

Battier drew offensive fouls and spoke articulately. Krzyzewski and Dick Vitale told everyone how special this was, and they won a national title in 2001. Krzyzewski wrote books on leadership.

It was enough to make everyone sick. A national Duke love-in nearly ensued.

I was looking for people who were dependable and organized--the general characteristics of good line monitors

There's no way I could let a guy with a 4.5 GPA [with] acne and bad breath decide the way I'm going to play on the court

Watch any Duke game on television and listen to the announcers praise the Blue Devils for their "intelligence" and "class".

Just listen to this statement and think about it for a moment.

"It's unfortunate that that kid got hurt," Krzyzewski said.

That kid? That kid has a name.

Tyler Hansbrough.

He's an All-American, twice All-ACC player, admirable for his ability to take the beatings and maintain his composure. He's been a credit to his school and his conference.

Yet the best K can do is call him "that kid."

"I was amazed with his family -- his mom and dad are just terrific people -- and how un-city-like Sean is," said Krzyzewski, who grew up on Chicago's north side. "You think of a kid from the inner city, well Sean is probably the sweetest kid in the whole world.

However, in 1995, a tired Coach K left after an embarrassing loss to Clemson and watched from afar as his mediocre Blue Devils finished the season with 13 wins and 18 losses. Although those results were rightly put on Coach K's record, he and the university quickly petitioned the NCAA to remove them. Bowing out to its most popular and powerful coach, the NCAA did just that.

Would a "leader of men," a self-proclaimed "idol of responsibility," really hand over his own losses to an assistant who was put in a harsh position? But, passing along responsibility is one of K's most prominent abilities.

You create your own website for Tent No. 6, with a minute-by-minute schedule so that you don't get booted to the waitlist by Donald and his nerd battalion, donning those LINE MONITOR windbreakers that you would just kill for. You'd even trade it for your parka, which you're going to need tonight in that muddy pit in the middle of campus because you'd rather go to the Student Health Center for mild pneumonia when your shift's over in the morning than miss your chance to get a super cool orange wrist band for the UVa game.

According to sources other than ESPN, Duke's coach Mike Krzyzewski slammed a chair to the floor that bears his name during the first half of this weekend's game against Virginia. Krzyzewski was apparently upset with the play of freshman point guard Greg Paulus, and he vented his frustration by breaking a nearby chair.

Referees did not address the matter, and Mike Patrick of ESPN seemed unhappy that he had to comment on it at all -- even though, according to the Charlotte Observer, the attack on the chair was loud enough to turn heads throughout the crowd. The main topic of conversation at Cameron throughout the halftime period was, in fact, Coach K's behavior.

When he looks into your eyes, he's almost angelic

I believe the students lack ingenuity because tenting has largely become a freshman phenomenon. I am not trashing freshmen-we were all freshmen once-but us older folks are just a little more clever.

Tenters complain left and right about spending time in K-ville, but I have the perfect solution: while in your tent, put down the books for a little and brainstorm for some cool, ORIGINAL cheers.

To say the Duke coach was on the edge would be true. But on the edge of what? An ejection? A nervous breakdown? A spontaneous combustion?

He did see the end of the 76-68 loss, and a lot of people inside Cameron Indoor Asylum didn't. In the end, the fans turned on their own, or at least those who tried to escape the bitter finish.

They don't have those precious group-hug huddles after every foul in the NBA. (Unless they're plotting a way to get the coach fired by the next TV timeout. Or, to be Laker-specific, plotting how to dynamite the ball out of Kobe's hands.)

Or do you not think the snarly, cussin', ref-baiting Coach K and his ad-nauseum American Express ads ("I don't look at myself as a basketball coach, I look at myself as a leader who happens to coach basketball") might rub some folks the wrong way?

Duke and Krzyzewski do a lot right, but they also do some things to encourage backlash. Resentment maybe began when Christian Laettner planted his foot on the chest of a Kentucky player in 1992. It continued when Gerald Henderson blatantly clubbed UNC's Tyler Hansbrough in the waning seconds last March - after which Krzyzewski implied Hansbrough shouldn't have still been in the game anyhow.

Meanwhile, a reasonable amount of attitude mixes with decades of student-section taunts and close-quarters agitation directed at visiting players. Krzyzewski didn't mention those issues while venting to reporters.

"Did you know I spoke at the Fuqua graduation?" Krzyzewski asked instead, referring to Duke's business school. "I'm not sure four people know that. Maybe we should've made a big deal of it."

Maybe not.

At 11:20 p.m., five minutes after Duke had blown a 10-point second-half lead and lost to UNC, the Cameron Crazies filed out of the building. There were no visible tears or emotional wringing over the transgressions of the past 140 minutes; Instead, the dominant conversation was of which bar to now frequent.

Duke has about 6,200 undergraduate students, who can get in free.Television viewers often can't tell that some seats are empty because the gaps are in the corners of the bleachers and out of view.

But Duke has noticed, and the drop has concerned coach Mike Krzyzewski, who has sought to build a tight bond with students in his 28 seasons as head coach.

Mike Krzyzewski, appearing on tonight's ESPN SportsCenter's "50 States in 50 Days" tour in North Carolina, had this to say about former Duke player (and assistant coach) turned ESPN analyst Jay Bilas:

"Yeah, I do remember Jay Bilas, but I get fixated on his shorts and how he filled them so... Anyway, he filled them."

Still, Krzyzewski has had to make sacrifices. As a special assistant to Duke's president, Richard Brodhead, he had to cut back on last-minute meetings with visitors and other special duties he performs. Krzyzewski discussed the job with Brodhead and athletic director Joe Alleva, and both supported the move.

Krzyzewski also has cut back on his speaking engagements, though the requests have only increased during his U.S. tenure.

"Financially, that knocks off a chunk," he said, "but timewise I had to do that.

Do you have any idea how the Crazies have a positive effect on the team? Well, I'll tell you. It means so much that Coach K, in his speech Tuesday night, said that the Carolina game is for the Crazies, that he was coaching for us. Pure and simple, we are envied by every other collegiate program in the country and that's something to be proud of.

Three seconds later, I was on the air asking how Redick would cope with a grueling 82-game regular season schedule in the pros, after fading down the stretch all four years in college. Or how, after he was harassed into an embarrassing 3-for-18 performance by LSU's Garrett Temple, Redick would deal with NBA shooting guards like, say, Kobe Bryant or Dwayne Wade.

(By the way, in the wake of Redick's DWI arrest, everyone is making the obligatory "sure, he took 18 shots before he got behind the wheel -- but only three went down" joke. Of course, I would never be so crass as to repeat that line. Ahem.)

The mere mention of Duke prompts television analysts (and the Blue Devils are on TV all the time) like the voluble Dickie V. to ascend to Mount Everest heights of hyperbole and Billy Packer to get all teary-eyed in verbal veneration.

(My editors don't give me enough space to fully explain the hypocrisy of an institution that shuts down its message boards when a few too many people speak poorly of Duke players-because they are just students and kids after all!-yet think it's OK to use an exclamation point to punctuate their headline about a Wake Forest recruit who has been arrested for allegedly shooting a woman with a BB gun.)

They are generally well spoken, clean-cut, polite to a fault, studious basketball practitioners, led by a Hall of Fame coach who calls voting-age players, 'my kids.'

You'd let most of them baby-sit your kids.

The Cameron Crazies have taken a lot of crap in recent years. To be honest, they deserve it.

I am not an expert on the history of the Cameron Crazies. Despite what every single Duke graduate I have ever spoken with about the subject has told me, I can't tell you that the Crazies of the past were so much better than they are now, because I wasn't there.

What I can tell you is this-the Cameron Crazies of the last three seasons have been totally lame. Lamer than that kid who shows off his knowledge in huge lectures, and even lamer than 98 Degrees.

I went to almost every game freshman year, but since then my Cameron attendance has been rare to quite rare. The cheers were downright unoriginal, and I simply felt like I was losing I.Q. points by the minute.

When you've just lost your two best teenage players, this sort of free publicity can be very beneficial on the recruiting trail. And when your No. 1 rival (UNC) has recently backed up a Brinks truck to land the coach of its dreams, a little public flirting with the Lakers is the easiest way to modify your "lifetime" contract, the one Krzyzewski signed in 2001.

"We were able to do a few things for Mike in his contract," Alleva sheepishly acknowledged on Monday.

Duke's pursuit of Raleigh's John Wall, a self-proclaimed "one-and-done" basketball recruit, illustrates both a shift in Mike Krzyzewski's recruiting philosophy and just how desperate the situation is for Duke.

In the aftermath of the 2004 Final Four, losing Luol Deng after one season and Shaun Livingston before he got to campus, Coach K made a conscious decision to avoid one-year college players.

ACC message boards are full of fans spewing millions of reasons to hate Redick. They range from his supposed arrogance to anger that more wasn't made of the suspicion he smoked marijuana in a dormitory in 2003. Many refer to the dreadful poetry he read aloud in an interview last season. And none of this is helped by the multitude of broadcasters who credit him for everything from his work ethic to the flawless form with which he ties his shoes. It seems like only Billy Packer doesn't rush to slobber all over the kid.

For those of you not familiar with the DBR, stop reading now--finding out about this crazed website where Duke fans can idolize their team, whine on the message board and bash UNC 24 hours a day seven days a week, will only corrupt your mind.

The day before the game, North Carolina coach Roy Williams assured that not too much attention would be paid to the students.

"It's usually a lot worse than you thought or nowhere near what you thought," Williams said. "We're going to spend more time trying to guard the screen on the ball than worry about people with painted faces.

Duhon's ''disappointment'' in being benched by coach Scott Skiles for Game 3 of the conference semifinals against the Detroit Pistons -- after he missed a film session the same week -- matches the disappointment of team officials in Duhon's penchant for partying over the years.

Skiles is said to be as tired of that as Duhon apparently was when he ''overslept'' and missed a practice on New Year's Eve weekend. If that's news to Duhon, it makes two wake-up calls he has missed.

It hasn't gone unnoticed that the three-year veteran is as recognizable at hot spots such as Ontourage and Rockit Bar as he is at the Berto Center, or that his name is as much a staple of bold-type gossip columns as it is the sports section

"Like Wojo," I said. The name immediately sprang to mind. How could it not? Steve Wojciechowski stood in for every obnoxious, overachieving white point guard who ever played the game. In order to show the coach how psychotically into playing he was, Wojo was the kind of guy who ran to every huddle like Nutty Buddies were being handed out there by the Good Humor ice cream man. He was the sort of lead-footed guard who commentators like Dook Vitale were always saying made up for lack of native talent with hard work. Vitale and his media brethren shilled Wojciechowski right into being named National Defensive Player of the Year for 1998.

The get-together was held Jan. 15 after a late-afternoon practice in the school's 50-year-old arena, Cameron Indoor Stadium. Besides the 12-member basketball squad, several assistant coaches and the team trainer were on hand as Krzyzewski cursed and raised his voice while upbraiding the student-reporters for coverage that 'degrades my basketball team.'

Once he had spoken his mind, in comments that included scatological and anatomical references, and had given the largely mute reporters a chance to reply, the forthright Krzyzewski believed the matter was settled.

From a strategic standpoint, Krzyzewski and Calhoun spent as much time reacting to David Hall, Olandis Poole and Ted Hillary as they spent reacting to the other team. Calhoun's decision to bench Okafor with 16:05 left in the first half, and to leave him there until the second half even as Duke was turning a 15-4 deficit into a 36-26 lead, paid off because Okafor was around to dominate the second half.

Krzyzewski's decision to let Williams and Randolph play with two fouls, even with Okafor out, helped Duke build a double-figure lead but backfired late when both players fouled out. For Williams it was a merciful ending to a night in which he was thoroughly spooked by Connecticut's bevy of shot-blocking big men, who held him to a combined 1-for-9 shooting.

For every one of these success stories, there are two counterexamples, though. Turn on any Sixers game, and you can see Shavlik Randolph looking like a lost kid who still needs his mom to drive him to practice and cut his steak for him. When David Stern's marketing machine makes its own dairy brand targeted at teens, former ACC Player of the Year Chris Carrawell's career will be listed as "Missing" on the milk cartons.

What I found quite sickening was the fact that going to watch Duke basketball obviously has nothing to do anymore with watching an outstanding sporting event, but is an occasion to participate in a large-scale exercise in group hysteria and group identification by means of creating a common adversary-what Jamal Middlebrooks called "the forces of evil" and the "accursed pagan foe" on Monday.

This is all a complete farce intended to generate publicity for K and engender an outpouring of support from the fans. K will love telling high school recruits that the Lakers offered him tens of millions but he tued them down and the high schoolers should, too. Since he already has K Court and a lifetime contract, what more does K want from Alleva--naming rights to the school?

The newspaper report, from the New Orleans Times-Picayune, suggested the parents of two Duke players -- junior guard Chris Duhon and former center Carlos Boozer, now a rookie in the NBA -- received disproportionately high salaries from employers who happened to be Duke boosters. Both players' families moved to the Durham area when their sons reported to Duke.

It seems like a lovely situation, but it also looked needy, like a desperate attempt to build a monument around Krzyzewski while he still is alive, entombing him on the campus. Richard Broadhead, the new president of the university, added to the impression at Wednesday's news conference, gushing so effusively over Krzyzewski that a face-down encounter with a paper bag seemed imminent. It seems like a lovely situation, but it also looked needy, like a desperate attempt to build a monument around Krzyzewski while he still is alive, entombing him on the campus. Richard Broadhead, the new president of the university, added to the impression at Wednesday's news conference, gushing so effusively over Krzyzewski that a face-down encounter with a paper bag seemed imminent.

Many people have recently tried to solve the problem of poor student attendance at football games. Administrators have encouraged students to go to games through a number of initiatives, most recently by ending tailgates at kickoff. Others have offered suggestions too.

But if history can teach us anything, there's one thing that brings Duke fans to game--Winning.

Dick Vitale loves Duke, and he's not afraid to say it. Moments before Villanova played Duke in the Sweet 16 last week, Vitale made this loud statement on ESPN: "This game was won three years ago when Gerald Henderson picked Duke over Villanova."

Vitale rambled on about how the Blue Devils surely would win. Duke got dismantled 77-54 as Henderson shot 1-for-14 and scored seven points. Unfortunately, that shut up Vitale for about seven seconds.

Mike, you love all that rah-rah stuff -- the stuff that makes Duke everything that the NBA isn't. You built Duke's corny camaraderie -- the coaches love the players, who love the students, who worship you like some kind of ancient god. It's basketball set to the Barney theme song: I love you, you love me ... Annoying, but apt.

The cloying word that envelopes your program is "special." And it's true. Duke is smug, Duke is sanctimonious ... but Duke is special.

Krzyzewski paused as he stood in front on the scorer's table, with former coach Les Robinson and another member of the NCAA basketball committee seated just behind his bully pulpit.

'You killed us,' Krzyzewski screamed at Hillary. 'You killed us.'

Then, as the teams lined up for UConn free throws, Krzyzewski pointed down the sideline toward another ref, Olandis Poole. 'You killed us,' he hollered.

That's what this charade of a possible move to the L.A. Lakers was all about: a power play by Krzyzewski to remind Duke, college basketball (as in ESPN) and the ACC/NCAA (and their people in charge of officiating) how much all those entities need his visibility.

He got popped in the face earlier in the game and may eventually require a root canal to repair a tooth. When Henderson hammered him, a fracture in Hansbrough's nose was the least of what could have happened. What if he had hit the court head-first? He could have sustained a career-ending injury. He might have suffered a concussion.

Yet here is what Duke coach Mike Krzyzewski said the real travesty was: "The person who it is most unfortunate for is G. The main thing is for Gerald's reputation. He's not that kind of player. These kids don't have long careers, and you never want an incident to soil or taint someone's reputation."

For heaven's sake, you have to be kidding.

Duke played a pretty impressive game in many respects, not least of all Casey Sanders, whose last game was one of his better efforts at Duke. Never a scorer, Casey has always focused on rebounding and blocking shots, and he made a dramatic difference under the basket. Collison scored 33 points and had 19 rebounds, but might have had 40 had Sanders not been so strong on defense.

Duke is perceived as arrogant. But the reality is: Coach K doesn't let the Devils be cocky, talk trash or strut on the court. They are a throwback to the time when being humble still mattered in America.

The Blue Devils are the Yankees of collegiate basketball. Actually, Duke is worse in that Yankee fans typically have a solid understanding of baseball, while the Cameron Crazies are usually nerds with no athletic background who have decided to go watch basketball because it's the cool thing to do. Plus, it can't hurt their cause when ESPN.com, along with every other major sports media source, has had its face glued to the Devils' collective ass all year.

UNC beat Duke yesterday, but the story of the game was Gerald Henderson injuring Tyler Hansbrough late in the game with a cheap shot. Mike Krzyzewski -- stand-up guy that he is -- said after the game, -We'll take all responsibility, but ' and then proceeded to take no responsibility. That classy approach is from his book: "Leading With The Elbow: Coach K's Successful Strategies For Shirking Responsibility."

"When people are jealous, they're obviously going to give a negative image of you," Redick said.

Jealous? Or just perceptive?

We admire you because you taught us that five people together is a fist, while one person is just a finger.

With all the hype that perennially surrounds Duke's program -- the lofty rankings, the seemingly endless national television appearances (including 27 this regular season), the weekly on-air love-fest from Mike Patrick and Dick Vitale -- one might assume the Blue Devils to be college basketball's most dominant program.

Dig a little deeper, however, and take a closer look at the numbers. Since 2001, the Blue Devils have dominated all right -- in December and January.

In each of the past six seasons (2002-07), AP voters have dubbed Duke a top-five team late into the regular season, including a No. 1 ranking four of the six years. Only once, however, has Duke validated those lofty opinions come March, reaching one Final Four (2004) while failing to advance beyond the Sweet 16 in the others.

This despite entering the tournament as a No. 1 seed in four of the six years.

I like that the NCAA never sniffs around Cameron Indoor Stadium, aside from its investigation of ex-Blue Devil Corey Maggette's $2,000 in cash payments from club coach Myron Piggie. I dislike it that Duke's response was upraised palms as if, aside from Maggette's association with a known scumbag, how could Duke know anything like that might have happened?

Wine tries to keep the intensity of the Crazies at full-bore throughout a game. He prepares a cheat sheet of suggested cheers that are distributed to students entering the gym.

The current Crazies still drive opposing teams to distraction. Even so, many alumni yearn for the old days, when Duke students threw panties and condoms at an opposing player accused of a sexual assault, made "Can't" the middle name of Carolina's J.R. Reid, or rattled Washington's Detlef Schrempf with cries of "Fehlwurf! Fehlwurf!"_ "airball" in his native German.

Wine acknowledges that older Crazies sense a slippage in condescension, but he believes the current style befits a basketball program of platinum stature.

"We're not holding up mug shots or things like that," he said, "but we haven't lost our edge."

What you did hear last week from Krzyzewski, as his Duke team is now alternately the most loved and hated in the country, is whining. Last week he complained to writer (and Duke alum) John Feinstein that his players, ahem, "face a kind of hatred that college kids shouldn't face. It's one thing to root for your team to win, it's another thing to root for a favorite to lose. It's gone way beyond that with us." OK coach, examples? Please? There aren't any that cross the line. The Impervious One just has a thin skin, something the back surgery apparently didn't fix.

"Coach K is selfish," said Simonton, WILLIAM AVERY's mother. "He wants what's best for him. He says it's for the players. It's not."

A 19-year-old Ohio woman who accused three Midwest City basketball players of rape told a Columbus television station Wednesday that she won't ask prosecutors to pursue charges. But the woman's decision doesn't rule out the possibility of charges being filed. Police could still turn the evidence over to a grand jury for consideration...

..."Prosecuted or not, they know exactly what they did, and they have to live with that," she told the television station.

"I love when the crowd is on me," said Vasquez, who had 13 points, a career-high 12 assists and 9 rebounds. "They were trying to make me mad. They were talking about the president of Venezuela. I love it. It was so nice. I've got three more years, and it's going to be fun. They might be worried about me now."

"Coach does a really good job of letting the kids know they're the Sixth Man," says Scott Yakola, Duke's director of sports promotions. As for the coach's effect on the students, Yakola says, "He could take a dump on a plate and serve it to them, and they'd love it."

Krzyzewski has had enough success and adulation that he's now allowed to operate by a different set of rules. You need your thumb scanned to gain access to the elevator to his office (seriously). He's rarely available to the media during the regular season. And those quickie halftime sideline TV interviews? They're now the duty of the assistant coaches. Coach K is too big to be bothered.

Gerald Henderson is not a goon, but Mike Krzyzewski isn't above using one.

Two years ago, I had the pleasure of watching Duke and Wake Forest play at Cameron Indoor Stadium while not on deadline. Shelden Williams vs. Eric Williams, J.J. Redick vs. Chris Paul, muscle and elegance, lots of star power.

The Blue Devils started Patrick Davidson, a seldom-used walk-on. The Demon Deacons won the opening tip, Paul got the ball and Davidson grabbed him with both arms five seconds in, whistle, foul. If it had been five seconds from the final buzzer, the officials would have called it a flagrant. If it had occurred in an NFL secondary, Davidson would have gotten 15 yards.

Wake Forest coach Skip Prosser was brilliantly tongue-in-cheek afterward, saying Duke's players "do a good job of playing hard without fouling. We have to learn to do that better."

While you feel sort of bad for a guy such as Nene, who is in a contract year, or Hill, who has dealt with more injuries than any person should, you have to shake your head over someone such as Boozer.

He was considered a warrior back in his salad days, grubbing for rookie wages with the Cavaliers. Since he hit the $70 million jackpot in Utah, though, he keeps coming up mysteriously lame.

Since Oct. 8, Boozer has participated in half of a practice. He hasn't played in one game. His injury -- a "tweaked" left hamstring. He keeps saying it's not serious, as he misses practice after practice, game after game.

Get this: Boozer has not worn a Jazz uniform since Feb. 14, four days after owner Larry Miller questioned his effort, saying: "I don't know how tough he is."

I think he does now -- not very.

The athletics department must clean house as well. An exposed by ESPN's "Outside the Lines" identified a double standard where athletes tend to pursue the same major and courses, purportedly for their ease. This should be a genuine concern for an institution that strives to remain among top-10 universities, regardless of top-10 basketball polls. This is compounded by the secrecy that shrouds athletics admissions, as Duke seriously considers recruits who barely meet the minimum NCAA requirements for eligibility.

Your buddy comes by after class, a plastic bag in his hand from the Duck Shop on Ninth Street. He didn't have time to grab dinner on the way over; the blue and white body paints were far more important. Yes, whether this is the Valpo game or the Georgia Tech game just hours away from UNC, you streak by Donald, flashing your DukeCard and start jumping up and down, so you can maybe, just maybe, get on ESPN2 for three seconds at the TV timeout in the second half. Do you do this because you love the team, or because you simply have nothing better to do with your time? I'm afraid it's the latter, and, frankly, it's pathetic.

The Crazies have also been criticized for their lack of creativity, a characteristic that initially made them famous.

"Apathy, that's the attitude of the Cameron Crazies this year," sophomore Tom Parisi said. "The cheers have been poor to quite poor, definitely not the originality we are known for.... It is more of a social event now. People come out, they get to be on TV, have a nice time. It has become something you tell your grandkids about."

'It's so Laettner. He's supposed to be like this all-America, this glamour boy, Mr. GQ. If you know Laettner, it's such a Laettner move to do something like that.'

As for Lute Olson's claim that I am Dukie Vitale, not Dickie Vitale, I just laughed. I accept that comment as tongue-in-cheek

After joining forces with photographer extraordinaire John Lyon to snap the photo you see here, I walked back into Cameron. On the way--and I promise this is true--I actually walked by a guy in a Christian Laettner jersey who was practicing his floor slap. I am not making this up. I could not have made something like this up even if I wanted to. His line-mates were egging him on, advising him on how he could improve.

He spent several days pondering the offer, saying he was ''taking inventory'' of his career and life. Translated, the Lakers' interest came as a new president was arriving at Duke, and Krzyzewski clearly used the offer as leverage for a new practice facility and a commitment to his program.

Last night's national championship game between Arizona and Duke was controlled by the officials, who completely ruined an otherwise classic and tremendous game.

The hatred of Redick stretches across the country. In an e-mail, a fan from McLean, Va., wrote, "Redick's most unforgivable sin, besides worshipping a false idol in the statue-like Coach K, is subjecting the world to some of the most horrible poetry ever written, putting him in the same category as Jewel and Kevin Federline, both of which I'd rather see playing basketball."

Student attendance has been slipping over the past five years, and when the men's team finished 22-11 last year, more than half the home games were played before empty seats in the student sections.

"It was minimal at first, and then last year, it was a dramatic decrease," Bazzani said. "Last year, you could walk in 15 minutes after tipoff and still get great seats.

But something is amiss in Duke's recruiting techniques, mainly because none of Duke's staff members have been forced to understand the new recruiting landscape. Everyone responsible for recruiting attended Duke and returned to Durham after professional careers. Krzyzewski has said publicly that he doesn't like the NBA's mandate that players must go to college for at least one year, and it doesn't appear he's figured out how to recruit with that law in place. The players who committed or were expected to commit to Duke-Shaun Livingston comes to mind-never made it to campus, and despite making a full recruiting pitch, Duke missed on a high-profile one-and-dones in Brandan Wright and likely another in Kevin Love. After next year, you'll likely be able to add the nation's top recruit Greg Monroe, who spurned Duke for Georgetown, to that list. And just yesterday, the team lost out on targeted big man Greg Echenique, who unofficially committed to Rutgers.

Duke students like to call their school "the Harvard of the South." They like to call it that a lot. The student union bookstore sells T-shirts that say "Harvard, the Duke of the North," an idea borrowed from Stanford, Kalamazoo College and even Vanderbilt, the Harvard of the Slightly Less South.

Inside, though, they know: Had they been accepted into the Harvard of the North, they would be cheering for the Crimson, not the Blue Devils. Their season would be over. And they would not be burning stuff.

Consider this: The ACC office moderates the weekly teleconference that serves as Krzyzewski's only access, and it knows about Krzyzewski's no-interview policy. It allows him to take advantage of the relative lack of interest in Clemson and FSU basketball for additional time on the teleconference. The moderator sometimes will cut short Clemson's Larry Shyatt, who precedes Krzyzewski, then let the Duke coach run a little longer than he should, which cuts into Florida State's time. And you thought the only reason other league coaches resent Krzyzewski was because he keeps beating them?

We didn't realize that college rosters had been expanded to 10,000. Beyond that, the students will be as close to the court as possible, which is the first row of the seating area. If that means they won't be able to hit below the belt quite as well as they’re used to doing, that's not our problem. It shouldn't be Krzyzewski’s, either.

So, while most people wearing red, white and blue assume that Coach Genius and his Dream Team II will roll to a gold medal in Beijing, it's hardly a sure thing.

To be sure, the pressure will be on Coach K to win. As well it should be. Because although he's won three NCAA titles at Duke, only one of those has come in the last 16 years, and he's been doing a lot of losing lately.

Very few people want to hear that the emperor has no clothes.

Especially if those clothes bear the logo of the Duke University Blue Devils.

Regarding Redick, Duke officials are investigating his involvement in a complaint regarding marijuana Monday in a dorm room. According to Duke officials, a resident adviser called campus police on the suspicion that marijuana was being smoked in a dorm room.

Police did not find marijuana in the room, but they did find a homemade bong and detected a marijuana-like smell, officials said. No arrests were made, and the case was referred to the Duke judicial affairs board.

Duke fans begged for a foul. Coach Krzyzewski called foul. "You killed us!" Krzyzewski yelled at the refs. "You killed us!"

"J.J. made a great play, I thought," Krzyzewski said after the game. "You're either trying to score or you're trying to get fouled or both. We didn't get any. And that was the game right there."

Speaking of which: Duke bashers consider ESPN the team's house organ. Vitale says don't shoot the messenger.

"If I were doing a telecast with Duke, how could I not sing their praises?" he said. "Look at the numbers. How can you not be positive?"

In pregame introductions, he was booed twice as loudly as his teammates -- worse even than Sean Dockery, whose remarkable game-winning shot kept the Hokies from an upset win at Duke eight weeks ago.

The fans also mustered a brief "J.J. sucks!" chant in the second half after he was the beneficiary of a foul call they deemed dubious...

Look, Duke is the No. 1 basketball program in America, bar none. Most of what it does is right, admirable and to be lauded. But it's not the only winning program in America doing things right and deserving of such recognition. And right now, with a whiny, sniveling coach, Duke is the least deserving of a fourth national championship.

The reality is that Duke isn't all that good. In large part because their longtime coach, the legendary Mike Krzyzewski, suddenly seems to be having as much trouble winning games as most people do spelling his name.

If ever a man is resting on his laurels, it's Coach K

There's only one problem with all this Dukophilia. It's absolute bunk.

Even though the Cavaliers appear playoff bound and Boozer has had a tough season with last-place Utah - owner Larry Miller singled him out for not playing hard every night - grudges die hard in Cleveland.

"They (fans) aren't going to move on," Cavaliers coach Paul Silas said.

Two fans, Tim Parnin and Brian Kirby, vented their frustration through the Web site www.carlosloozer.com and planned a pre-game "Loozerpalooza" party Tuesday night complete with Boozer pinatas.

"What a coincidence," Parnin said sarcastically of Boozer not making the trip to Cleveland.

Krzyzewski was not there. He regularly declines to participate in events that promote the sport that made him a multimillionaire, got him a lucrative shoe endorsement deal and gave him a forum to become one of college athletics' most recognizable spokesmen. At this point in his career, he turns down TV interviews, radio interviews, print interviews, sideline interviews and the rest.

As Redick runs back down the floor, the cocky sharp-shooter nods his head, exuding the "Duke mentality," which I define as their notion that "We're better than you, and Coach K has molded us into great players and quality human beings while running the perfect college basketball program."

Duke is the toughest football-coaching job in the ACC. It remains a yearly challenge to achieve a non-losing season. The fact Ted Roof's team is 0-3 means only that preseason expectations are so far intact

The four teams from North Carolina have won it 43 times. Duke had claimed it a record five straight before yesterday. Duke star guard Chris Duhon had raised six fingers after the Blue Devils' semifinal win, which drew the ire of the Terps.

"If he wants to hold up six fingers when he only has five, he's never going to have a chance to do that again," said Maryland sophomore Nik Caner-Medley. "Don't count your chickens before they hatch."

I haven't written that much recently but I do hope at some point in my life to have some of my poetry published.

They are the Duke Blue Devils and, frankly, a lot of people just can't stand them.

Duke is in town for a West Regional semifinal Thursday against Kansas at the Pond, meaning, if you missed out on heckling the Osmonds years ago, this could be your next-best chance to rail against wholesomeness.

At first- and second-round games last week in Salt Lake City, Duke was derided when it took the court against Colorado State on Thursday and hissed at when players trotted out for warm-ups against Central Michigan on Saturday.

On the weekend jeer-meter, only filmmaker Michael Moore bested the Boo Devils

The program has become nothing more than an excuse to spend lots of money on facilities, scholarships, coaching salaries, support staff, travel, stadium upkeep and many other related areas. In college football, losing is an expensive ordeal, and that's especially the case at private schools.

The good news is Duke doesn't care about the steady financial drain. There's that much money in the endowment fund. Most schools try to raise donations by the millions. Duke rakes it in by the billions. The football program can be compared to owners of some professional sports franchises. It's an expensive hobby, but so what?

That's because the post-Duke tournament is the only time in the entire college basketball season when one gets relief from the incessant Duke-related commentary (particularly from Dick Vitale and Billy Packer) that casts the non-Duke world as an afterthought, and a relatively unimportant one at that. Even if direct observation leads one to think that Salim Stoudamire might be a better shooter than J.J. Redick, or that Andrew Bogut might be a better center than Shelden Williams, those opinions get overwhelmed in the flood of positive Duke propaganda (there's no other word for it).

We apparently are not supposed to notice that Coach K is appearing in one of the biggest games of all, the advertising game, using the power of his celebrity to advance the cause of American Express.

Or perhaps we are supposed to be too dumb to notice.

You go ahead and reach for your America Express card on Coach K's say-so.

Some of us are reaching for an air sickness bag instead.

The antics of the Cameron Crazies, as opposed to being clever, are obnoxious. They smack of the elitism that is part and parcel of the Duke campus mentality. Duke prides itself on being a high-class institution and, in many quarters, it bills itself as the 'Harvard of the South.' Yet, go to Harvard, view its institutions and sports and the way their students and fans interact with others, and you'll see they bear no similarity to Duke whatsoever

"I'm not going to have an inquiry here, but obviously (it's) whoever puts up the graphics, whoever puts up the footage," he said. "How could that be the play from the Florida State game? Really. Really. They won. But they can't let it go. Why can't you let it go: 'I've got something here.'

"Is it for ratings? What is it for? Why do people do things? Obviously to hang on to this for this long, somebody's getting something out of it. And it takes away from other things. Is that a reason?"

"Just from this year, there have been so many incidents from other teams' fans and other players, whether it be hard fouls against [Luol] Deng in the ACC tournament or people trying to pick stuff with me in front of the other teams' bench or other teams' fans saying rude and crude remarks to us," Redick said.

This is an interesting take from a Duke player, considering fans at Cameron Indoor Stadium are notorious for humiliating opposing players. They chanted "SAT!" at former Maryland guard Steve Francis for having poor grades, tossed condoms at a player accused of sexual assault and threw pizza boxes at a player accused of assaulting a pizza deliveryman. Clever, but how does that differ from the "rude and crude" remarks Duke hears?

Granted, Brodhead is just the latest in a long line of Duke presidents to kiss Krzyzewski's ring. Even before 1992, when Duke had just won back-to-back national titles and the school's New York alumni group pointedly told the school's then-president Keith Brodie that it wanted Coach K, not Brodie, to address its next gathering, Duke realized that Krzyzewski was its most important employee--and one to whom homage must be paid. The basketball court at Duke's Cameron Indoor Stadium is now called "Coach K Court." The area outside Cameron where Duke students camp out for tickets has been officially dubbed "Krzyzewskiville." Krzyzewski has a faculty appointment at Duke's business school. He even has an institution within the B-school--something called the "Coach K Center of Leadership & Ethics."

In typical bandwagon fashion, ESPN followed the lead of several prominent publications and featured Duke junior guard J.J. Redick as the Blue Devils prepared to battle Atlantic Coast Conference rival Maryland.

The Cliffs Notes version of ESPN's tale: Redick endures an unconscionable amount of taunting by opposing fans. Yet somehow he perseveres through it all, in part by writing poetry. (We were treated to the sight of Redick sitting on a bench Cameron Indoor Stadium quietly reading several verses.)

Excuse us for a moment while we chug Pepto Bismol.

Thank you very much, for reminding me of the reason why I left Duke. Peolple like you cannot and willnot (sic) ever understand my situation. I'm sure daddy worked very hard to send your rich self to college. While real people struggle. I would also like to extend an invitation for you not to waste your or my time ever agin. Never being considered a part of your posh group of yuppies really hurts me to the heart. Yea Right because I don't care about you or your alumni.

Your shot was useless from both the perimeter and around the basket, and you didn't have the lateral movement to defend anyone-not even my dad scrimmaging in a bagels-and-basketball Sunday league.

You suffered more injuries than Allan Houston (ok, maybe a slight exaggeration), and Coach K decided to go with five guards instead of substituting you into the Sweet 16 game against Michigan State last season when Shelden Williams fouled out of your final game as a Blue Devil.

Over time Carlos had told Jim and me repeatedly, 'If you show respect for me, I will show respect for you.' So, in the June 30 meeting, I reminded him of that and said, 'We are all counting on what you said in earlier meetings and again today.' He responded, 'That's right and you can trust me on that.' I asked if we could all trust each other? Carlos, his wife and agent each responded 'Yes.'

At that point, believing so strongly in Carlos, I said we would not pick up his option. Our intent, as soon as we could do so, was to re-do his contract. The quotes you saw in the media July 1 about his desire to remain here were entirely consistent with what he told us

Taking all of the aforementioned data into account, it would seem the common theme among Duke's recent teams is that they spend most of the season playing above themselves. Krzyzewski certainly deserves credit for adapting each year to the personnel on hand and maximizing their talent, but eventually the gas runs out and/or they get exposed by more talented teams -- the very kind of teams they avoid playing early in the season.

Could this year be different? It's certainly possible. Much has been made of the fact that Duke is running a more wide-open, perimeter-oriented offense this season. The Blue Devils are also deeper than they have been in a while, a deficiency that often caught up to them during the Redick/Williams era.

Consecutive mid-February losses to Wake Forest and Miami are hardly an encouraging sign, however. If history is any indication, they're a harbinger of things to come.

Also, we remember Steve Wojciechowski winning the National Defensive Player of the Year award, pretty much for leading the country in floor slaps.

Fifteen months after Maryland forward Herman Veal was accused of sexual misconduct toward another Maryland student, Duke's Cameron Crazies wouldn't let him forget it—even though formal charges were never filed against him. In a January 1984 game between the Terps and Blue Devils, Duke fans greeted Veal by throwing panties and condoms into the air when he was introduced, then yelled obscenities throughout the game

Coach K has lamented that Duke is not a favorite among fans (outside of Duke University). Could it be that word of Duke's utter contempt for all that is non-Duke is spreading?

You can't talk about stuff like this without mentioning 1984 and Herman Veal. Why a Maryland player? Well, after Duke played Maryland, and taunted Herman Veal for alleged sexual assault (we can't remember the outcome), throwing condoms and panties and the like, the basketball world went ballistic. Ken Denlinger blistered Duke in the Post. Terry Sanford wrote an open letter to the student body calling for a different approach to games and asking for cleverness rather than meanness.

The next game was UNC.

The Crazies showed up with tin foil halos, and chanted "we beg to differ!" when the refs made a bad call. They welcomed "our esteemed guests from Chapel Hill." All in all a great day in Cameron.

Dean Smith didn't think so. Asked afterwards, he groused that one day of good behavior didn't make up for years of bad. This from the guy who pounded on the scoreboard, who called another player "Mr Choke," and who was thrown out of the Final Four and who recruited Makhtar Ndiaye and Jeff McInnis.

We are homers, but we're not pollyannas

Is it too easy to believe that officials have finally tired of Krzyzewski's intimidation tactics, perhaps after his reprehensible behavior March 3 against Georgia Tech?

That night we wore Duke blue solely for safety's sake. Since significant quantities of alcohol had been added to an already intense rivalry, we decided to avoid any unnecessary pre-game conflict. Our concerns were well founded: Even though we were standing behind UNC's bench during the game, we were subject to numerous taunts, threats and projectiles.

I won't say Coach promised me certain miracles, but he did guarantee [Elton, Shane, and I] would play together.")

Deron Washington found out early what he and his Virginia Tech teammates were up against.

About 90 seconds into the game, the forward was running back on defense when he got shoved hard from behind by Duke's Shelden Williams. Washington went sprawling across the floor, then waited for the foul to be called.

The whistle never blew

Last season, as they left the court after their 84-77 victory over N.C. State, the Blue Devils held up all five fingers, showing off their consecutive tournament titles. So how would they handle six?

"We are not going to tell you our secrets,'' Duhon said. "Be there with your cameras ready and we will surprise you.''

Steve Wojciechowski smacking the hardwood floor with both hands while exhorting his Duke basketball teammates to get a defensive stop.

These are the images associated with the members of the Anne Arundel County Sports Hall of Fame's 15th induction class, which will be enshrined Oct. 19 at Michael's 8th Avenue.

After all, it's hard to imagine a seasoned coach complying to recite ad copy this self-aggrandizing.

He sees himself not as a "basketball coach" but as "a leader who happens to coach basketball"? Who wrote that arrogant tripe for him, and what did that person have against him?

Can he sue?

He actually says in the commercial, "I want you to develop as a player, I want you to develop as a person and I want you to develop as a human being"? Who did that voice-over for him, and what motive did they have in portraying Duke as a harbor of preposterous triteness?

Before losing to UNC in 1989, the student body, referring to Carolina's star center J.R. Reid, raised a sign that read, 'J.R. Can't Reid This.' The same statement was chanted, even though Reid was actually a quite intelligent and scholastically accomplished student athlete. This is the stuff of class?

Dean Smith was badly troubled by the latter incident, which he understandably construed as a racial slur. Because Coach Smith had also recruited two of Duke's big men, Christian Laettner and Danny Ferry, he coincidentally knew what these players scored on the SAT. In a press conference, he rebutted the crowd's baseless innuendo by explaining that J.R. Reid and frontcourt mate Scott Williams accomplished a higher combined SAT score than did Laettner and Ferry, both white. Smith took pains to avoid disclosing any specific scores, nor did he provide any individual comparisons. In response, the same group that slanderously labeled Reid illiterate berated Smith for his audacity in disclosing the completely true, but purportedly 'private,' information of its players.

It was a great score. It was old-school. Coach K never raised his voice or his hand, but he let his new president know exactly who runs things on Tobacco Road. He also sent a similar message to basketball recruits across the land: Coach K is the unquestioned king of amateur hoops. Check "SportsCenter'' and USA Today if you doubt it.

Think about it. Coach K, without uttering a word or meeting face-to-face with owner Jerry Buss, had us all believing he might uproot his family and move to the West Coast for the privilege of coaching a young man who is scheduled to stand trial for rape this year.

I feel stupid for falling for it. Brodhead shouldn't. He had no other choice.

Finally, basketball fans all over the country got what they wanted - the two best teams with everything at stake - but the referees had to step in and have their say on the outcome of the game, an 82-72 Blue Devils victory.

The report doesn't accuse Duke of any wrongdoing, but it suggests that Duke athletes get the chance to load up on easy classes with a preferential registration system.

It says that Duke basketball players gravitate toward sociology, which is considered by some to be one of the easier majors at the school, and it questions the difficulty of the summer-school and independent-study courses that have helped juniors Jason Williams and Carlos Boozer close in on graduating in three years.

When ACC beat writer Gregg Doyel of the Charlotte (N.C.) Observer wrote a book about Krzyzewski after the 1999 season, the coach refused to be interviewed for the project. Subjects often decline to participate in unauthorized biographies, but Krzyzewski went a step further, actively discouraging the project. Doyel once told a colleague that he had been making do by interviewing former Blue Devils such as Kenny Dennard, Jay Bilas and Antonio Lang - but that sources stopped returning calls. One can only wonder if the author ever learned the reason: Krzyzewski had another one of his designated pit-bull guardians send a letter to former players and coaches, asking them not to do interviews for the book.

But after the U.S.' stunning defeat - yes, despite our recent failures, these losses still shock - Coach K should dump his $100,000 motivational speeches in the Pacific. Because, at the moment, American basketball fans just want answers, not sermons

When it was Missouri and Massachusetts, justice was swift, complete and appropriately in line with NCAA statutes.

So why not with Duke?

I usually enjoy Vitale's shtick -- his enthusiasm for the sport is undoubtedly infectious, and you know it's a big game if Vitale is there -- but not when he's covering Duke. He just loses all control.

"We never got a call that whole ball game," he said Tuesday. "But that would never happen to Duke."

Was Brent McGoldrick actually serious when he claimed that "Duke basketball defines who we are?

But, we could have a problem here. It's not a good thing if an important Duke supporter gave Duhon's mother an unposted job - at what fellow employees reportedly suggest was an overpaid salary to an underqualified person - simply because her son signed with the Blue Devils.

Duke F Shavlik Randolph is in a similar situation--he is leaving, essentially, because he has not been able to fit the model that coach Mike Krzyzewski wants. Says one NBA personnel executive, "Being at Duke probably hurt him. Coach K tried to make him a standard back-to-the-basket big man, but this was a big guy who could shoot coming out of high school." The executive says he hopes the same thing does not happen to incoming Duke freshman PF Josh McRoberts. . . .

I didn't care what happened in this one until Jim Nantz started with his, "Coach K was saying this week that, no matter what happens, the Duke students and alumni will remember this team for the rest of their lives, the way they kept battling back from so many injuries, how they handled adversity and blah blah blah" routine (I'm paraphrasing). Yeah, what a bunch of courageous underdogs -- instead of relying on players who were top-10 national recruits in their high school classes, they had to rely on some of the guys who were just in the top 30. I feel horrible for them. It's such a chore to play Shavlik Randolph big minutes when he was the No. 1 recruit from that 2002 class. Check out this column from Dick Vitale from October, 2001. Really, I'm supposed to feel bad for Duke? Ever?

"He's the most team-oriented. He's got the best smile. You'd think that he went to a private suburban school. I said, 'How is he such a beautiful kid and potentially a very good basketball player?"

Our advice to the Crazies: Ignore the media, ignore other fans (they are all just pretenders wanting to tear us down), and just have fun at the games. We aren't the Crazies for national attention or to be worshipped by other fans. We are the Crazies to carry our team when they need it most. The Crazies do that better than any fans in the country; we believe the cheer sheets help

He then glared at the person who asked the question, a reporter with an accent. And he said: 'Maybe it's a difference in our languages. Maybe in your language playing hard means showing off.'

And the show was over. Krzyzewski had won, of course. He had managed to belittle and crush someone who dared ask a question in what was obviously his second language. And for what? Did he really think that Dwyane Wade did a 180-dunk on a breakaway because he was worried that Yao Ming would materialize in front of him and block it? Was he really saying that all the no-look, two-on-none good times the U.S. had while up by 30 points were really about playing hard and taking it to the basket hard?

No. He didn't like the question, so he rejected it. That's his right. The thing is, he is supposed to be leading a different kind of American basketball team. That, supposedly, was the whole point behind the 2008 Olympic team. Now, we would have a humble team, a respectful team, a team that all of America could get behind.

With that in mind, I'm not sure the coach - the guy hired to bring a little class back to the team - needs to be snidely ripping foreign journalists and mocking their languages and making Americans seem like bullies again. Especially because - well, look, here's how Kobe Bryant answered the same question:

'Look, I had five dunks in one game. That's because of the crowd. Last time I had five dunks in a game, I was like 17. So that's all because of the energy of this crowd.'

See? Kobe gets it.

'Coach K has never in his life reacted in the way he reacted to DeMarcus,' said DeMarcus' father Ron Nelson in a May 30 article in the Vallejo Times-Herald. 'They said he went home and told his wife he finally found someone he fell in love with on sight.'

As he does every year, Krzyzewski chided the media on several occasions. He gave his steel-piercing glare and made several biting comments in the direction of Bryan Strickland, the young Duke beat writer for the Durham (N.C.) Herald-Sun, after a piece that addressed rumors (transfer to Texas Christian, early departure for the NBA, etc.) about the future of junior swingman Mike Dunleavy. The story, written in response to several national commentaries on the same subject, simply allowed the player himself to respond to the rumors. Dunleavy did just that, and the speculation quickly disappeared. The coach, who of course wasn't available to respond in the story, thought it never should have been written.

An American Express credit card is not only a credit card, it's a value system. And apparently it has something to do with developing as a student, a player and a human being. Or so says the eternal wisdom of Professor Mike Krzyzewski.

Krzyzewski didn't identify specific news organizations, other than mentioning ESPN once. He said he's upset because he thinks that Duke and center Shelden Williams haven't received proper credit for their achievements. Duke had clinched the ACC regular-season title before last night's game against North Carolina and was 27-2 overall.

"Wow, it's been sad," Krzyzewski said. "And I think it's been orchestrated. I not only think, I know it has been.

Sure, he was cocky as a college star, but Redick said he mostly played to the crowds. He concedes he was 'a jerk' as a freshman, and only acts like one now after the Magic lose or he struggles with his picturesque jump shot.

Vivian is a single mom who moved to Durham, N.C., after Chris simply told her, "Mama, I can't do this without you."

Still not convinced? Mike Dunleavy got a huge, cap-killing contract extension even though his only discernible talent is looking like the elf from the Claymation Rudolph movie. When the NBA adds naked free-throw shooting to the All-Star Skills Competition, Dahntay Jones will be a mortal lock to win. Until then, he's relegated to playing 12 minutes a night for the Grizzlies. Carlos Boozer looks like he may be on the Grant Hill Perpetually-Injured Career Arc, but at least he can still be remembered as the only NBA player whose chest hair showed even when he wore a turtleneck. They're all hilariously disappointing when they take it to the next level.

After several years of disappointing in March, Coach K's club is underperforming in February.

Between 1988 and 1992, the Hall of Fame coach guided the Blue Devils to five consecutive Final Fours and two national titles. But in the nine seasons that followed, he managed only three Final Fours and one national championship. In the five years since, Mike Krzyzewski's record has been less than overwhelming: one final four and no national championships.

"I want my players to be aggressive and smart for 40 minutes of each basketball game," Coach K could have said. "Gerald did not make a smart play, and for that we sincerely apologize to Roy, Tyler and North Carolina fans. We think a one-game suspension is appropriate and look forward to renewing our heated rivalry with the Tar Heels in the future.

"I've talked with Gerald, explained to him what I think he did wrong in that situation and I'm comfortable it won't happen again."

That's it. There's no real controversy. It's over.

With Mike Krzyzewski out for the season due to a back injury, the men's basketball team finished last in the ACC and the student section of Cameron Indoor Stadium wasn't even filling up, said Chris Kennedy, Duke's senior associate athletic director.

Though that was the only serious case in recent memory of a decline in basketball attendance--after all they've been pretty good the rest of the time--Duke fans have shown their tendency to come out in hoards for winners.

Dear Cameron Crazies,

You suck.

I mean, honestly. Let's just be rational. You get back early from vacation to go spend $133.84 (plus tax) at Wal-Mart for the Eureka! Nine-Person, Three-Room Getaway Tent. You ditch your dorm room inevitably smothered with posters of J.J. Redick, who's just a friggin' 19-year-old with a good shot, for God's sake- and head to a lawn. Not a campsite in the mountains with a vista you could write home about.

Rather, it's a strip of grass, where you call Donald Wine your god..

Krzyzewski has a passion and a love for college basketball, and for six days and 20 hours each week, he's a wonderful ambassador. But for those other four hours, his four most visible hours -- two for this game, two for that one -- he's awful. He's noxious. He is, in fact, an eroding influence on the sport he helped build.

Yes, I'm saying it: For four hours each week, Mike Krzyzewski is bad for college basketball

They wish they went here.

Since then, Coach K has waged a public-relations war so inept, so disarmingly dumb, that it has to be intentional. He's mind-freaking us like he mind-freaked potential 2006 lottery pick Josh McRoberts into staying for his sophomore season. He wants everyone to be so busy hating him -- Coach K -- that we forget about Gerald Henderson.

And Krzyzewski was able to let his new school president, Brodhead, know exactly who is in charge at Duke. Brodhead, who has been Duke's president for about a week, proudly announced on Monday that Coach K would remain "special assistant to the president," as he had under Duke's previous leader.

It doesn't help, either, that instead of spending the summer analyzing why Blue Devil squads have looked fatigued the final month in each of the last four seasons, the entire coaching staff will be in China. Krzyzewski contends that USA Basketball does not take away any focus from his first priority here in Durham-it even helped this year, as he instituted Phoenix Suns coach Mike D'Antoni's offensive schemes and Syracuse coach Jim Boeheim's zone defense. But Duke, not Team USA, is Krzyzewski's primary job.

"My family would say, 'Poking your nose where you shouldn't poke your nose,' and I've got a big nose. So if I poke, something crazy might happen."

'You killed us. You killed us. You killed us. You killed us.' Krzyzewski could be clearly seen and heard hurling those words at the officials, walking off the court at game's end. Later he added, 'It was a very hard-fought game, disruptive game... A lot of subs. A lot of fouls.'

I've gotta say, those remarks are an atypically poor reaction from Coach K. Understandable, though. After all, he committed a couple of crucial errors in judgement that probably cost his team the victory, and I can't imagine he was too pleased with himself. 'Obviously you didn't see the game,' he snarled at one reporter who referred to the Devils' performance as a 'collapse'. No Coach, we did.

Several years ago, Smith pointed out that he thought it was tougher for Duke and Krzyzewski because there is so much more attention paid to college basketball these days. Every Duke game is on national TV, and Dick Vitale seems to do about half of them, screaming about the greatness of Krzyzewski and Duke until normally reasonable people start to throw things at the television set. But there's more to it than that. Unlike Smith, who never endorsed anything, Krzyzewski has become a very wealthy pitchman for corporate America; he's written books on how to win and on how to lose and on how to tie. (Or so it seems.) He has put himself out there and, in doing so, made himself and his program a target

They should. because there is no doubt they are playing with the best shooter outside the NBA. What? You thought it was J.J. Redick? Oh, I forgot. Salim Stoudamire doesn't have his own personal ESPN publicist, the way Duke's Favorite Son does.

Now, I love Dick Vitale and consider him a friend; I really do. But I'm officially pleading with him to stop embarrassing himself on this topic. There is no argument, as I'm sure you'll agree.

I don't coach for winning, I coach for relationships.

Duke fans of the late 80s early 90s flat out embarrassed players. Most of us are here because we know of Duke as the Duke when the legend of Kville and the Cameron Crazy were being made. In fact, it's a legacy that the fans of today are undeservedly getting credit for.

Richard Brodhead, president of Duke, was terrified at the thought of losing basketball coach Mike Krzyzewski, a key fundraiser for the university. When Coach K -- after fleecing Duke for some new stipulations to the "lifetime" contract he'd signed just three years earlier -- announced he wasn't interested in coaching the Lakers, Brodhead talked about Duke's hoops coach as if he'd starred in a real-life re-make of "The Passion of The Christ."

"I think part of it has to do with the Duke perception," said ESPN college basketball analyst Jay Bilas, a former player at the school. "There's not a whole lot you can find wrong with the kid. He's a nice-looking young man, who shoots the eyes out of the bucket and writes poetry."

The number of people who still haven't seen Stoudamire is dwindling, thankfully, as is the number of people who think Duke's Redick is a better shooter. There really shouldn't be any debate anymore as to which player is a better shooter because, as Shakur said, the numbers are so overwhelming in Stoudamire's favor, to ignore them is to admit to some agenda.

It wouldn't be a Duke game on CBS if the voices didn't do everything but nominate one of the Blue Devils for sainthood. On Sunday, it was Bill Raftery's turn to remind us about a book titled "Profiles in Courage" and how Chris Duhon is a "profile in courage."

Why? Because he's playing banged up? Or because CBS needs Duke to have a designated hero?

"Chris Duhon," Verne Lundquist, Raftery's play-by-play partner, said. "What a player. What a man."

What nonsense.

The cool thing a person can have is the means to love himself the right way. Most people do not think the are worth the finenest things in life. i think that all people shoulkd have a high self-esteam. i mean i do and everyone loves me. i'm the man tho....so its easy for me.

Duke's famed student-fans, the Cameron Crazies, routinely distribute pre-game cheat sheets on the other team -- suggested chants, areas to ridicule, etc. It destroys the idea that thousands of students could spontaneously think up such brilliant cheers, but that's not the point. The point is, one such cheat sheet was distributed for the Maryland game, and somehow a Maryland fan managed to get a bogus bit of information onto it. According to the Diamondback, the fraudulent factoid centered on Terps star Nik Caner-Medley, whose girlfriend was said to be nicknamed "Piggy." During the game, the Diamondback reported, the Cameron Crazies oinked at Caner-Medley and serenaded him with chants of "Pig-gy, Pig-gy." As it turns out, Caner-Medley does not have a girlfriend whose nickname is Piggy.

But Duke does have a connection to tarnished summer coach Myron Piggie, who has admitted giving money to several of his club players, including future (and now former) Blue Devil Corey Maggette.

Fortunately for the Cameron Crazies, they didn't take the bait all the way. That same fraudulent factoid on Caner-Medley identified his girlfriend by her first name: Myra.

Imagine the sound of thousands of Duke fans chanting, "My-ra Pig-gy.

Dick "Duke" Vitale -- The unofficial sports information director for the university will ruin any basketball broadcast by going into an uninterrupted 28-second love fest about the Blue Devils. He could be broadcasting a T-ball tournament and find a way to sneak in a reference the "The Dookies".

J.J. Redick -- Maybe it was the Sportscenter profile of Redick last year when he whined that fans on the road are too mean to him.

Maybe it's all the hype about him as a shooter when there was a point last year where Redick would have had to make 75 straight three-point shots to tie the shooting percentage of Arizona's Salim Stoudamire.

Maybe it's just the fact that I want to punch him. I don't know -- there's just something about the guy.

He's evil, they're all evil. But he takes the cake. He's a shorter, geekier Laettner.

Duke refuses to pretend football is important. Every school should understand its place in the athletic universe.

Some basketball schools throw huge piles of money at football and remain lifelong tackling dummies. Duke views football Saturdays as a time to entertain basketball recruits. It's called perspective, people.

They knew we -- the media, sports fans -- were gullible. We ate it up. Coach K was going to throw away a 24-year legacy to take over a team led by a star player scheduled to stand trial for rape. If you believe that, you probably believe Kupchak thought this would be the ideal time for Roy Williams to think about leaving North Carolina.

When the Athletic Department organized a Thursday night pep rally in the Great Hall, officials thought the event would be the beginning of renewed student support for the football team. But so few students attended the rally that organizers had to tell head coach Ted Roof and his players to stay home.

'I didn't want to make them do this,' said Bart Smith, director of promotions for the Athletic Department, as he bemoaned the poorly-attended event. 'There is nobody here.'

In Duke's 2001 championship season, the Blue Devils benefited from a ridiculous fifth foul against Maryland's Lonny Baxter in the semifinals. It amounted to the brush of a butterfly's wing, given the contact between Baxter and current Cavalier Carlos Boozer all game. "

Duke players in the NBA should be avoided like a girlfriend with anger issues, no matter how good they looked in college. If you don't believe me, just ask Cleveland GM Danny Ferry how well the NBA careers of former Duke stars have gone.

We've done things the right way. So people hate us.

Wojo. This isn't Steve Wojciechowski's fault, but no player better personifies the Overrated Caucasian Dookie phenomenon than the former point guard and current assistant coach.

The fact that Wojo was named the national Defensive Player of the Year in 1998 must produce peals of laughter from Wayne Turner, the University of Kentucky point guard who obliterated Wojo in the '98 regional final. Interstate road signs aren't driven past as many times as Wojo was that day.

The Krzyzewski-Wojo lovefest produced this Velveeta prose in the Duke media guide: "Steve Wojciechowski, rushing across the court after Duke's 1998 victory over North Carolina, looking for his coach. The coach catching his player's eyes and finding him through a rush of fans streaming on the court to celebrate. Ultimately, the two embrace with tears running down their cheeks, in celebration of the accomplishment and the relationship between coach and player."

"The attendance last year was pathetic in terms of fan support, and that's something we're trying to rectify this year," said Roberto Bazzani, a Duke senior who serves as head line monitor.

Just because something is an accident doesn't excuse it. Henderson came down recklessly and with force and should be suspended. "I wasn't trying to hurt him" isn't good enough. He didn't try to stop either. There was nothing in that video that suggests he tried to pull up and NOT hurt his opponent.

Students must provide their social security number to register a tent, check in via e-mail and abide by the whims of the head line monitor, an elected student who governs K-Ville, mediates disputes and makes the rules.

To wit, when the Georgia Tech team dared to gather at center court, standing atop the Duke logo before the national anthem, Blue Devil center Carlos Boozer pointed and screamed at the whole Jacket team. Think C-Boo was PO'd he couldn't sit down in the locker room?

Duke didn't need Shavlik Randolph, who entered the summer as the No. 1 rising high school senior in the country. But Duke got him, and recruiting analyst Bob Gibbons knows what all of it means.

"We could be looking," he said, "at the makings of another UCLA-type dynasty."

Alleva's performance before the lacrosse debacle, has been undistinguished to put it politely. Duke football, terrible when he took over, is now worse. (Brilliant move turning down Bobby Ross, who has only won a national title and coached in the Super Bowl to hire the immortal Ted Roof). Alleva also hired a crony of his to coach baseball and kept him around through one losing season after another until accusations by ex-players that the coach had encouraged them to used steriods finally forced his hand.

When the lacrosse story first broke, Alleva's initial public reaction was, "this is an unfortunate incident." Huh? Unfortunate? Losing to LSU in the Sweet Sixteen was an unfortunate incident for Duke. This goes well beyond that. Alleva has basically been told since then to shut up and not say anything publicly because he can't be trusted to keep his foot out of his mouth. Someone should have told Trask the same thing. Two weeks ago he was quoted in the Duke student newspaper, The Chronicle, as saying that he was aware there were behavioral problems with the lacrosse team (he did not mention that he had seen a written report on the subject) but felt as if the school had a handle on those problems.

Apparently not.

Embrace your loathing of Krzyzewski. Whatever your reason, I'll buy it. His Duke team beats your team? Loathe him. His Duke team is on television too much? Loathe him. His commercials? His self-righteousness? His hypocritical imperiousness? Loathe him, loathe him, loathe him.

Mike Krzyzewski. Dick Vitale, Jay Bilas, Billy Packer and all the stooges for the Duke men's basketball coach could not cover up his classless display at the end of the Blue Devils' choke against UConn in the NCAA semifinals.

He blamed the refs for the loss, then followed with the charade of being interested in coaching the L.A. Lakers in order to have the Duke administration prove again how much it loves him.

"I sat down and had long discussions with myself," Duhon said. "It got a little heated at times. I just wanted to find myself; I didn't know who I was.

One of the little things you might not notice about Duke basketball, but which is a telling detail, is that you'll rarely hear anyone call more than one syllable. So it's Shav, Shel, Chris, and so on. It's a smart principle, and a sign of the level of organization the program thrives on: yelling Shelden is less effective and takes longer than yelling Shel. We're not saying Shel is what they call for Shelden, but you get the point. That's an important thing at Duke.

You dress up in capes and take your shirts off to be a Cameron Crazie because you care about being at the game and being part of this scene, not watching it and being witness to the best college sports program there is. You cheer to be part of your big, dorky club, one that's lost any pure root, root, root for the Blue Devils in the name of just being another dyed-blue skull in the mass.

Dockery's very public struggles with the ACT punctured the myth that Duke basketball players are scholars and other college basketball players are idiots.

ESPN took its "College Gamenight" show on the road yesterday, putting up a studio outside Cameron Indoor Stadium and televising the show amid a horde of screaming, blue-painted nerds.

Josh McRoberts, Duke: Before McRoberts it was Shavlik Randolph. Before Randolph it was Chris Burgess. Before Burgess it was Taymon Domzalski. Big men go to Duke with big names, and with some exceptions -- but not you, Casey Sanders or Eric Boateng or Michael Thompson -- they leave with diminished reputations. Such is the case with McRoberts, who was a definite lottery pick after high school and a possible lottery pick after last season but now is projected to go later in the first round. So why come out now, after his sophomore season? Because with another year at Duke, McRoberts would be a second-rounder. Imagine if he stayed through his senior year. He'd go undrafted, then get cut by some team in Korea.

"I was pissed," a calm Myles said after the Blue Devils escaped the Georgia Dome with a 66-63 win against the Musketeers. "I don't think it was a foul. I know it wasn't no foul because I know I didn't touch him that much.

"He said I pushed him in the back. I didn't push him at all. I was just going for the ball. When he blew the whistle, I knew he was calling it on me."

"I think that it's obviously very hard to be a Cameron Crazy and a full time student, however students are here to get an education," said Wine, a senior.

"The fact that students are being punished for choosing to study for exams instead of going to the game--I don't think that's fair.... Obviously I was at the game. I would have been there even if I wasn't head line monitor because that's what I prioritize, but other people choose tests and we shouldn't fault them for that."

"I don't think we would have picked a Duke guy," Karl said when asked about acquiring a player from N.C. State. "They're a second-class citizen of the ACC. We accept that they do develop players once in a while and have good teams.

"It's all about winning, whether by one or 100," Duke's Jon Scheyer said. "We're relieved. We won our first game, and we're going on."

There was a time when those words would have been heresy.

Relief at getting out of the first round? Isn't that feat a Blue Devils birthright?

But Duke is quickly becoming the Green Bay Packers of college basketball, living more on its faded glory than on current success. The aura is tinged, the mystique has dissipated. This year, with no threatening big man and a team that looks imminently ordinary, what with a bunch of 3-point shooters, Duke was the 2-seed everyone wanted to get.

In 1990, The Chronicle, Duke's student newspaper, published a midseason report card giving the Blue Devils a B-plus on their basketball performance.

In a meeting with Chronicle staff members that was taped and later excerpted in several publications, Krzyzewski occasionally used profanity in berating the students in front of his team, saying the team deserved straight A's. Later he met with the same students and apologized for the profanity but not the message.

But the information about his girlfriend and her pet name for him was false, planted by a person who wished for the Cameron Crazies to embarrass themselves. If the Cameron Crazies had chanted 'Myra Piggy,' it would have sounded like 'Myron Piggie,' the name of a former basketball coach and crack cocaine dealer who pleaded guilty to giving money to college basketball players, including former Blue Devil Corey Maggette, in one of Duke's scandals.

The prank worked, conceded Duke senior Stephen Rawson, the student in charge of controlling student admission to games and passing out the cheer sheets.

'We got hoodwinked on that,' he said. 'Somebody pulled a fast one on us.'

A person claiming responsibility for the false information called The Diamondback Thursday night. The caller, a 23-year-old male from North Carolina who operated under the pseudonym 'Lance Nichols,' said he received an e-mail copy of the cheer sheet for Duke's last home game against Virginia. At the bottom of the sheet is a screen name, CheerSheets, that students can instant message to 'contribute for the next game.'

Duke's been the favorite for the national title all year. Can they regroup? We'll see. But they might want to drop some of the antics that accompanied last night's frustration. Lee Melchionni has no business smack-talking the opposing team's bench after hitting a big shot--Carolina promptly beat them back downcourt for an easy bucket. And Sean Dockery's slap of Hansbrough at the end epitomized the idea that Duke has perhaps lost something more than just a home game on senior night, and that they know it.

"It sends a message to this whole league that we have dominated this conference over the last eight years," Duhon said Tuesday. "We are just going to keep continuing to do it. I think it sends a message to the other teams that they are always playing for second.''

Doubting the Devils doesn't seem as preposterous in March as it did in November -- unless, of course, the referees choke on their whistles and go Duke-blind like they did last year at the Final Four in Minneapolis, allowing Williams to use Jason Gardner's back as a luge sled, among other calls and non-calls.

Duke was used to the microscope -- they were marked men ever since they touched down in Blugrass Country. Apparently, the legions of Kentucky fans decided to hate the team that had beaten them more recently (UK managed a W against Indiana this year, but lost an OT heartbreaker to Duke). The crowd was against the Devils from the beginning, which might have made a difference in the end. With 11 seconds left and the Blue Devils down for the first time all game, 72-70, Indiana guard A.J. Moye went to the line. Jones, on the bench after fouling out, apparently forgot where he was -- he turned toward the crowd and motioned for them to make noise. Fat chance; Moye hit both in morgue-like silence. But a few seconds later, when Williams got the ball from the ref, Rupp was a madhouse.

Trotting toward the locker room after the final horn, Hansbrough held four fingers in the air and smirked as he stared into the student section. It was as if he was waiting for someone to scream something, throw something or shoot him the bird.

This time, though, the crowd could only stare as Hansbrough disappeared into the tunnel. Gone - thankfully - forever.

'The best feeling in the world is to walk off someone else's court and have everyone be quiet," said the 6-foot-9 Hansbrough, the Tar Heels' all-time leading scorer. 'I'm going to miss playing here."

But I digress. It is easy to become sidetracked on this subject when recalling the incredible hypocrisy that surfaced in Duke's attempts to rationalize.

The point here is that Gerald Henderson has already received barrels of well-deserved ink as a result of his goonish play. His was the most frightening flagrant foul that I have seen in thirty years of following college basketball. The contact and its aftermath were reminiscent of Kermit Washington's brutal punching of Rudy Tomjanovich. If Vitale means to suggest that additional negative press is due this "Super Soph," I wholeheartedly agree. But, somehow, the analyst argues the contrary: that Henderson merits more in the way of favorable publicity. Is Vitale's memory this short or his love for Duke this blind?

At the same time, when your team loses it's not blasphemy to suggest that the vaunted coach might be spending too much time moonlighting as Team USA's coach, or to wonder if the team could use a new assistant, or to ask questions about why the team's recruiting has slipped from what it once was.

Trust me: the first time Bryant drops a dismissive, contemptuous f-bomb on Krzyzewski during a time out, the resulting Coach K nostril flare -- is that special, special spittle on the corner of his mouth? -- will be well worth your efforts.

It will forever be argued that Mike Krzyzewski turned a potential Larry Bird into a poor man's Larry Lakins. It'll be said that Krzyzewski brought in Randolph for no better reason than to torture Sendek on one front and Carolina on the other.

The same was said of Dean Smith when he signed Southern Durham High's Curtis Hunter -- often called "the next Michael Jordan" in those days -- to fight for playing time at North Carolina when Duke and State were clamoring for Hunter to carry their programs to a higher level.

It turned out that Hunter was no more the next Jordan than Randolph is the next Laettner. Exceptional talent, in the long run, usually surfaces. Duke hasn't been great for Randolph, but Randolph hasn't been great for Duke.

It's fair, in that regard, to say that both sides made a mistake.

Appearing on Sporting News Radio's "James Brown Show," Duke coach Mike Krzyzewski defended his appearance in an American Express commercial against critics who have suggested the ad gives the Blue Devils an unfair recruiting advantage.

"Well, we're honored," Krzyzewski said. "It's part of this initiative to get college out there. We don't need a commercial to recruit. We have what we've done for 25 years and Duke University. That (the commercial) has nothing about recruiting for basketball players.

"I'm not going to apologize for that," Krzyzewski added. "It's done in great taste. If someone thinks that's a recruiting advantage or that's why it's done, I feel bad for them. I'm proud of it."

SI.com: Will J.J. Redick's legend be permanently tainted by his inability to perform in the tournament?

Davis: Yes, that's the reality. It's an unfortunate reality, but it's the reality. If you line up his shooting percentages from the Sweet 16 and on, it's going to be lower than the shooting percentages for the rest of his career. Whether it's fair or not, that's the reality. When it's all said and done, no one is going to remember that Kansas had a great year; people will just remember that they lost in the first round. And that's the nature of the tournament. People remember what happened in the tournament, and people are going to remember that he did not take Duke to the Final Four this year, he did not win a title there and he didn't shoot the ball well in the later rounds of the tournament.

"Would I want him to come back for his senior season? Absolutely," Krzyzewski said. "I would love to continue to coach him. But part of me admires his courage to go after this.

The question here, however, is a simple one. If Krzyzewski didn't get thrown out of Wednesday night's game against Georgia Tech, then just what does it take to get thrown out of a game in this league?

His manners were deplorable. His language galling. His actions just short of, well, apparently ejection.

Krzyzewski picked up one technical foul. He deserved four. And the fact is, he appeared to be trying to get them

Not long after that hiccup: "Everybody has been disrespecting us ... saying we're not tough ... calling us soft," Duke guard Chris Duhon told writers who politely did not follow up with "Say what?" but were almost as perplexed as Georgia Tech coach Paul Hewitt.

"They won the national championship ... they've got the player of the year [Williams] ... I know I have a lot of respect for them," said Hewitt. "Maybe they need to contrive some things to get themselves motivated after that [FSU] game."

Krzyzewski himself reacted to the contrivance, uh, the loss, by closing himself off to the media -- other than weekly conference calls and post-game briefings. Then, of course, he contrived to steal away with all those nameplates and pictures and chairs. (Don't ask where Cameron security was.) As for the disrespect, the rumor that both Seton Hall -- which had nearly pulled off an upset in Hawaii -- and Florida State had murmured something about Duke's "softness" was believed by absolutely nobody -- except apparently the Devils themselves.

You can't get Dick Vitale to say 15 words without Duke coming out of his mouth.

So your NCAA tournament bracket is shot to pieces. You had Kentucky, Stanford, Gonzaga, Mississippi State or some upstart (uh, Wisconsin) and now your pool pick-sheet is worth as much as a Dominican baseball player's birth certificate. But there are still two more weeks to go, so now who do you root for?

Easy. You root against Duke, for that program and its head coach are - and we don't think we're in any way exaggerating here - the epitome of all that is evil.

Maryland is not going to be as good as last year, period

I like that Coach K wants his wife, daughters, sons-in-law and grandchildren to sit as close to the Duke bench as possible. I dislike that Krzyzewski curses like Eminem, loudly enough for fans to hear.

It was Krzyzewski who stormed into the league all those years ago, fighting the "double standard'' he saw between how Dean Smith was treated and how the rest of the league was treated. After all these years, the irony is that there is still a double standard. Gary Williams has questioned it for years. And so has Herb Sendek and various other ACC coaches who didn't survive the standards set by Krzyzewski.

Coach Krzyzewski, which is more artificial: your left hip or your respect for the Cameron Crazies? Along those lines, which is more artificial: your right hip or your friendship with Bob Knight?

Rudder, who's listed at 6-foot-1, later matched up with Gerald Henderson and Jon Scheyer. At one point late in the first half, he fell to the floor in the lane trying to draw an offensive foul on Scheyer.

Rudder's attempt could be described as a flop. He could laugh that off.

"I've been watching them forever," he said of the Blue Devils. "I learned it from them."

As for Redick, for the third time in four years, he came up small in the regional semifinals. Unable to get away from tenacious freshman defender Garret Temple, he was a dismal 3-for-18 against LSU.

Anyone can have a bad game, you say? True. But how about last year, when Redick was 4-for-14 as the Blue Devils lost to Michigan State in the regional semis? And what about his freshman year, when he scored only five points in a bittersweet 16 loss to Kansas?

Forget about how many points a guys scores against Wake Forest or Clemson in January or February. It's what he does in the NCAA tournament in March that people remember.

Now, the truth is that, in every team sport, even a great player can be shut down. That's when his teammates have to step up. And when his coach has to come up with alternative ways to win.

On many campuses, particularly those in North Carolina, there is a visceral hatred for the Dukies. As former UNC coach Matt Doherty once said, "I think Duke fans are a bunch of Northeasterners who study too much and don't show a lot of class....They're not that clever."

Nonetheless, something must be done to reverse the trend of Duke teams choking in crucial moments. Krzyzewski's three national championship rings do very little to assuage my concerns.

Like a good columnist, I must ask Krzyzewski: 'What have you done for me lately?' If you define 'lately' as the last three seasons, the answer is: Not Much.

Such saturation coverage for a program that has won one national title in the last 10 seasons, one fewer than both Connecticut and Kentucky during that span, combined with the hyperbole, is why some fans cheer for Duke to fall.

By choosing the path of denial, Coach K is now drawing comparisons to his mentor Bobby Knight, another man reluctant to admit a mistake. Coach K doesn't have Knight's (public) temper.

They share a self-righteousness and a terrible, immature reaction to losing. That can be a lethal combination, especially when Greg Paulus is your best point guard. Yeah, Duke isn't done being an ACC also-ran. The Blue Devils don't have a point-guard replacement in their 2007 recruiting class. Looks like they'll be counting on big man Josh McRoberts to break the press again, and that means there'll probably be a few more last-seconds elbows thrown in frustration.

That's compounded by the fact that the mere mention of Duke in a college basketball context has become polarizing, the world divided into 'Duke lovers' and 'Duke haters.'

According to a report in the Charlotte Observer, there have been multiple media inquiries to the NCAA as to whether the commercial amounts to a loophole recruiting pitch for Duke.

During last week's Maryland-Duke game (page 4), the ever-clever Cameron Crazies were duped into heckling their own school. Using false info (planted by a Terrapins fan) that Maryland forward Nik Caner-Medley's girlfriend's name is "Myra" and her pet name for him is "Piggy," the Crazies made pig noises and showered Caner-Medley with chants of "Piggy." Myron Piggie, of course, is the former AAU basketball coach and convicted drug dealer who gave money to several college basketball players, including Corey Maggette in 1997 before he signed with Duke.

Boozer initially said he worked as a programmer and made $125,000 per year. But when told former co-workers said he was an administrative assistant, Boozer recanted, saying he earned about $40,000 annually doing administrative work.

Though the four wins and 15 losses under Gaudet in 1995 were removed from Krzyzewski's coaching record, Duke does not list Gaudet among its head basketball coaches. Nor does Gaudet appear among the 19 former coaches and players included in Krzyzewski's "coaching tree" even though Krzyzewski once referred to him as "my main guy.

"Yes it's true," Duhon explained, " I sleep with a ball. I carry it wherever I go the day before and day of our games. Whenever I get off a bus, I always have a ball in my hands. I just like to get the feel of it and have great dreams that night. I'm not ever going to say that when I wake up the ball isn't on the floor, but I want it there to have good thoughts when I go to bed."

There's something somewhat perplexing about journeying into Cameron Indoor Stadium. You know that the Cameron Crazies are supposed to be funny and hysterical, because Dick Vitale tells us so at every opportunity. So every time the Crazies open their collective mouths, you expect something witty and humorous to come out.

But the truth is that the student section is really the world's largest group of people who spent high school being beaten up and getting their lunch money stolen.

In his dorm room, Randolph rolls around on an office chair his roommate, Duke track and field athlete Harrison Till, reclaimed from a sidewalk.

Now free from the nagging pain in his foot, a relaxed Randolph celebrates by gaining weight.

At home, Randolph's mom, Kim, fills her son's plate and rejoices when he asks for more. Before bedtime at his dorm, Till makes two peanut butter and jelly sandwiches or two protein shakes, ready to offer one to his friend.

The smudges. For all the piety, there is the inky issue of Corey Maggette, who took money from summer-league scammer Myron Piggie. Yahoo! sports columnist Dan Wetzel opined this week that a thorough investigation and resolution of the Maggette issue might result in the Blue Devils' 1999 Final Four appearance being stricken from the record. An NCAA enforcement representative said Thursday that it has investigated and found no impropriety.

And then there is the issue of former Krzyzewski assistant Quin Snyder, now up to his carefully styled locks in scandal at Missouri.

There are many things to point to in terms of how this season went so awry. For instance, DeMarc absolutely fell apart to end his Final Four-less Duke career, denting the rims of Cameron along the way with his oft-short line-drive free throws.

Or how about young Kyle Singler's love for the deep shot (he hit only 34 percent of his threes despite often being pretty open) when he was easily our best interior offensive player? And then there's his love for committing unnecessary fouls 40 feet from the basket. I was at my buddy's apartment the other day and he told me Singler would be coming over later to pick up some paint for an art class. I was amazed. Given that he spent the last month of the season on the perimeter, I could've sworn he was terrified of paint.

Let's not forget Taylor King, the guy who ESPN loves to tell us "never met a shot he didn't like" and "has no conscience" when it comes to shooting. They always say this as if it's a good thing. It's not. Especially when Taylor was riding one of the coldest streaks I've ever seen. Did he hit a single three after January? Tough to remember.

'I felt the whole system let me down,' Carrawell said. 'Whether it was NBA scouts, my agent, NBA (general managers), Coach K not lobbying enough for me -- never in history had an ACC Player of the Year gone so low.'

Under the impressive command of Mike Krzyzewski, Duke has fielded not only a team with a winning record in 21 of the past 24 seasons but also a team comprised of likable, high-quality student-athletes. When people cite programs that "do it the right way," Duke usually is the first example. These are the good guys.

Chris Paul, a former Wake Forest guard now with the New Orleans Hornets in the National Basketball Association, said Redick could be "pretty arrogant at times" and recounted a tangle with the Duke guard in 2004. "I was guarding him and he slapped me right in the face," Paul said. "The ref saw it and he got a technical."

Some fans, however, have a hard time seeing it that way. Since Krzyzewski first signed on as USA Basketball coach prior to the 2005-06 season, none of his four Duke teams has managed to make it past the Sweet 16 of the NCAA Tournament. And the 2006-07 team looked to be in slight danger of not even making the tournament before bowing out in the first round.

Meanwhile, rival North Carolina's past four teams have advanced beyond the Sweet 16 three times, twice reaching the Final Four and most recently capturing the national championship.

Do Duke fans have reason to worry that the troublesome trend will continue now that Krzyzewski is set to take on Olympic-sized duties again? Would the balance of power be decidedly different if Krzyzewski wouldn't spend so much time with USA Basketball?

Perhaps so.

Earlier in the NCAA Tournament, the Blue Devils vowed not to allow another game slip away with a late-game collapse. They believed the experience against Maryland would prevent such a repeat.

"I'd like to send a thank-you out to Maryland so our season could continue," seldom-used senior reserve Andy Borman said after the Blue Devils qualified for the Final Four.

There is absolutely no other determination you can make on Redick except to say he has been a failure in a Magic uniform. He's played two seasons under two different coaches and still occupies a seat at the end of the bench. He couldn't get on the floor for the defensive-minded Brian Hill and couldn't get on the floor for the offensive-minded Stan Van Gundy.

What's it say when Redick, one of the best pure long-range shooters in college basketball history, can't play for Van Gundy, whose system puts a premium on long-range shooters?

And you know what? Mike Krzyzewski knew it. For much of the game he calmly sat in his seat. There were few exclamations or outbursts. He knew what he was watching. It was Christians and lions. There was no amount of coaching that could make up for the talent gap so Krzyzewski figured he might as well sit down and keep quiet.

"We didn''t play well tonight," Krzyzewski said. "... Villanova outplayed us. I love Villanova''s team and what Jay has done with his team. They''ve got a chance to do something special, because they can really handle the ball and they play very good defense and they''re tough. They''re just a tough basketball team. They''re a very, very good basketball team."

Duke was shell-shocked by a 12-1 Villanova run early in the second half as six different Wildcats scored. Duke never recovered and seemed, at that point, like it was simply trying to keep the game from becoming a blowout.

Two of Duke''s stars, Gerald Henderson and Jon Scheyer, combined for 4-of-32 from the field including 3-for-15 from 3-point range. It wasn''t an off night of shooting. It was Villanova''s defense.

Villanova has an outside chance of becoming the next Duke.

The question is: just what exactly is Duke becoming?

Now, the Crazies are peopled with young blood, the freshmen. That seems to be what it's come to in Durham -- the student section has been taken over by frosh in recent years. And get this: There is a significant sentiment even on campus that regards the once-revered Crazies with embarrassment, that looks down on them. They don't seem clever, and they don't seem spontaneous.

They rely on lame attempts at biting humor, body paint and capes. And that isn't enough anymore, because at the end of the day, at the end of the game ... it's only Carrot Top material.

"It felt good man, it felt good. There are a lot of people around the country who don't like Greg Paulus, and I'm pretty sure a lot of those people were rooting for me," he said. "It was a good highlight, and hopefully it makes SportsCenter."

With the history behind the Cameron Crazies, Duke criticizing anyone for chants and gestures is simply laughable.

[Dean] Smith and Krzyzewski haven't gotten along since 1984, when Krzyzewski insisted there was a ''double standard'' in the way ACC referees worked -one for North Carolina, another for the rest of the league.

Congrats to Coach K for questioning why Hansbrough was still in the game and inadvertently using Isiah Thomas' "he was asking for it" defense. And the Duke fans wonder why everyone hates Duke. If the roles were reversed, and this had happened to McRoberts, Coach K would have shown up for the news conference covered in McRoberts's blood, fighting back tears, urging for the offending UNC player to be suspended for the entire ACC tournament and basically looking like Jackie Kennedy in Dallas after the JFK shooting. God, I hate Duke

A return to Olympic glory under Coach K would be annoying at best, insufferable at worst. The 'leading from the heart' talk of "special, special kids." The lavish, condescending praise for bug-squashed opponents, even when said opponents hail from the war-torn Balkans and would be content with immigration visas.

Think those American Express ads were irritatingly ubiquitous (and ubiquitously irritating)? Just wait until Krzyzewski is aligned with official Olympic sponsor Visa. Duke loathers will long for the days of Dan and Dave. And if America's Coach brings home the gold? Forget a Sports Illustrated commemorative issue. Dante's "Inferno" would be more appropriate.

Coach K's Blue Devils are the Yankees of college basketball, although not nearly as arrogant as George Steinbrenner's enterprise, but arrogant just the same

"We're always winning," senior guard Chris Duhon said. "We're always on top. And people get tired of that. But what they don't realize is it never gets old for us. Never."

Christian Laettner. He also missed practices, had a bad attitude from day one in the end, was a wasted first round pick.

Indeed, Duke got off to a strong start after coach/American hero/ethicist Mike Krzyzewski disowned the school's floor-slapping legacy, benching the runty Paulus for talented sophomore Nolan Smith. And after a midseason slump in which the Devils lost three of four games, the team found its mojo by rebenching Paulus-who had somehow wormed his way back into the lineup-in favor of freshman Elliot Williams.

While reasonable fans might wonder why Williams, a reigning McDonald's All-American, wasn't seeing more time to begin with, Krzyzewski got credit for unearthing a diamond in the rough. "He's been really good in practice and always has a good attitude," Coach K explained. This, of course, is the Duke way-basketball as leadership seminar, where winning is an outgrowth of "a good attitude" rather than the simple act of replacing a substandard basketball player with one who's capable of passing, shooting, playing defense, and dribbling. Actually, strike that last one-at Duke, dribbling is always optional.

And Duke fans are dorks. Just like Stanford fans. Your fashion-backward rugby shirts, your painted-faces barely concealing your gaunt, pasty countenances, the ignominy of not having gotten into Yale, your soul-murdering future in hedge-fund management, your embarrassing I-Pod playlists, those dog-eared copies of Elfquest ... How do you live with yourselves?

The faction expands each March, with each new pronouncement from Dick Vitale, who could spend 10 minutes gushing over the Duke manager.

Vitale goes to bed each night dreaming up new ways to fawn in behalf of Duke. He means well. He probably could find something nice to say about the ex-coach at Baylor.

The Duke today is above something so trivial as a loss to the Terps, who are entitled to feel vindicated after being sent to be with the dead.

Thanks to ESPN, the Blue Devils are more well-known than the average working stiff in the NBA.

When they were finished, Krzyzewski launched into an eight minute profanity-laced tirade. 'He started to yell and rant and rave,' Peele said. One of the reporters had carried a tape recorder inside his backpack and recorded the entire address. 'I just wonder,' Krzyzewski told the journalists, 'where your mindset is that you don't appreciate the kids in this locker room. I'm not looking for puff pieces or anything like that, but you're whacked out and you don't appreciate what the [expletive deleted] is going on and it pisses me off'and I'm suggesting that if you want to appreciate what's going on--get your head out of your [expletive deleted] and start looking out for what's actually happening.'

They told me a lot of things like they always do in recruiting,' Collison said of Duke coaches comparing him to other players. 'At Duke they tell you you have all this freedom. You can basically do anything you want out there. If you believe everything they tell you, it's probably the best place to go.

'When you see what they've got and look at it from the outside, you see it might not be everything they say. I like what coach (Roy) Williams said. He said, ‘You earn the freedom you get by showing what you can do.'

'As a high school kid, I can definitely see how people can get caught up in a lot of that. They (Devils) make you think it's the place to go.'

Dowdell, who was first tackled in the lane by a mob of teammates then bounced up and extended the ''Virginia Tech'' on his jersey toward the Crazies, was stopped by Duke coach Mike Krzyzewski during the commotion.

''He told me I was too good of a player to be celebrating like that,'' Dowdell said. ''But the way they beat us last year, they certainly celebrated. It's hard to control your emotion at that point and it was impossible for me to hold my feelings inside.''

To keep students on the same page with cheers, line monitors, the student group in charge of coordinating the Crazies, are handing out cheer sheets. They contain regular cheers and information on the opponent for each home game.

Past Crazies never needed cheer sheets. Recently, though, sheets have been distributed to students. Current head line monitor Donald Wine promised the practice would continue all season.

My goal as a basketball coach is to get all five of those fingers, all five of those guys [on the court together] playing as one. I tell them, 'We play like a fist.' When we are introduced or in a huddle, we don't put our hands in or boogie or whatever you do... what we do is put our fists in: five playing as one.

USA Today also reported that NCAA president Myles Brand "has fielded a number of calls (about the commercial) from concerned ADs and commissioners, presumably on behalf of their teams

During the tournament, I saw two reasons why so many fans dislike J. J. Redick. After he hit a big three in the second half vs. BC, he went into his brief routine where he throws his arms in the air (not a big deal) and practically preens as he runs back down the court (very annoying if you're not rooting for Duke). When things were not going his way late in the first half of the semi-final vs. Wake Forest, the TV cameras caught him shouting two big-time f-bombs at 'everybody'. It's hard to fault him for the latter transgression, though. He was just following the example of his coach.

Krzyzewski took a shot at the Tar Heels Sunday, saying that Duke doesn't discuss injuries "unlike other schools."

It was completely unnecessary.

I'd much rather have a school provide a comprehensive injury report than a Bill Belichick-esque way of hiding everything.

This weekend's game in Coral Gables against a Miami team that has already knocked off both Georgia Tech and Maryland is a huge one for Duke. Should the Blue Devils lose and fall to 0-3, it might be time to start assigning blame. And if the players are talented, but the results just aren't there, then it might be time to start asking the guy running this show what exactly is going on.

Of course, we don't do that around here

Krzyzewski said Tuesday that Duke never has been under investigation by the NCAA and that if Duke did something wrong in this case, "we should be punished."

"I have no problem with that," he said.

The irony here is not the utter lunacy of suggesting that any Duke player could ever be media underrated. Nor is it the fact that this particular player was touted as the next great college impact player before he ever set foot on campus. (Vitale himself wrote multiple columns touting this "special newcomer" while Henderson was still in high school.)

No, the problem here is that Henderson, as one of Vitale's heralded "Diaper Dandies," earned and received coast to coast headlines, commentary, and notoriety for the dirtiest play in college basketball history. Somehow, a mere five games later, Henderson is being portrayed as a quiet, unassuming, underrated player worthy of more positive press. The suggestion is nothing short of a journalistic outrage.

Here's a really funny one: Anyone from Duke complaining about student behavior

"The only reason it's played so often is because it's good. People don't put those things on if it's bad or not doing something good," Krzyzewski said. "There's a certain group that I really didn't think about when I did it that will be negative towards it, because if one of your competitors is doing something good, you don't like to see it all the time.

The greatest thing is knowing that I loved you and you loved me back

Body, mind, soul: Casey Sanders has it all

This will be heresy to some, and lunacy to others, but it could it possibly be that Coach K is getting by on his reputation?

Yes, he's won three NCAA championships, but just one in the last 14 years -- an inability to finish that might have gotten the legendary John Wooten fired at UCLA.

Another indication of a coach's prowess is how his proteges are doing. Consider the following disciples of Coach K: Tommy Amaker has been unable to restore Michigan to hoops glory. Or even the NCAA tournament. At Notre Dame, Mike Brey is looking more and more like Ty Willingham, a nice man who can't get the job done. Dave Henderson just got fired at Delaware -- Delaware? -- with two years remaining on his contract after his third straight losing season. And Quinn Snyder was fired at Missouri amidst questions of unethical activities.

Similar to all those televised sales pitches featuring coach K, the Dookies try to sell their program as the nation's best -- that Redick is the best player in the country, and Krzyzewski is the best coach in the country.

But I'm not buying it

Although the Crazies like to get a head start, official tenting doesn't begin until February 1st, at this time, 'official tent checks' begin by Donald Wine and his staff of line monitors.

But there's more to the anti-Duke feelings than just the human instinct to recoil at continued excellence. It's not so much the success that bothers people as it is the Blue Devils' reaction to the success. Duke carries on as if it has the magic formula and everybody else has coffee grounds.

They don't slap their palms on the floor in the NBA. (If Shaq gets any thicker this offseason, he might not be able to see the floor beneath his feet, much less bend over and slap it.)

Where football is concerned, Duke has become a place completely different from Northwestern, Stanford, Rice, Navy, Vanderbilt, Boston College and Wake Forest. Each of those schools has a desire, maybe a need, to stay within shouting distance of the football mainstream.

Duke could not care less, but it doesn't yet have the courage -- nor the intelligence -- to say so.

Nose rings, visible tattoos and orange hair are as hard to find as battered Escorts. More than 70 percent of the Blue Devils belong to fraternities or sororities. Overwhelmingly white, Duke even has a new chapter of a black fraternity, Omega Psi Phi. It has four members.

I remember a TV timeout in a big game a few years ago, a game your team was losing at the time. I remember being behind the Duke bench to hear your right-hand man, Johnny Dawkins, drop screaming F-bombs into players' faces and obscenely impugn the masculinity of every starter in the huddle. Your face indicated that you had no problem with it, perhaps even encouraged it.

Maybe they're too busy with their future-CEO classes to actually care about basketball anymore -- or at least care as much about the hoops as they seem to care about amusing each other. Now they appear to be too smug to realize, much less admit, that their mere presence alone isn't worth the 20 points they seem to think it is.

They're too in love with themselves.

Curious about what the Cameron Crazies' cheer sheet for the Duke-Carolina game looked like? We've got it right here.

There were problem signs this season even before the UNC game. A cheer sheet for the Virginia game (including such gems as "You killed Abel," to be directed at the Cavs' Jason Cain) was circulated on the Internet, complete with an Instant Messenger screen name to submit ideas. An enterprising Duke hater used this information to dupe the Crazies into self-deprecating taunts during the Maryland game.

Worst of all, I hardly can stand to pick up Sports Illustrated's college basketball preview issue, because some overhyped Dukie like Steve Wojciehowski is always grinning back at me. Even in the years the special, special Blue Devils aren't No. 1.

The irony is that Krzyzewski came into the Atlantic Coast Conference years ago, complaining about the double standard of former North Carolina coach Dean Smith's treatment by the refs, compared to that of his peers.

Coach K loved to twit Smith about what he saw as a weak will, and what others saw as human frailty. Krzyzewski would say with a smirk: "Maybe Dean can come by and smoke some cigarettes." But Smith kicked the habit years ago, long before Krzyzewski, apart from the tobacco jones, turned into the man he once envied and ridiculed.

In introducing the 10-minute piece, host Bob Ley holds up Duke as the gold standard for a successful balance of athletic and academic success. But while Ley says that Duke had a 100-percent graduation rate in three of the five years chronicled, 'the reality might not be as ideal as advertised.'

Krzyzewski says things, abominable things, that other coaches can't. Listen to him. Read his lips. Coach K gets away with it because he's Coach K. Need a reminder? Read the floor at Cameron Indoor Stadium

t is about the notion they expressed, which is that the Duke fans who caused the message board shutdown by being too critical are "fickle and spoiled" and "ignorant and foolish," as they wrote in a column posted on their website the next day. (By the way, that column also blamed the West Virginia loss on the flu, which was interesting coming from a website with a specific policy against rumor-mongering.

He indirectly blamed UNC coach Roy Williams by saying Hansbrough, an All-American, shouldn't have been on the court. "The game was over before that -- the outcome of the game, let's put it that way," Coach K said Sunday. "That's unfortunate that those people were in the game. ... I mean, 20 seconds left. You know what I mean. What I'm saying -- I'm not blaming anybody. It's unfortunate. We should have both probably had our walk-ons in. ... If they're still playing, we're going to play."

'So, is it true? Does Duke really get all the calls?' " Sweet mimics. "I'm like, 'Of course, it's true. It's Duke.' It's Mike Krzyzewski. The refs were afraid of him. He could get you calls that no one else could get. That's part of playing for Duke.

"Coach K told me I'd have to work my butt off, that I'd have to earn everything," Randolph said. "That's fine with me. I've dreamed of the NBA since I was 11 years old, and I think he'll get me ready for that."

If we're trying to inspire our impressionable youth with a commercial, don't we owe them a view of the full range of the tools of victory? How in the world do you omit central components of success such as referee intimidation with language that'd peel the cheek off a Soprano? Did an editor accidentally leave that part on the floor? Did mushrooming gas prices prompt the non-payment of so many AMEX bills that the company just couldn't afford a full accounting?

Or possibly the aggrieved honchos from other universities complained of Duke's recruiting advantage from the ad as a crutch argument, when really they felt sorry for Krzyzewski.

After all, it's hard to imagine a seasoned coach complying to recite ad copy this self-aggrandizing.

The truth is, as Krzyzewski himself admitted it after UNC's win in Durham on Feb. 11, UNC's just better than Duke right now. And despite public protests to the opposite, by both sides when the subject is brought up, beyond winning, what matters most to both Duke and Carolina is keeping up with the other side.

Since Duke's most recent Final Four appearance ('04), UNC has been to the Final Four three times, with one title in the bag and another just 80 minutes away.

That's why Duke is back in the one-and-done business. Right or wrong, it's that simple.

The reasons for this hatred are legion, and rife with irony. You hate our team for many of the same reasons we love it: because Duke runs a relentlessly excellent, squeaky-clean program filled with good kids who play hard, go to class, never get in trouble and flop big-time as soon as they reach the NBA. (By the way, that last point comes up a lot, and you need to understand: we don't care. Sure, we want our players to do well after they get drafted, but if they do it's a bonus. Duke is our NBA. Everything after that is just a job.)

But Krzyzewski's influence in basketball and power over the university have taken center stage. Brill said Krzyzewski goes to great lengths to build rapport with students and university official-on his terms.

"It's the most controlled environment you've ever seen," Brill said of Krzyzewski's handling of the local media, school officials and the Cameron Crazies, the team's student support group.

"It's whatever coach Krzyzewski wants."

In the last few seasons, several columnists in national markets have written columns explaining why they hate Duke.

Worst of all, I hardly can stand to pick up Sports Illustrated's college basketball preview issue, because some overhyped Dukie like Steve Wojciehowski is always grinning back at me. Even in the years the special, special Blue Devils aren't No. 1.

But there was something particularly unsettling about the spectacle of Brodhead prostrating himself before Krzyzewski for much of the last week. Never, it seems, has a coach had such an upper hand in a relationship with a university president as Krzyzewski has at Duke. Confronted with the prospect of Krzyzewski's departure, Brodhead essentially begged him to stay. He took Krzyzewski to dinner to tell him, as he later recounted, "how deeply he was valued here and how much I hope he'll stay ... [and] of my personal respect for him and our deep hope that he'll serve out the rest of his career at Duke." He joined a rally outside Duke's basketball arena, Cameron Indoor Stadium, to chant "Coach K, please stay!"--even locking arms with students to form a big human "K." And, of course, he approved unspecified "modifications" to Krzyzewski's lifetime contract with the school--which had been signed in 2001--that, while certainly falling short of the Lakers' $8-million-a-year offer, no doubt cushioned the steep opportunity cost to Krzyzewski of staying at Duke. It's hard to imagine Brodhead doing all this for a star history professor tempted by the Ivy League.

Even after Krzyzewski's decision was made, Brodhead continued to grovel, praising Krzyzewski at Monday's press conference as "a teacher as much as a coach and ... a coach in the way that makes that term continuous with the whole concept that college is all about." Turning to Krzyzewski after ticking off all his wonderful traits, Brodhead gushed, "That's part of what makes you so great."

Now you know why J.J. Redick will be a nonfactor as an NBA player.

Forget all the talk about his pure shooting stroke translating to the next level. How will he get that beautiful shot off?

Because in a game against precisely the kind of long, quick athletes he'll meet all over the place in the NBA, Redick was lost.

Next time, Redick claims, those shots will fall. The offense will execute. The defense will clamp down. There will be enough depth to handle any foul trouble.

He promises.

"We will be back here next year," Redick said. "Write that down -- we will be back in the Final Four."

They don't have those precious group-hug huddles after every foul in the NBA. (Unless they're plotting a way to get the coach fired by the next TV timeout. Or, to be Laker-specific, plotting how to dynamite the ball out of Kobe's hands.)

"She didn't know my background," E says, making a move to the kitchen. "I ain't come from money like a Christian Laettner or a Grant Hill or even like Shane [Battier]. She didn't know my background, so for her to just go off on me...you know I had to say something."

"We get portrayed as choirboys," Duke sophomore J.J. Redick said last week. "People don't like that."

"If I went to another school, I'm pretty sure I'd have my fair share of people who don't like me," Redick said, "but not to the level that it is... . I don't know what the word is, to be honest with you. Animosity. Resentment. Hate. Whatever the word is, the negative feelings towards Duke and towards me come from the fact that we have had success over the past however many years you want to put it in."

"We've had a lot of success. We've won a lot of ball games. We've done things the right way. So people just hate us."

I like that Coach K truly cares for his players after their playing days are finished, even guys like Maggette and William Avery, whose early NBA departures rocked the program. I dislike that in recent years some of his players' parents have been moving to the Durham area with their sons and getting jobs with companies run by Duke boosters.

'Usually, I don't play anyway, so it doesn't have that much of an effect on me.'

The one last week, Duke-Maryland. I sometimes play a little game where I count unfair calls for each side. I rarely see a difference of more than 6. In this game, I counted a 24-4 Duke advantage (and that includes the bizarre charging foul against Shane Battier). Maryland could have been UCLA in the early 1970s, and it wouldn't have made a difference. Of course, Jim Nance and Billy Packer, both massive Duke fans, hardly mentioned it. But the fans were aware of it. Watch the replays of Duke on offense, and especially Battier. I counted no fewer than 12 uncalled charges against the Blue Devils, charges where the exact same thing was called against Maryland. Fairleigh-Dickinson could have won with that kind of officiating. I now believe this to be the worst-officiated game I've ever seen. And somebody has a lot of explaining to do

As the two teams left the court following another Duke 103-80 blowout, Krzyzewski stopped for some consoling words with the wounded Hicks.

Lucky for Wake -- or maybe unlucky -- the Kapitan didn't rip the poor kid's name right off his jersey.

I don't know whether K has lost his touch, but I do know Duke has established a new ceiling for itself over the past five years -- and it's not the Final Four.

The Blue Devils had finished last in the league, and their commander had bailed out on his troops. As one Tar Heel fan was heard to sneer, "If Coach K still had Bobby Hurley, Grant Hill and Christian Laettner, think he'd have sucked it up and coached?"

'The first couple of weeks here, I didn't eat three meals a day. I sometimes just forgot. Small things like getting a haircut, keeping up your hygiene...things you don't pay attention to because Mom and Dad take care of them.'

A native of Philadelphia, Boyle is about eight months younger than her former boss at Duke, Gail Goestenkors, and said she talked a lot to the new Texas coach during this process of considering going back to the Blue Devils. Boyle stressed that she thinks Duke is a "great job" for somebody.

But...it's worth noting that whoever that "somebody" is obviously should know who runs the show at Duke: Coach K.

Mike talks a good game about relationships and people, but, no matter what one of his players does, he never fails to rationalize it and find justification for it. This time he topped himself by blaming Roy Williams and saying the harm is to Henderson.

Krzyzewski had his starters in. He was still calling timeouts. He was trying to win the game.

Williams actually had a substitute at the scorer's table ready to enter the game for Hansbrough, who couldn't come out while he was shooting free throws.

Truth is, that doesn't really matter. Henderson flung himself across the lane, leading with his forearm. I've never seen anyone grab a rebound with a forearm.

Tommy Amaker's Michigan bunch embarrassed itself and -- by association -- the Duke franchise Friday, losing to Minnesota in the first round of the Big Ten Tournament. This was only the latest disgrace to the Coach K -- um, er -- coaching tree.

We trot out that bromide with caution because to credit Coach K with a "tree" at this point would be complimenting shrubs everywhere. We'll give it to you straight from the site of the latest fiasco: If Krzyzewski calls recommending one of his guys right now, make that scratchy noise with your voice and pretend like you've been disconnected.

To summarize: Quin Snyder ran Missouri into the ground before resigning under pressure earlier this year. It's going on three years since Mike Brey had a tournament appearance at Notre Dame. David Henderson is feeling the heat at Delaware after a 9-21 season. It's been four years since Bob Bender was fired at Washington where he was 26 games under .500.

Just the other day Fairfield's Tim O'Toole (Duke assistant, 1995-97) was fired with a 112-120 mark in eight seasons.

Krzyzewski is similarly abusive to referees, constantly berating them--usually in florid language--for their apparent shortcomings. In March, after his team blew an 11-point lead to lose to Connecticut in the Final Four, Krzyzewski barked over and over at the refs, "You killed us, you killed us." A favorite pastime for Duke detractors is to count how many times each game Coach K is caught on camera dropping, as they call them, "F-bombs." Krzyzewski has even abused his position for partisan politics, hosting a fundraiser for North Carolina Republican Senate candidate Elizabeth Dole that--because the event was called "Blue Devils for Dole" and was held at a university-owned facility--gave the impression that Duke was endorsing Dole. In all of these cases of misbehavior, Duke has simply looked the other way.

When Maryland roared to an early 23-14 lead, for example, Coach K went to not Sanders but to another familiar hole card: he slyly halted Terp momentum, shut up the crowd and stopped the game (for a couple of minutes) by complaining about the slippery floor.

Duke did cut the lead to five (34-29) towards the end of the first half, before Blake responded with a bucket. Then, as Coach K barked at Williams on Duke's final possession: "Wait ... Wait ... Wait ...," J-Will turned to look at the coach for an instant, Blake stole the ball and went coast-to-coast for a layup and a 38-29 margin.

"I take full responsibility for that," said K. "But this was not a one-possession game."

Did Coach K order the code red? I really don't know. But I know this; they got hammered by Carolina…again. And they didn't like that Hansbrough was still on the floor late in the game and they were looking to send a message. Well, they did, with the message being, we're not nearly the program we used to be either in ability or class.

Krzyzewski essentially admitted it was intentional when he said, 'The game was over before that. I mean the outcome of the game, let's put it that way. That's unfortunate, too, that those people were in the game in that play. Maybe this wouldn't have happened.”

Translation: If your guy wasn't still on the floor at the end of the game, maybe my guy wouldn't have jacked-him in the grill. Ie. It was deliberate.

In the Blue Devils' game with Wake Forest on Sunday, Krzyzewski inserted rarely used guard Patrick Davidson into the starting lineup. Not for his "game," but for his "maim."

Davidson - whose bio in the Duke media guide begins "Valuable practice player for the Blue Devils" - was making his first career start.

Davidson banged Wake Forest guard Chris Paul seconds after the opening tip, apparently in an effort to intimidate the Wooden Award and Cousy Award candidate in front of the Cameron Crazies. Davidson committed a second foul on Paul and exited the game to a standing "O" and a warm embrace from Coach K. His boxscore: 2 minutes played, 2 fouls.
...
Of course, basketball's a physical game. But it's physical enough without this kind of thuggery. What makes it even worse, in my mind, is that this was a premeditated act, a game plan.

Something's wrong when perhaps the college game's best coach, with a roster full of studs, has to stoop to that garbage as a game plan.

Get a grip, Coach. What kind of life lessons are you teaching over there?

Through his 25 seasons as Duke's coach, Krzyzewski has had a few, shall I say, flat tires or disappointments or troubled figures who either couldn't or wouldn't adjust to that motion offense and that man-to-man defense.

Back when you had to say his name, not just Coach K, Duke had recruited Joey Beard, who was supposed to be awesome. And Crawford Palmer was not far behind. And Bill Jackman went home to Nebraska.

They are few in number but, for certain, add Shavlik Randolph to this shallow, thin list of prep stars the gurus figured could one day be among Duke's better players.

A writer from a small newspaper in Maryland, obviously unaware of the brick wall he was about to encounter, contacted Duke and asked for an opportunity to talk with Krzyzewski. The topic: legendary coach Don DeVoe. The 60-year-old Navy leader, who ranks among the 20 winningest active coaches in the nation, was an assistant under Bob Knight at Army when Krzyzewski played there in the late 1960s. The writer wanted a quote. Of all the others contacted for the DeVoe story, everyone agreed to talk. Even Knight, not exactly the warm and fuzzy type, responded with a personal phone call - to a writer he'd never met and never spoken with - within a few days.

The response from the Duke sports information department? Coach K doesn't do interviews. Not even to talk about one of his former coaches? No. Not even one question? No. Even if it's submitted in writing? No. How about a forwarded e-mail, from the writer to the SID to the coach, and he can respond with a single quote at his convenience? No. How about a simple statement, without any specific questions? No. Even if this whole thing takes less than 60 seconds? No. No. No.

Carolina and Duke played one of the most heated ACC Tournament finals in history in 1989, but it was almost overshadowed by the off-court battle between the two coaches. After taking offense to "J.R. Can't Reid" signs at Cameron that he felt were racially motivated, Smith pointed out that the combined SAT scores of Reid and fellow Tar Heel Scott Williams were higher than those of Duke's Christian Laettner and Danny Ferry. That incited Blue Devil fans, who felt Smith was using confidential information to his advantage.

The Piggie scandal even reached its dirty tentacles into the once-pristine world of Mike Krzyzewski's Duke Blue Devils. If the NCAA truly believed in equal punishment for all members, it should vacate Duke's 1999 national runner-up finish from the books for playing the ineligible Corey Maggette

But even Duke's players admitted Friday that there was a high level of disappointment with the current state of the program. Greg Paulus admitted that "it's not characteristic for a Duke team to lose 11 games" and that he'd be playing with a big chip on his shoulder this year because of that. Coming from the ultra tight-lipped point guard, that statement carries even more weight.

Whether Coach K admits it publicly or not, his program is currently in a bit of a valley. On the court and on the recruiting trail, the Duke brand has lost some of its value.

That's not to say Krzyzewski and Co. can't exceed expectations this year to bring the Duke program back to where it was when Williams and J.J. Redick left in 2006. But Greg Monroe's verbal commitment to John Thompson III and the Hoyas was one more reminder that the start of the 2007-08 season brings less than unbridled optimism about the Duke program's future.

The NCAA Division I Men's Basketball Committee has issued a public reprimand to Duke University student-athlete Matt Christensen for verbally assaulting and making physical contact with a member of the officiating crew after Duke's regional semifinal loss to Indiana University, Bloomington, in the 2002 championship. The committee also directed Christensen to write a letter of apology to the official, which he has done. In addition, the committee will withhold from Duke the per diem for Christensen's participation in the regional semifinal. Lee Fowler, committee chair and director of athletics at North Carolina State University, said that had Christensen not exhausted his intercollegiate athletics eligibility at the end of the 2002 season, the committee would have suspended him from at least the next NCAA tournament game in which Duke participated

Sunday night, I had a good look at you from across the court, in the first row past that gold bar that divides the basketball fans from the real whine and cheese crowd in front of them. Sure, you had a better seat than me-by a little bit at least. But I jumped up and pumped my fists when Luol Deng threw down that first big dunk in the second half, appreciating this 6-foot-8 talent before he leaves for the NBA.

But when I glanced over to you guys, poor Body Paint Crazie didn't know what had just happened. He had been too busy looking around at the rest of you for which uncreative chant to sputter out next, and he flat-out missed Shelden's steal and pass (and after he had made all that effort to stop by the tent!).

The newspaper report, from the New Orleans Times-Picayune, suggested the parents of two Duke players -- junior guard Chris Duhon and former center Carlos Boozer, now a rookie in the NBA -- received disproportionately high salaries from employers who happened to be Duke boosters. Both players' families moved to the Durham area when their sons reported to Duke.

To wit: Krzyzewski decreed that the stone-cold J.J. Redick needed a group hug at halftime of the first-round victory against Alabama State...

Krzyzewski, without being asked, brought up in calm and measured tones that, "the game was over before [the foul]. That's unfortunate, too, that those people were in the game in that play.'

By throwing that out there, he flipped at least part of the post-incident debate away from his program and squarely on Carolina.

That he tried to do that was not surprising. While I was waiting for Krzyzewski to enter the pressroom after the game nearly every reporter was speculating what accusation the Duke coach would throw out there. There was no doubt in any of our minds that something was coming.

The assistant coaches -- In every Duke broadcast, you get at least five shots of assistants Johnny Dawkins, Chris Collins and Steve Wojciechowski sitting on the bench and every broadcaster in America raves about why they're the best assistants ever. By the way, none of them won a national championship as a player at Duke.

'The attendance last year was pathetic in terms of fan support, and that's something we're trying to rectify this year,' said Roberto Bazzani, a Duke senior who serves as head line monitor. 'Last year, you could walk in 15 minutes after tipoff and still get great seats.

'Ten years ago, five years ago, they'd turn away people at the door because we were too packed. We could sell out every game, even exhibition games and Blue-White games. It was packed.'

Bazzani said the athletics department had told him the dropoff 'was in the past five years.'

A reporter on that ACC conference call Monday -- OK, me -- noted Coach K's tough personal stance on dirty play and asked how many games he had suspended Christian Laettner for stomping Kentucky's Aminu Timberlake at the 1992 NCAA Tournament.

"First of all," Coach K said to me, "would you call that a stomp?"

Absolutely, I said. I'd seen the replay many times.

"Well then," he said. "My judgment and yours would differ."

So there you have it. Laettner didn't stomp Timberlake, and Henderson didn't mean to hurt Hansbrough.

In 1994-95, Duke was 9-3 and ranked No. 11 in the country when Mike Krzyzewski underwent season-ending back surgery. Under 12-year Krzyzewski aide Pete Gaudet, Duke went 4-15 and suffered its only NCAA Tournament miss of the past 20 years. Gaudet was inappropriately saddled with the 4-15 record, and the episode's strain caused he and Coach K to part ways. Today, Gaudet is an Ohio State women's assistant.

He's a winner, he's a whiner. A great leader of men, a great torturer of officials. A squeaky clean basketball ambassador, a calculating self-promoter.

Of course, the former typically comes from the same sources (TV announcers, Cameron Crazies), while the latter flows from just about everyone else in the free world.

Who's gonna believe Carlos Boozer next time he promises to do something?

Why should anyone take the word of these lowlifes again after the double-cross they pulled on the Cavaliers?

Throughout your career, you have been accused of burning out your players and leaving them unable to perform at a competitive level once in the NBA. And while Blue Devil players are now starting to play better in the pros, they also tend to be leaving Duke early. Have you observed a reverse correlation between the quality of your players' performance in the NBA and the amount of time they've spent under your iron fist?

Mike Krzyzewski has launched his official website, located at www.coachk.com. Which was surprising to Fly and other non-Dookies (translation: those who don't live in Durham or didn't attend Duke) because we all thought his official site already was at www.espn.com.

This is not the way this fourth generation Dukie grew up viewing his favorite team, nor is it the thing about which Dick Vitale continually boasts every chance he gets.

You certainly can see why some coaches and athletic directors stewed about the Duke basketball recruiting video that's airing as a March Madness American Express commercial starring coach Mike Krzyzewski.

After all, the spot murmurs on for 30 seconds without once showing the Duke coach profanely haranguing any game officials.

While we're at it, enough with the Mike Krzyzewski valentine for American Express. Yes, he is a great coach, one of the best ever. But the big knock against Duke and Coach K is their arrogance, and this song of myself, talking about how he's not a coach but a shaper of men, la-di-da, was arrogant beyond belief the first time, to say nothing of the 27th.

Anyhow, both Knight and K have had contentious relations with the press. Both belittle questioners who displease them, and both expect to be treated more equally than their fellow coaches during post-game interviews. (Krzyzewski, like Knight, is also no fan of the free press. K's famous threats to the Duke Chronicle staff in the mid-1980s are well documented and were also caught on tape.) No big surprise that he refers to Duke as "my program."

Krzyzewski hit Livingston with a full-court press in late April when he and an assistant met with the guard in Peoria. Livingston said Krzyzewski told him that there were necessary steps he had to take to get to the NBA.

They included going to Duke.

You might tell Frank Morock to look at the TV replay of the 1987 Notre Dame-Duke basketball game at Cameron Indoor Stadium. The Blue Devil mascot wore a large headband that read "Buckwheat" and the Duke students chanted "Buckwheat" every time that David Rivers touched the ball. There was no racist outrage from the media and no apology from Duke.

A few critics correctly pointed out John Wooden in his UCLA days rode the refs hard, too. But no dynasty in this country gets a pass as often as Duke does. George Steinbrenner needs a flak jacket with the New York Yankees. Not coach K.

On top of all this, UCLA handed us a golden opportunity, violating rule #1 above. Just a week before the game UCLA player Jenali McCoy quit the team, ostensibly because of media pressure. However, rumors got out that in actuality, Jelani was suspended for marijuan use. Add to this the fact that senior Kris Johnson HAD been disciplined for marijuna and the table was set... The crowd that afternoon sported the occasional paper blunt,a dn roused many a marijuan related jibe (Where's Jelani? Smoking pot!), but the crowning glory, in my mind was the 500 green construciton paper marijuna leaves. Conceived by Matt Ching and I, we bought a ream of green paper, and, recuitng some guys from the tent line (see kville), worked for an hour and a half to cut out and distribute the leaves....the media reaction was mixed: ABC wouldn't show them, and the New York Times felt we weren't respecting the players' privacy. However, vindication was ours, when later that week at the pre-Carolina pep rally Coach K thanked the crowd for its support, and said "Those marijuan leaves - they were awesome."

He's cocky

Off the court, Redick doesn't seem to have a "look-at-me" bone in his body. He's pleasant in group situations, but unobtrusive.

On the court, he's totally different. He will hold the follow-through of a successful 3-pointer for an extra second or two. He will bob his head. He will pump his right fist. He will get feisty with everyone. He looks like someone who wants attention--and he gets it.

In 2002, national media criticized Krzyzewski for hosting with his wife, Duke women's coach Gail Goestenkors and former Duke player Mike Gminski, a fund-raiser for Republican senatorial candidate Elizabeth Dole at the Washington Duke Inn and Golf Club.

Critics thought Krzyzewski's endorsement looked too much like a university endorsement since the event was called "Blue Devils for Dole" and was held at a university-owned venue.

In the Duke-Kentucky regional final in 1992, so great was the game that many reporters glossed over the appalling performance of the refs in ignoring that Duke's Christian Laettner had deliberately stepped on the chest of Kentucky's Aminu Timberlake as the latter lay on the floor.

"The Crazies this year have not been as good as they have in years past," said senior Jason Levine, who is tenting. "I would say there has been a steady decline over the last three years."

Mike Krzyzewski told Kris Humphries that he was just a player - not a position -and that was exactly what the Minnesotan wanted to hear.

Give Duke credit for one thing: By no means does it load up on cupcakes like many other elite programs. However, in recent years, it has also shied away from playing nonconference games against elite opponents (note that only one of those seven tourney teams from last season, Pittsburgh, advanced beyond the first weekend) not to mention nonconference road games of any kind.

Some think Krzyzewski has lost some focus because of the pressures he's facing as coach of the Olympic team. Others think recruiting mistakes have been made. Paulus, who was rated the best point guard in the country two years ago, isn't really a point guard. Lance Thomas, who was all the rage coming out of New Jersey last year, played 20 minutes Thursday and didn't score. McRoberts puts up nice numbers but appears to believe that playing college basketball is beneath him at times. He's about as ready for the NBA as he is for Broadway, but he may very well depart after the season. If you believe what people close to the Duke program are saying, few tears will be shed in the locker room if that occurs.

'Hey, Haywood! Yeah, you Brendan! I'm talking to you, Brendan! You're a disgrace! You're bleeping, bleeping bleep! You're bleeping horrible! You're the bleepingest piece of bleep in the world and you know it don't you, you big bleeper?'

That's how one crazed Duke student, hair and face painted dark blue and a long white horn protruding from his forehead, greeted UNC's senior center Brendan Haywood, as the 7-footer warmed up just a few feet away on Thursday night.

And, hey, that guy was one of the friendlier 'Cameron Crazies.'

I'm all for going after the referees. They're the only ones between the lines getting paid for this, so they are clearly fair game. But some Crazies spend so much time yelling at the refs, they don't even seem to be cheering for Duke or paying attention to the game. My fellow writer heard one Crazie near us tonight yell to the ref, 'I hope you get cancer and die soon.' Umm, a little much.

Krzyzewski is a pontificating whiner who is never happy.

His success and longevity, his thoughtfulness and intelligence, his charming sense of humor have often put Krzyzewski in the media spotlight. Like too much sun, though, extended exposure to microphones and tape recorders brings scrutiny that can skew the message.

For instance, coach K was aghast that senior guard Chris Duhon didn't make the Atlanta All-Regional team last weekend.

"Is there something in the food there that made people (forget him)?" Krzyzewski wondered. "Duhon was the best player, and the most important player, in Atlanta. Not that he needs it - all he wants to do is win - but for him not to be chosen, you're not looking at the game the right way, OK? No way would we be going to San Antonio without Duhon. No way."

By contrast, the behavior of fans at Cameron was upsetting. Cameron Crazies don't treat anyone with respect, and I question sometimes if they respect their own team. They have made specific, hurtful references to players relatives, grades, health conditions and campus incidents.

The Cameron Crazies have endured because the school has condoned their behavior. No announcers have had the gumption to speak out on this matter.

Quin Snyder seems to attract off-the-court troubles as readily as he attracts blue-chip recruits to Missouri.

If I wanted to, I could devote this column to questioning some of Krzyzewski's decisions on and off the court over the last few years. I could suggest that the talent he brings to Durham isn't developing like it should, or that his team plays at too slow a pace, or that he hasn't evolved his recruiting and coaching strategies to fit the NCAA's new one-and-done rules, or that his commitment to the U.S. National Team takes away too much of his time.

In addition to paying Coach K homage, Duke has paid him deference. While it's true that Krzyzewski runs a clean program--his players stay out of trouble, they go to class, they aren't paid under the table--he's hardly an angel. Although Krzyzewski is always happy to field softballs from Dick Vitale, he rarely grants less obsequious journalists an audience and when he does, he gives them clipped, testy answers. He's even harder on student journalists. In 1990, angered by a mid-season report card issued by Duke's student newspaper that gave his team a B-plus, Krzyzewski summoned the student journalists to a meeting and, in front of his players, cursed out the students for not giving the team straight As.

Krzyzewski also complained about the Chronicle's preview of the Maryland game, an article that had referred to the talented Maryland swingman Walt Williams by his nickname, The Wizard. 'I opened up the Chronicle,' the coach said, 'and all I read about was 'the [expletive deleted] Wizard

In lieu of assigning a letter grade, I'll let my buddy, a Duke alum and ardent Blue Devils fan (as if there was a difference), have the final word on the essay: "This is nearly 100% factually incorrect. Embarassing that I'm associated with people who would write this."

The arrogance and the denial just rub me wrong. Coach K has been blessed. He gets to coach kids who have involved parents and have rarely missed a meal.

With that blessing comes a higher responsibility. He needs to humble himself and his players. He needs to admit when he's wrong and when his players have erred. Gerald Henderson foolishly initiated contact with a bitter rival in a game that had already been decided. He injured that player.

Why not take the high road and apologize?

Remember back just a few years ago during an altercation at the Smith Center when Duke reserve Andre Buckner came running off the bench after then-UNC coach Matt Doherty. The next day Krzyzewski tried to award Bucker the Nobel Peace Prize by calling him a "peacemaker." Krzyzewski has exposed himself as one of the great hypocrites in sport.

He talks about the kids, but his talk is cheap and tawdry after what we witnessed this time.

Snyder, a former Duke player and assistant who has been Missouri's coach for five years, oversaw a staff, that in the committee's words, "took risks" in recruiting. There were 40 allegations of rules violations, and the NCAA began investigating the case in September 2003.

Still, it just seemed that Duke was destined to win. Especially when Shane Battier spent most of his time waving his arms to the crowd and doing his best Dre' Bly imitation. Naturally, if a Carolina player did this, it would be classless. For Battier, however, it's a terrific show of emotion.

It will forever be argued that Mike Krzyzewski turned a potential Larry Bird into a poor man's Larry Lakins. It'll be said that Krzyzewski brought in Randolph for no better reason than to torture Sendek on one front and Carolina on the other.

We're not Maryland, FSU, or UNC, and we should keep that distinction very clear. We're Duke.

Girls say they like Redick because he's a Christian (he has two Bible verses and a Japanese word for courage tattooed on his torso, out of camera view); he's cute; and he seems nice.

'Like, if he bumps or pushes somebody, he goes over and tries to help them up,' Meredith Brown said .

Morgan's father, Joe Brown, likes Redick, too. But he knows the guy's no saint. He can read lips.

This incident is another embarassment along with the Duke football player who committed armed robbery on someone in a wheelchair shortly after coach Franks was hired. It's really not a good sign when a university like Duke tops even the NBA and every other pro league in stomach turning incidents involving its athletes, and it needs to stop.

Krzyzewski also took a page from his mentor, Bob Knight, throughout the night as his behavior left a lot to be desired.

Snyder's brazen disregard for compliance has made it seem as though he has been auditioning for a job at Tyco

As the media outrage continued, Duke's spin machine tried to defend Henderson's flagrant elbow through a variety of poorly coordinated approaches. Henderson offered the following tripe: "I wasn't trying to hurt the kid or anything. It just turned worse than it was." Mike Krzyzewski, never one to shy away from incredulous suggestions, initially implied that the entire incident was UNC's fault for having starters in the game at a point when the outcome was determined. In so doing, Krzyzewski seemed oblivious to the fact that his own starters - at least those who had not fouled out - were also in the game, intentionally fouling to stop the clock at every opportunity. Later, Krzyzewski feigned shock at the notion that Henderson's elbow was intentional. "That's not the way we play," said Krzyzewski with a tone of voice that suggested nothing more needed to be said. To even suggest otherwise was, in Krzyzewski's words, "Crazy."

One more question, K, if the game was over, why were you still calling time out with 50 seconds to go? If the game was over, why did you still have Hnderson on the floor. The answer is, because the game wasnt over, and thats why Roy Williams still had Hansbrough on the floor. Youre program is down, your team isnt what it once was, and Carolina rolled you up again. You need to own that. And stop telling us that sort of thing doesnt happen with your program, when it just did and everyone saw it.

I originally fell for the Krzyzewski bulls---. I took his flirtation with the Lakers seriously. Coach K's boss, athletic director Joe Alleva, sold the idea of college basketball's No. 1 employee bolting to the NBA pretty strongly during a choreographed press conference last Thursday. Alleva insinuated that Krzyzewski had been frustrated by the early defections to the NBA of some of his underclassmen. Coach K lost his two best players, freshman Luol Deng and recruit Shaun Livingston, to this year's NBA draft.

The Blue Devils were the overwhelming preseason favorite to win the national championship, and they entered this year's tournament as the No. 1 overall seed. They had the rare modern-day advantage of four seasoned seniors in their seven-man rotation, including two first-team All-Americans in guard J.J. Redick and center Shelden Williams. They had one of the most talented freshmen in the nation in forward Josh McRoberts. They also had the best coach in college basketball, Mike Krzyzewski, on the sidelines.

But they laid an egg against LSU.

To keep Krzyzewski, Duke reportedly more than doubled his previous base salary of $853,099 (not counting his Nike and basketball camp income), but money wasn't all he gained.

Duke accelerated plans for a $15 million practice facility. Krzyzewski gained a louder voice in college basketball and the ear of NCAA president Myles Brand. Krzyzewski, Brand and others are discussing initiatives that have Coach K feeling more optimistic about college basketball's future.

There's nothing to criticize!

It's a scenario he vehemently rejects by saying that "This whole thing has been great for everything I am associated with, including Duke basketball."

The results don't exactly bear that out, though. After a decade of Sweet 16 appearances, the Blue Devils have failed to make it out of the second round of the NCAA tournament in the two seasons since Krzyzewski began devoting his summers to his Olympic duties.

More telling is that he has still yet to address his team's most glaring shortcoming by recruiting and signing a dominant inside presence.

They don't have college newspapers to browbeat in the NBA, and they don't generally cotton to coaches ignoring the media for days on end. ("I love my kids," might no longer suffice as a multipurpose quote, either.)

Believing they had been invited to meet the Duke varsity basketball team, 10 members of the sports staff of The Chronicle, the Duke student newspaper, accepted an invitation from Coach Mike Krzyzewski to visit the team locker room Monday.

In the locker room, in the presence of the players, the coach spoke for 10 minutes, accusing the newspaper of coverage that ''degrades my basketball team.'' Rodney Peele, The Chronicle's sports editor, said Krzyzewski used profanity.

''I don't think the way it was handled was very professional,'' said Matt Sclafani, the managing editor. ''I think most of the things he said about his team being amateur equally apply to our reporters, and they are entitled to mistakes if they made mistakes.''

Krzyzewski would not comment about the incident other than to say: ''To me, what I do with the students here in the university is a private matter, and it's something I won't comment on.''

The fabled 'Cameron Crazies' are revered as the zaniest, and most committed, fans in college basketball, willing to sleep in tents for days to get into a game.

But in recent years, student attendance at Duke men's basketball games has slipped. And last year, when Duke finished 22-11, there were empty spaces in the student sections for more than half the games.

The point is, one such cheat sheet was distributed for the Maryland game, and somehow a Maryland fan managed to get a bogus bit of information onto it. According to the Diamondback, the fraudulent factoid centered on Terps star Nik Caner-Medley, whose girlfriend was said to be nicknamed "Piggy."

During the game, the Diamondback reported, the Cameron Crazies oinked at Caner-Medley and serenaded him with chants of "Pig-gy, Pig-gy."

As it turns out, Caner-Medley does not have a girlfriend whose nickname is Piggy.

But Duke does have a connection to tarnished summer coach Myron Piggie, who has admitted giving money to several of his club players, including future (and now former) Blue Devil Corey Maggette.

In 1991 and 1992, when such celebrations degenerated into unruly and dangerous situations, dozens of injuries resulted from drunken assaults; students trying to run through, or being pushed into, the fire; and bottles being thrown into the crowds. More than a dozen students ended up in the emergency room of Duke Hospital with second- and third-degree burns

When Vitale talks of Duke, he gushes. I want to reach through the television screen and beat him over his shiny bald head.

That character would be tested when Dockery traded the concrete jungle of Chicago for the quiet beauty of Duke University. It was a full-blown case of culture shock.

"I could definitely sense that," said J.J. Redick, a fellow junior guard who roomed with Dockery during their freshman year. "From what I understand, there weren't a lot of white people at his high school. And at Duke there certainly are a lot of white people."

For the rest of his career, Coach K can tell wide-eyed recruits, "Yeah, Kobe wanted me to come and save the Lakers' franchise, but then I wouldn't have had the chance to recruit outstanding young men like you, son." Other schools can never again credibly suggest to recruits that Coach K might abandon them for the pros if they go to Duke, because if he turned down the Lakers, what other offer could lure him away?

Redick understands the responsibilities that come with being a star. After a wrong-place, wrong-time dorm incident his freshman year at Duke, Redick got a bitter taste of the dark side of being a public figure.

Redick eventually was cleared by the university of any wrongdoing, but for weeks his name was linked to police reports and marijuana.

"I don't think anyone has an idea of what the ramifications were," his father, Ken Redick, told The Roanoke Times at the time, "but it was pretty deep.

The most clever sign at Thursday's game? Certainly not "RAYMOND FELTON IS A $0.75 TAIWANESE SEX WORKER!" Whatever that means.

Nor was it "SEAN MAY ATE ALL OUR COOKIES."

Or "HEY ROY -- IN THE RARE CASE AN ERECTION LASTS MORE THAN 4 HOURS, PLEASE CONSULT YOUR DR."

It wasn't even "CAROLINA BLUE IS JUST PAST TENSE FOR CAROLINA BLOWS."

None of the above. The one that hit closest to home belonged to a pair of Carolina fans in the middle of the madness. It read, simply, "POSERS." And it featured arrows pointing in every direction around them.

The truths hurts. And what must be especially painful for the Crazies is that the truth is coming at them from observers in both shades of blue.

Duke averaged 22,505 at Wallace Wade Stadium in 2004. The Blue Devils ranked 85th nationally in attendance and last among the 65 teams in the six conferences in the Bowl Championship Series.

I like that Coach K genuinely seems to abhor the influence of sneaker-funded street agents. I dislike that Coach K makes more money from his Nike contract than anyone in the game.

"I love Duke and I couldn't ask for anything better. It's a tough school, but if you ask for help, and you work hard and you show them the work, it's going to pay off."

They stood there, the Duke cheering section, the Duke band, in silent disbelief, trying to accept the unacceptable, trying to understand what should have been the impossible.

The Blue Devils were going to the NCAA basketball final. And suddenly they were not.

They're lightning rods, a college basketball phenomenon unlike any other. Look at it this way: They represent a snooty private school, not a big State U. They don't have a bazillion living alums

When Krzyzewski came to the press room on Sunday and blamed Roy Williams for having Hansbrough in the game, one wouldn't think it could get worse. But that ridiculous statement managed to surpass Sunday's ignorant rant.

Krzyzewski has yet to show any genuine concern for Hansbrough, and that may be because Hansbrough has kicked Duke's butt in three of the four games he's played against the Blue Devils since coming to Chapel Hill.

He was MVP for the Hickory Nutz of the now-defunct Carolina Basketball League in the summer of 2003, then he played professionally in the Philippines, France and Hungary. Former Duke players Chris Carrawell and Ricky Price played on opposing teams in the Philippines; in Hungary, James teamed with former Duke center Casey Sanders to win the league title.

The first place I went was the Philippines, where I played with Chris Carrawell and Ricky Price; they were both over there as well. From there I went and played for a team in France for a couple of months, and then spent the 2003-2004 season in Hungary, where I played with Casey Sanders.

Many of us waited three hours in the driving rain on Friday night just to see Dicky V go wild...

Duhon said the reason he missed the shootaround was he overslept.

'It wasn't my fault, Duhon said. 'I didn't get my wake-up call.'

That excuse might have carried more weight if Duhon hadn't traveled to North Carolina to attend Saturday night's Duke-North Carolina game.

The Bulls are done Wednesday. Jim Boylan is done Thursday, Chris Duhon and Ben Gordon Friday, and if we're lucky, Luol Deng and Kirk Hinrich Saturday.

Disclaimer: Duhon might not be booted out until Saturday if he doesn't get his wake-up call. Think about that: Duke has such high entrance requirements, and it produces guys who can't set an alarm clock.

The students at Duke don't have the same passion to paint their chests blue and make fools out of themselves in support of their team as past generations.

Sure K-Ville still filled up with tents before the second semester officially began, but I think that has more to do with the fact that tenting is the "thing to do" rather than because the tenters are all passionate fans. If they were, then they'd all be coming to games, and maybe we wouldn't have this problem in the first place.

Working in the Wilson Recreation Center, between Christmas and spring break, we are privileged to witness firsthand the tradition of K-ville daily, as we walk from Card Gym parking lot to Wilson and back-at best stepping around smelly garbage, wet bedding, cans and other litter-at worst trying to avoid broken glass, vomit, blood, urine, feces-even used condoms. ...

As parents and grandparents, it is scary to see kids living in such deplorable conditions for 6-8 weeks. Is this what an expensive education at an esteemed university comes down to? Is it okay to make a horrendous mess because someone else will clean it up? The employees performing the cleanup should receive premium pay, probably even hazard pay.

We appreciate that basketball is a big part of the Duke experience, and are all in favor of school spirit and team support, but in its present state, K-ville is a blight on the landscape of an otherwise beautiful campus.

My point is that if another coach had walloped a chair this weekend, you'd have heard plenty about it. But ESPN needs Duke, and Coach K especially, to be its squeaky clean focal point. By naming Duke its Official Good Guys, ESPN has a built-in narrative that they can sell over and over to its market. It makes great business sense -- build them up as the Yankees even though they've accomplished nothing close to the Bombers (or UCLA's dynasty for that matter) and play every other team off against them. The only tricky part is making sure that when a Laettner stomps an opposing player, or K chases after a ref screaming that he took the game from his team, or he destroys a chair while enraged, the network needs to gloss over or ignore it and must pretend it never happened. To do otherwise is to risk Duke being seen as what it really is -- a damned good program led by an occasionally raving maniac.

Little of what's said about Redick is fit to print here, but a student I met in Chapel Hill, Jelani Ramos, summed up the most common criticism of Redick: "I feel like Coach K is the emperor, and J.J. is his next-in-line Sith crony." After receiving a funny look, Mr. Ramos continued. "Look at him, though. Compare pictures side by side. J.J. has gotten paler, his hairline's receded a little and his ears have gotten pointier over the past four years."

To wit -- two: On Saturday when the Wake Forest game was still a contest, the perhaps still-incensed Boozer (20 points, 18 rebounds) bullrushed the Deacons' point guard, Broderick Hicks, on a loose ball, practically crashing him into the Cameron Crazies and ultimately out of the game with a deep thigh bruise. "WHOA! WHOA! I GOT ONE EYE AND EVEN I CAN SEE THAT [was a foul]!" roared even Dick (Dukey) Vitale when Boozer was not whistled for any violation.

Owen Good, a 1995 N.C. State grad, had this to say before the Wolfpack-Blue Devils game: "I hope K spends the entire evening snarling from behind that crinkled-up nose that looks like someone farted into a bicycle seat and shoved it into his face. Probably won't happen, but one can dream."

No, the only real, lasting solution for Duke haters is to go with "none of the above." And then find a new country. Not a new country to root for; but a new country to live in. Otherwise, we'll be no better than the legions of Duke fans who didn't actually go to school in Durham.

I don't know about you, but I'm tired of hearing about him, tired of writing about him, tired of fans cheering raucously whenever he gets up from the bench and stretches.

Redick has handled his situation with class, but still, has there ever been more embarrassing adoration for a guy who never plays? It's like the second-string long snapper being the most popular player on an NFL team.

I can't see what my future has in store

But I move forth with the strength of a condor

Duke's senior-laden rotation fell to a group of Tigers that included six freshmen. The Blue Devils' star player, Redick, had one of the worst shooting games (3-18 FG) of his career (again) at the worst possible time. Lost behind the Redick meltdown was the fact that the team's complementary players -- Greg Paulus, Sean Dockery, Lee Melchionni and DeMarcus Nelson -- shot even WORSE than Redick, finishing a combined 3-19 from the field

A better solution is to blame Coach K's system for making above-average players look fantastic, which is better than his protege Quin Snyder's system of making fantastic players look below-average. (Don't worry, Quin; you've got the best hair in the whole damn unemployment line.) In this vein, Redick might just be better off bagging the NBA and joining Coach K's bench a la Steve Wojciehowski, although he'll have to slap the court an awful lot in his last dozen games to be as annoying as Wojo was in his playing days.

Krzyzewski went on to rant that officials are being unfair to his team because they're intimidated by others saying Duke gets the benefit of calls. This season, Krzyzewski is apparently angry officials have only called 82 more fouls on Duke's opponents. Kentucky, by comparison, was called for 18 more fouls than its opponents this season.

"I am a leader who happens to coach basketball," Krzyzewski says in the ad. "When they get out into the workplace, they're armed with not just a jump shot or a dribble. I want you armed for life. I want you to develop as a player. I want you to develop as a student, and I want you to develop as a human being. My life isn't about playing games. That's why my card is American Express."

Strawberry wasn't the only one who elicited a few smiles about the atmosphere at Duke. Williams was asked about "how crazy" it is there.

"No crazier than here," he deadpanned. "They have about half the number of students at the game. We have 4,000; they have 2,000. They get there early, they hand out sheets to practice their cheers. [If you think all that stuff is spur of the moment that you see on television, he said, I've got an exclusive for you.] It's well done. It's well-documented. If I see another story on Krzyzewskiville, I might get a little sick."

Counting Saturday's 37-0 loss to Virginia at Wallace Wade Stadium, the two coaches hired by Alleva have a combined 12-71 record. Carl Franks, in nearly five seasons, went 7-45. Roof, almost midway through his third full season, is 5-26. During the same stretch, the Blue Devils have gone 6-53 in ACC games.

Through four games this season, Duke has scored one touchdown. Seven of 10 losses last season were by 25 or more points.

One of the major themes you'll hear about Duke in the coming months is that they're mad as hell and they're not going to take it anymore. And it's about time. We're referring of course to the sometimes startling media bias against Duke, something we've talked about as much as anyone over the last few years, and we're glad it's being taken seriously.

There's an e-mail that has haunted Elton Brand and won't go away. He's never admitted to it, not until now. Chillin' in his modest downtown apartment with teammates Ron Artest and Corey Benjamin, watching Duke ball UNC, Elton confesses--but only because I asked. "So E," I say without Corey or Ron hearing. "Did you really write that e-mail back to that white girl when you were at Duke?"

Elton looks around, rubs on the red Coogi sweater, and spits honesty. "I'll tell you, I did.

To sit behind the Duke bench is to sometimes hear Krzyzewski bully officials and even berate his aides. After hearing him work over the refs and his assistant Quin Snyder during a tournament victory five years back, I wondered if there was more Knight in Krzyzewski than he'd ever care to admit.

'I came here because of the basketball,' Ijames said. 'The academic side is nice and it's extra, a $40,000 extra. But I'm here for the basketball.'

And in typical Duke and Coach K snottiness, Henderson, his coach and the Blue Devils are pretending as though Henderson did nothing wrong. Coach K even slyly insinuated that Roy Williams was foolish for leaving Hansbrough on the floor that late in the game.

Obviously, the Duke basketball program can do no wrong. You would think that Coach K and his band of followers would be smart enough to realize how dangerous it is to confirm the perception that Duke athletes are above reprimand, filled with a sense of entitlement and arrogance and spoiled.

Coach K implied -- oh, hell, he came out and said -- that the bigger victim was Henderson. Not Hansbrough, who might have to wear a protective mask during the ACC Tournament. Here's what Coach K said Monday: "I don't blame anybody. I'm just saying it's unfortunate, and the person it's most unfortunate for is 'G'. That wasn't his intent (to injure Hansbrough), and that's not what he was doing during that play."

Early Monday evening inside Cameron Indoor Stadium, after an alleged "serious'' flirtation with the Los Angeles Lakers, Coach K listened to the school president he barely knows gush about his integrity and his importance to Duke, and gloat about the world's good fortune that Mike Krzyzewski won't be leaving amateur athletics.

The whole thing just made you feel warm and fuzzy.

Unless you've watched one too many reruns of the Sopranos, or were curious about whether any money exchanged hands.

"We were able to do a few things for Mike in his contract,'' mumbled Alleva, Duke's athletic director, when asked whether the "lifetime'' contract Don K signed in 2001 had been modified.

They don't let big-name coaches bully refs into getting all the calls. (They save that for the big-name players.)

And of course the Blue Devils have the usual onslaught of Hamburger All-American talent coming in next year, in an attempt to extend their hegemony into Krzyzewski's dotage. By the time he's done, CBS will have us on a first-name basis with the grandkids. Fans will be given an address for sending doggie treats to the familly canines, Cameron and Defense (ugh).

As Duke fans, we feel for Quin. He's about as smart as he can be, but by his own account, he wasn't paying attention to details

And there you have it. In the end, Seton Hall had no results, no principles and a team in shambles.

What was the response?

Amaker left for Michigan. Griffin left for the NBA. And Seton Hall players, alumni and fans left their nice-guy perceptions of Amaker behind them.

"We didn't think that he'd back out on us like this," Seton Hall's Marcus Toney-El told the Newark Star-Ledger. "There's a bit of betrayal."

I like that Coach K's players graduate, and that before the NBA made such a stand obsolete, that Coach K refused to hang a banner from one of his championship teams because one player hadn't graduated. I dislike that his players tend to major in the same subject, and that some have graduated in only three years -- an eyebrow-raising achievement considering the academic reputation of Duke and the time constraints on players.

At the press conference announcing that Coach K was staying, Brodhead revealed that, in his attempts to get Coach K to spurn the Lakers, he'd asked Krzyzewski to serve as a "Special Assistant to the President." Krzyzewski played along, assuming the role of humble servant. "The honor of being special assistant to President Brodhead was really one of the factors in coming back," Coach K said. But to anyone who'd been paying attention for the past few days, it was clear who's really the special assistant.

It's a different world in the NBA than in college, especially where I came from, Duke. We were isolated, oblivious to a lot of things that were happening around us.

They don't slap their palms on the floor in the NBA. (If Shaq gets any thicker this offseason, he might not be able to see the floor beneath his feet, much less bend over and slap it.)

If you're a fan of the Duke Blue Devils, this is going to make you see red.

If, that is, you can see anything at all through those red-rimmed, tear-filled eyes. Just like, you know, the ones J.J. Redick had Thursday night after the top-seeded, highly-regarded -- and highly-recruited -- Dookies were done in by a bunch of kids from Baton Rouge, 62-54.

Which, by the way, raises a few questions about coach Mike "You guys shoot around while I shoot another commercial" Krzyzewski, too.

Part of the criticism comes because I praise Duke. I am not going to apologize for singing the praises of one of the best programs in the nation over the last 15 years. What's not to praise when talking about Coach K, Shane Battier, Jason Williams and company?

Want more things that cause chafing? There's the nasal ranting Krzyzewski regularly gives referees. And if he thinks that's overstated, as he said to the Post, he might want to remember the way one of his bench players chased down a referee after a loss to Indiana in the tournament two years ago. That kid learned at the knee of the master.

"It's [amazing] what has happened to his reputation in a year," the NBA executive said. "He went from 'hard worker' to a guy who doesn't give his best every night. He went from 'man of the people' to a greedy guy with no ethics. He went from part of the foundation to journeyman.

For the second time in less than a year, the ACC has publicly admitted that Duke won a close game at Cameron Indoor Stadium with help from an egregious officiating mistake.

As a whole, Duke didn't play well in the NCAA Tournament. The Blue Devils were bounced from the Sweet 16 for the fifth time in seven seasons, which doesn't sound very dynasty-like at all. They didn't lose to a superior opponent, didn't lose on a last-second basket, didn't lose on a controversial call, didn't lose to a once-in-a-lifetime shooting night by the opponent. Some of those factors may have made it hurt less last night, but they'll likely make it hurt even more in the long run.

To refresh, the Georgia Tech players were stretching in preparation for the game and were unaware that Duke would be coming out to take some shots.

"As you saw out there, Georgia Tech, when they were stretching, they took up the whole court, while our guys are out there shooting," Duke guard Chris Duhon said. "That's a sign of disrespect. We are not going to have that."

I think whoever our second team is could definitely contend for the ACC championship right now

Two lousy decisions in crucial moments at Boston College on Wednesday night - a blocking call that was the fifth foul on the Eagles' top scorer Craig Smith and a no-call on Duke center Shelden Williams in the final seconds - certainly adds credence to the belief of many that Mike Krzyzewski has replaced Dean Smith as the guy who gets all the calls.

The charge-block can be a tough call, but Duke freshman Greg Paulus was out of control near the basket and Smith seemed firmly planted. The no-call on Williams when a replay clearly showed body and arm contact on a shot-block attempt looked more like a whistle being swallowed when the game was on the line.

And then Brian Zoubek came back from injury, and it all went to crap.

With Big Z in the game, our entire strategy changed. He can't run, so the fast break took a hit. He's lost on defense, so the double team wasn't as effective. He is the definition of a lane-clogger on offense, so our cuts to the hoop were greatly cut down.

He seems to be good at only a few things. Holding the ball below his waist after a rebound, for instance. He's great at that, often giving the opponent ample opportunity to strip the ball. The wide-open fade-away bank lay-up, he's got that guy down pat. I know what you're thinking-he's 7-foot-1, shouldn't he be dunking the ball if he's wide open? Well, you see, even at such an imposing height, one must jump in order to dunk, and as we all know, Zoubie was born without the ability to jump.

And let's not forget his specialty: The Big Z Shuffle. This season, Zoubek broke his own ACC record for travels per second of possession. He also broke Nick Horvath's record for most times a player has been called a "piece of dog poop" by me during the season; another impressive feat considering he only averaged 10 minutes a game and missed nine of them. Just imagine those numbers projected over a full season at 20-plus minutes a game....

The Duke today is personified by the smugness of J.J. Redick, the Roanoke product who has embraced the elitist tradition of Durham, N.C. Redick even annoys the little old ladies in the stands.

J.J. is hardly the best player on the team, only the most feared because of a shooting range that extends to the street. He has that smile.

You want to wipe it from his face, pronto.

You want to let him know that his world intrudes on yours. Go away, J.J.

Many fans at the game made the comparison between their beloved Krzyzewski and his mentor Bob Knight's infamous his chair toss in 1985. It's an interesting teacher-student comparison, and of course there are other similarities between the two men--K's unsportsmanlike abuse of refs is so complete that his face can rarely shown during the action of games; his curses can be easily made out clearly when he's pictured full on.

Instead, ESPN in particular chooses to show him almost exclusively during slowdowns in the action. (When the cameras do show K going after refs, Patrick and Dick Vitale are both careful to make benign comments like, "Mike didn't like that call, did he?")

Krzyzewski has created his own little world, one in which he cut off access to all of his players the week before the biggest game of the season, one where he can berate the media for writing stories he doesn't like. It's not good for the game.

One cause of low attendance is that students tailgate in the parking lot and never enter the stadium gates. Tailgates are one of the only chances undergraduates have to engage in large-scale parties on campus, and many students would rather take advantage of this opportunity instead of attending the game.

We threw aspirin at Mo Rivers [alleged to have stolen aspirin]. We threw underwear at Tony Warren [alleged to have shoplifted underwear]. "

It's just one simple sentence, but Otis Smith won't say it.

Only four words and 13 letters, and he can't quite make himself do it.

He just can't say, "I made a mistake."

It's official now -- or, at least, it will be sometime today when the Magic announce the signing of free-agent shooting guard Mickael Pietrus: Smith made a mistake when he drafted J.J. Redick two years ago -- a big, fat, No. 11-overall, lottery-pick mistake.

Duke's Mike Krzyzewski and the dozens of other college coaches recruiting Duhon had to go through Vivian Harper. At the time, she and her two sons were living in a modest house in Slidell. It was a house Harper nearly lost in June 1999, according to court documents.

Trustmark National Bank filed court papers to seize the house after Harper allegedly failed to make mortgage payments for more than six months. Foreclosure never took place. Though court documents offer no details as to how the situation was resolved, Harper remained the owner. Privacy laws prohibit Trustmark from disclosing information about the matter, said Rob Armour, the bank's assistant marketing director.

It is nearly midnight. Brendan Haywood's foul shots with 1.2 seconds to play were the difference in North Carolina's 85-83 victory against Duke. The drama has left Cameron Indoor Stadium, but the upraised fists remain. Several dozen Duke students are on the floor, standing silently with fists pointed toward the ceiling. "I don't think we're going to leave until every North Carolina person is out of the stadium," says Stephanie Spalding, a senior from Sarasota, Fla. "They just need to show us respect."

Or you could speak to Pete Gaudet, who for years was the third assistant at Duke, earning upwards of $12,500 per year. Then during the 1994-95 season Coach K underwent back surgery and decided conveniently to take the entire year off as his team went 13-18. Once he returned The Sainted One fired Gaudet and later petitioned the NCAA to have all but three of those losses charged to Gaudet's record and not his own.

'I heard Coach K tell Trajan to get the ball,' Moore said. 'I felt if he got it, he wasn't going to do anything with it. It was crunch time. It was him against me. I knew that my will to win was going to take over, and it did.' Langdon dribbled into the lane, spun around in an attempt to free himself for a shot. Moore was with him every step of the way, including the extra one that Langdon took after the spin. He was called for traveling with 5.4 seconds left.

Another thing I despise about Coach K is his sneaker contract. When "60 Minutes" came calling on him several years ago for comments about his record contract with Nike - believed to now be upward of $1 million per year - he declined comment.

When cornered during a press conference by Leslie Stahl after a Duke game, the powerful Coach K turned into Coach Church Mouse. It was pathetic.

Now that he has officially signed a $68 million contract with the Utah Jazz, perhaps former Cleveland Cavaliers forward Carlos Boozer can afford to take care of some loose ends he left behind in the city where he once worked. Like the $15,000 he allegedly owes in unpaid rent. Seems that Boozer, who is now persona non grata in Cleveland, forgot he wasn't a house guest in the pricey place he bunked every night and is being sued by his onetime landlord for overdue payments. What does any of this have to do with the NFL? Well, the landlord is former Cleveland Browns safety Percy Ellsworth, who hasn't played since 2000, and isn't predisposed to charity when it comes to Boozer

'Coach smiled at me,' Nelson recalled last week. 'I was aglow. I thought, 'He likes me. He can tell I'm a good person.' Then he said I had angelic eyes.'

Doubting the Devils doesn't seem as preposterous in March as it did in November -- unless, of course, the referees choke on their whistles and go Duke-blind like they did last year at the Final Four in Minneapolis, allowing Williams to use Jason Gardner's back as a luge sled, among other calls and non-calls.

What's it say when Redick, one of the best pure long-range shooters in college basketball history, can't play for Van Gundy, whose system puts a premium on long-range shooters?

And maybe this is the problem: The Magic, unlike many teams, have a plethora of long-range shooters. They have Rashard Lewis, Hedo Turkoglu and a shooting point guard in Jameer Nelson. Orlando doesn't need to endure Redick's defensive shortcomings just to get a shooter on the floor, but surely there's a team out there that could use a three-point bomber. And that's why the Magic should trade J.J. For the love of God, PLEASE trade him. Even if you can only get a second-round pick, cash considerations and a gallon of tattoo ink.

Coach Krzyzewski, the 1992 men's basketball Olympic team featured 11 of the greatest NBA players ever and Christian Laettner. And while NBA coaches Chuck Daly and Lenny Wilkins obviously had authority when it came to on-the-court decisions, you allegedly used your clout to secure the Dream Team's 12th spot for Laettner instead of Shaquille O'Neal. Do you believe that the respective NBA careers of the two have justified the arguments you used, or should you have yielded to your superiors on the matter?

The previous season, Krzyzewski's flirtation with the Los Angeles Lakers was about the same thing -- his love of Duke. He was never leaving. He was using the NBA as leverage just as Duke had hired a new president.

After attending The Miss Raleigh Scholarship Pageant and dining at Applebee's, Randolph and his friends returned home just before midnight for chocolate milkshakes and a new episode of "Saturday Night Live". "That's a big night out for him," said his mother Kim Randolph, as she blended the shakes for the boys

TOMMY SEABASS would like those over-aged, stat-geek fanboys at DBR to kiss his @$$.

Well, I guess there is one other explanation: GMs are people, and the thing about people is that they can be really, really stupid -- especially when it comes to drafting Duke players.

After seeing Mike Dunleavy taken No. 3, Trajan Langdon picked No. 11 and William Avery selected No. 14, I have no doubt that somebody will pull the trigger on Redick way too early

Covering tonight's loss to Maryland, I noticed that the environment was much better than it was at the Georgia Tech game. But for a game of this importance and against Duke's second-biggest rival, it was a little subdued. And I couldn't help but be dismayed at the lack of creativity of the Crazies as a whole and specifically the ones around my seat on press row.

I'm convinced there are a lot of creative, passionate Cameron Crazies out there. But it just seems like I'm sitting in front of those that really don't know the game and end up embarrassing the Crazie population.

Friday, the ACC announced that a time-keeping error gave Duke too much time in the final seconds of the Blue Devils' 68-66 victory against Clemson. Duke won on David McClure's shot roughly one-20th of a second before the buzzer, and while that's not tantamount to saying the clock mistake gave Duke a win -- we'll never know what Duke would have done had it known it had less time -- it's certain that the mistake gave Duke a better chance than the Blue Devils deserved.

We already have the "cheer sheets" back--a big step up from last year.

For all his genius, Dean Smith always seemed duplicitous.

Whether it was keeping his smoking and drinking out of public view, or letting his mask drop with "Mr. Choke" type comments, Smith managed to drive just about everyone outside of UNC fans to distraction.

Krzyzewski, who wouldn't be made available for comment, has become what he once despised -- a latter-day Dean Smith. On Jan. 21, 1984, after uneven officiating cost Duke a win against Smith's North Carolina dynasty, Krzyzewski unloaded in his postgame news conference.

"I want to tell you something," he said. "... You cannot allow people to go around pointing at officials and yelling at them without technicals being called. That is just not allowed. So let's get some things straight around here and quit the double standard that exists in this league, all right?"

Cameron's upper-level seats and the bleachers behind the visitor's bench were rife with orange-clad visitors. The ballyhooed "Cameron Crazies" turned out in force, armed with their usual printed cheering instructions. (So much for spontaneity.) Many were unaccustomed to watching the women, or the "girls" as the cheat sheet had it. Commenting on students who screamed for a 10-second backcourt violation at an earlier contest, a rule that applies only in the men's game, one veteran observer of women's competition muttered, "You idiots. Come to more than one game."

First and foremost of these attributes has to be Krzyzewski's hypocrisy. For a man such as Coach K to claim that his program is clean and on the up and up, is completely laughable.

Numerous Duke players have come to play for K under suspicious circumstances. Chris Duhon and Carlos Boozer both saw one of their parents receive a high-paying job under the eye of notorious Duke boosters. While a long paper trail extends straight from their jobs to Coach K's office, not a thing has ever been done.

Duke is the exception to the notion that everybody loves a winner.

For us, it was his announcement, two minutes into the 2001 title game, that 'Duke's getting the calls.' How the heck can you decide that two minutes into anything?

Coach K has spent most of his time with the media explaining Henderson's innocence, and very little expressing concern for Hansbrough. I counted 222 words on his version Monday of Henderson's foul, and two words -- "It's unfortunate" -- on Hansbrough's bloodied mess of a face.

He is whiny on the bench. He does come across as smug. And nothing Mike Krzyzewski says or does is going to change that, not when the body of his work is decked out in whininess and smugness

What about "My life isn't about playing games"? If that's true, shouldn't a great university stop touting the three national titles and the 10 Final Four berths? Shouldn't the officials and their singed ears catch a break from here? Shouldn't Krzyzewski request that the university restore the 4-15 portion of the 1995 season - the part after he took a leave for back surgery - that a sports information director unctuously pinned on the replacement coach?

And who decided way back in American culture that image construction would consist of stripping away human foibles and eccentricities in favor of manufacturing saints?

No pursuit as oily, savage and NC-17 as college basketball - as sports - should warrant a commercial so absurdly "Pleasantville," but we continue to dole our helpless youth such televised misguidance as to how the planet really works.

Stop pretending that football matters. It's transparent. It's also agonizing. It's like watching a trapped animal gnaw off a foot.

It's important to understand that unlike at most colleges, even those in the private sector, there's no motivation at Duke to become competitive in football. Other than the coaches and the players, no one even cares enough to press the issue.

I've been hearing a lot of people ask out loud (or email me indignantly) 'How on earth did Billy Packer think that Gerald Henderson's hack job on Tyler Hansborough was unintentional?'

My guess: Billy Packer is hallucinating

And how does Love feel about being compared to Duke? "Aw, that's an insult man," he said with feigned disgust.

Is it a surprise that sports controveries seem to keep happening at Duke? Or is it yet another example of a university that sold its soul to Mike Krzyzewski and the coach is God syndrome that Faker K. produces?

"Coach K is not very big on rubbing things in, like showboating." said Burgess. "That's something I learned from day one. Our players told us that's something that we have to have a lot of class."

I'm not interested in talking to you.

But an angry, profane locker room lecture by Krzyzewski to 10 invited guests from the student newspaper's sports staff now threatens to undermine that relationship. Even the popular coach's subsequent acknowledgement that the matter should have been handled differently has not altogether quelled fallout from his outburst.

'People on campus were surprised he would act like that, he would use profanity like that, he would act like that toward students,' said Craig Whitlock, the editor of the student newspaper, The Chronicle. 'I think it hurt Coach K. somewhat.'

Otherwise, Krzyzewski has decided that he no longer needs to talk about his highly successful program. He apparently thinks he no longer needs to answer questions, intimating at times that he is beyond reproach and his players do no wrong, the social lives of Reggie Love and Chris Duhon notwithstanding.

Coach Krzyzewski, you often respond to criticism about your inflated ego, hostile treatment of referees, and foul language by citing the amount of money you have given to charity. Are we to conclude from this that you consider writing checks a proper substitute for common human decency?

But this team can recruit nationally, has a staggering eight McDonald's All-Americans and a Hall-of-Fame coach and is supposed to be one of the nation's elite. Losing to a gutsy seventh seed after narrowly squeaking by a gutsy 15 seed one year after bowing out in the first round to a gutsy 11 seed is nothing short of a collapse.

And year-ending implosions do not cap "great" seasons.

Losing five of your last 11 games is not part a "great" season. Losing in the semifinals of the ACC Tournament is not a "great" season. Losing on the first weekend of the NCAA Tournament is not a "great" season.

They don't do the Cameron Crazies thing in L.A. (Go ahead, ask the Gucci Row crowd to put on the face paint and matching T-shirts and jump up and down for two solid hours. OK, maybe Dyan Cannon signs on. But that's it.)

In three trips to the Big Dance, he hit 6 of 21 trifectas, then 15 of 42, then 6 of 24 for a total of 27 of 87. If my math is correct -- which is a big "if" -- that's 31 percent.

OK, well, the best shooter ever would probably get better the deeper Duke goes in the postseason.

Here's how Redick's past three seasons have ended: 1-of-11 on 3s vs. Kansas, 3-for-9 vs. UConn and 3-for-9 vs. Michigan State, for a total of 7-of-29, or 24.1 percent. In three losses. Hence, no NCAA championship rings. For the greatest shooter ever.

Considering Redick's history of late-season struggles, can't we at least wait until his senior season is over before we say it's destined to go down in history alongside Walton in '74, Maravich in '70 and Alcindor in '69? In his past three games, Redick is 6-of-26 1-of-6 at Georgia Tech, 1-of-6 at Temple and 4-of-14 at Florida State from beyond the arc. Is this the start of yet another late season swoon? Would the greatest shooter ever go in the tank on an annual basis?

The Crazies earned their reputation in the '80s, when overweight opponents were pelted with Twinkies and those accused of sexual misconduct were showered with panties or condoms. Taunts such as "Safety school!" (toward Wake Forest) and "We're smart! You're dumb!" (at UNC) that play off Duke's academic standards continue to anger not only opponents but also many among the 4,000-plus students who don't attend games. Explains Mike Corey, sports editor of the student paper, The Chronicle, "Lots of students don't like the implicit condescension."

The truth was that Wojo played with such effort and intensity largely because he was so slow! It required vast expenditures of energy for him just to catch up to the play and the man he was guarding. Wojo slapped his defender around like a girl in a catfight. You bitch! After one mid-Nineties Carolina--Duke game, the North Carolina point guard Ed Cota displayed his scratched-up arms to the press and tried to explain Wojo's defensive prowess, saying something to the effect of "he fouls. A lot."

His style was so antithetical to physical grace that he made you think about inequalities of scale, of the fundamental unfairness of the universe when it came to the distribution of gifts, in this case physical talent. Worse, he made you wonder why white players tended to be perceived as hard workers and black players as naturally gifted. He made you see the lingering taints of race when all you wanted to do was watch a basketball game. None of this was exactly his fault, either. But his desperate, handslapping, knee-to-the-thigh scrappiness still rankled.

Really, now - if coach K is that smart and his players are that talented - why have they been struggling so in recent years?

The reality has to be that either the players weren't that good to begin with, which calls into questioning coach K's ability to evaluate talent, or, if the Blue Devils recruits are, indeed, talented, then coach K hasn't done a very good job of developing that talent.

Either way, Krzyzewski (and let's not forget the NBA talent he had at his disposal in the '06 World Championships) has had as much trouble the last few years winning big games as most people do spelling his name.

Duke opened 1994-95 with a 9-3 record before Krzyzewski left the team because of back surgery and exhaustion. Interim coach Pete Gaudet went 4-15 the rest of the way to cap a 13-18 finish.

Because those final 19 games went on Gaudet's record, a Krzyzewski-coached Duke team has never lost more than four straight.

"I should have been credited with all the losses," Krzyzewski said.

I like that Coach K had the nerve, more than 20 years ago, to speak out against the officiating double standard enjoyed by North Carolina legend Dean Smith. I dislike that Coach K, now a legend himself, seeks that same officiating double standard through intimidation -- and has the nerve to say he doesn't seek it, or get it.

Uh, hello? Is this not an unfair recruiting advantage? I mean, with an endorsement this good, Krzyzewski should be paying American Express.

Far more often, they anticipated the chance to repeatedly suggest Carolina take a one-way trip to you-know-where. The night before the game, as many of the Tenters dealt with colds and fevers - and oh, by the way, the matter of mounting course work - Coach K had come by to offer thanks, encouragement and resolve. He made a point he had established with his players, the unity and strength that results when five fingers form a fist just as five individuals form a team. That is how his following came to adopt the outstretched fist as its silent symbol, pointing toward the Duke bench as the Tar Heels were introduced. The Crazies had screamed for much of the rest of the night. But now, saddened, sleep-deprived and enraged after several UNC students celebrated on the Duke logo at midcourt, some display defiant fists and vow to stay.

The students leave only after gathering around Krzyzewski to hear his personal appeal. "He's like our father," Spalding says.

It is difficult to tell which event will take place first: an end to Stephanie Spalding's disappointment or the removal of the blue face paint from her tightly-wrapped hair. "Maybe," she says, "I'll just go to class like this.

When Melchionni, a junior forward at Duke, makes a good play, the student sections at Cameron erupt in a chorus of 'Lee! Lee! Lee! Lee!' that sounds like the bleating of 1,500 hyperactive tree frogs.

But wait, it gets stranger.

While emitting this weird noise, the students then sway from side to side, making a movement that combines elements of ballet, Oktoberfest and a bodybuilding pose down. First, they turn to the right, extending their right arms upward with their hands balled into fists, turned inward. Then they repeat the motion to the left, all the while chanting 'Lee! Lee! Lee! Lee!'

All of which signifies ... what?

'I have no idea,' Melchionni said. 'I don't know what the symbolism is or anything like that.'

In later interviews, Krzyzewski actually blasted the NCAA for requiring Henderson to sit out all of one game as punishment for his assault. "Gerald is the victim," said the sanctimonious coach. He actually went so far as to compare Gerald's so called punishment -- having to sit behind the bench during his single game suspension - to the public stockades of colonial times. And don't forget, Coach K is the same guy who made a point of heralding George Mason's head basketball coach Jim Larranaga a year earlier for voluntarily requiring his star guard to sit out more than the minimum suspension for a cheap shot, which seems almost cute when retrospectively compared with Henderson's savage blow.

It all started with the Cameron Crazies and has now spread across the country

There was a buzz around the Final Four, though, that if the foul involves Duke, the Blue Devils will get the benefit of the call.

There were several moments in Duke's 82-72 victory over Arizona for the NCAA championship Monday night when fouls that seemed obvious weren't called, including one first-half collision between Jason Williams and Jason Gardner.

Williams had two personals at the time and a third would have been crucial. It turned into a no-call, though, leaving usually mild-mannered Arizona coach Lute Olson gesturing at the officials.

In the end, Gerald Henderson clearly took the physical play thing too far. Took it all the way to the locker room and an invitation to wear street clothes in Tampa on Thursday night.

So Duke wakes up Monday with a fresh black eye and a fourth loss to Carolina in the past five meetings. For the image-obsessed Blue Devils, it gets no worse than being bad and being dirty.

Somehow, it aims to give us a picture while depicting him neither giving a patented blistering to the refs just before ducking into a timeout huddle, nor notifying officials they cost him a Final Four game his team led by eight with three minutes left.

Never once in the whole ad do you see him demonstrating any sort of sense of in-game entitlement.

It's amazing.

Colangelo has a fellow political traveler in Mike Krzyzewski. Coach K is a longtime Republican donor who made waves when he hosted a 2002 fundraiser for North Carolina senatorial candidate Elizabeth Dole at the university-owned Washington Duke Inn. His group, to the consternation of many non-Republican faculty and students, was called "Blue Devils for Dole."

In a small tiff that has added the latest spice to college basketball's most intense rivalry, Williams took exception to a comment made by Krzyzewski on Sunday that the Blue Devils don't discuss injuries "unlike other schools."

While Krzyzewski never mentioned the third-ranked Tar Heels specifically, Williams felt the statement was a subtle jab at his team, which has had a much-publicized run of injuries and ailments in the past two weeks.

It was enough to have Williams, in a comment on his weekly radio show Monday, telling an unspecified person to "coach their own damn team, I'll coach my team."

Well, apparently you can give Coach K the most talented players in the world and he can't design a defense that can keep a team of Greeks from surpassing the century mark.

Shavlik and his parents are all quick to point out that girls do not figure into his life at this point. They are "out of his comfort level," Kim Randolph says

I like that Coach K always credits the other team after a Duke loss, and if he blames anyone, he blames himself. I dislike that when he withdrew from the team in 1994-95 with exhaustion and back pain, Duke petitioned the NCAA to make sure the team's 4-15 finish was credited to interim coach Pete Gaudet.

Then on Phil being let go: "Phil took us to the finals three out of the five years and you want to fire him and want to bring in Mike Krzyzewski? Come on, man. That's like being married to J-Lo, then dropping J-Lo for a girl that's 5-10, 480 (pounds). They asked me when I was out there, 'Why do you want to be traded?' I said me staying here is like divorcing my wife and marrying someone who looks like me. That's backwards, man."

Duke and officials: Here's the impact Duke bully Mike Krzyzewski has on late-game officiating: Duke's last two wins came down to a 50-50 call involving physical post defense by Shelden Williams. Both calls went to Duke. Does that sound 50-50 to you?

An ESPN "Outside the Lines" program questioned the academics and suggested the school bends entry requirements for basketball recruits. Krzyzewski dismissed the report as "bogus" and "lies."

Blue Devils and potential Blue Devils also had several run-ins with the law, including a top recruit being dismissed from his high school team after being accused of rape. And Duke suffered public humiliation when one of its players got into a physical confrontation with an official after its NCAA tournament loss.

"It's surreal," said Frasor. "If someone would've told me my freshman year that we could do this, I would've thought they were crazy. It's something I'll be able to tell other people. Any Carolina player who loses at Duke, I'll say, `I never did that.'"

Krzyzewski was livid about the lack of a call with 12 seconds remaining when Duke guard J.J. Redick went to the basket and was stripped of the ball.

"You're either trying to score or trying to get fouled or both," said Krzyzewski. "We didn't get any. You know, to me that was the game right there."

The reason a foul wasn't called is because there was no foul. But if instead of Connecticut it was N.C. State the Blue Devils were playing, and if instead of an all-star crew it was ACC officials calling the game, does Duke get the call? You think?

The list of problems is not short, and, sorry Duke Basketball Report, it is not a sin for a fan to admit that. I certainly appreciate the effort the team put forth Saturday and don't doubt DeMarcus Nelson was trying his damndest. But Duke students don't sleep in the cold for two months just to see players give it their all. Expectations can and should be high, and they were not fulfilled this year or last.

Unlike the NBA, the coach does almost anything he wants in college basketball. He talks to the media when he wants on non-game days, which for Coach K is about 10 minutes per week. He can get away with it because, well, he's Coach K.

When a well-known college basketball writer named Gregg Doyel wanted to do a biography on the Duke coach, Coach K didn't want any part of it. A letter was sent to all of his former players and friends which said something like, "Coach K would appreciate it if you didn't help Doyel with his unauthorized project."

I really felt that the officiating crew for the Duke/Md. game simply had one of those horrible days.

It's just a shame that, thanks to three stocky men in stripes, we never got to see the championship game we all hoped for.

The report also examines how Boozer and Williams have gotten into position to graduate in three years by taking heavy course loads in summer school.

Boozer and Williams both took two independent-study classes during Duke's second summer session. The show states that during half of the six-week session, Boozer was out of town practicing and playing with the U.S. team competing in the World Championship for Young Men.

The most commentary generated by this year's NCAA Tournament did not concern action on the court. It revolved around a commercial break in the action.

Specifically, the credit card commercial starring Duke Coach Mike Krzyzewski aroused passions. Did the commercial tout American Express or Duke basketball? Hard to tell even after repeated viewings ad nauseum

Although Vitale's presence may add a buzz to what's expected to be a hotly contested game, at least one of the principals won't get caught up in the moment.

"It may mean something to some players, but it doesn't really mean anything to me," said Timmy Bowers, MSU's unflappable senior guard.

"It's just another commentator, a guy who thinks he knows everything about basketball. He's a Duke fan to me, so I really don't care too much about that," Bowers said with a smile.

You're too good of a player to be celebrating like that."

That's what Virginia Tech's Zabian Dowdell told the Herald-Sun Krzyzewski told him following the Hokies' upset of Duke at Cameron Indoor Stadium over the weekend. So I'm guessing Coach K must've been offended Wednesday after Georgia Tech handed the Blue Devils a 74-63 defeat here at Alexander Memorial Coliseum and forced him to observe students pouring onto Cremins Court from both end zones, he being the Celebration Police and all.

"Basically," said sophomore Jason Ritchie of Chicago, "basketball is just another reason to feel we're better than everyone else on the planet." He's disgusted by the overall attitude and by the emphasis and energy devoted to games -- which brings us back to Cambridge and combustion.

The first time I listened to Coach K speak I was awed. I had revered him and the Duke program in high school (and even wore the same number - 44 - as Cherokee Parks). Four years later, before the UNC game, I reacted to Coach K's speech with skepticism and even some anger. As he talked about the million-dollar donors to the program, I could think only of the cuts in the Biological Anthropology and Anatomy Department (euphemistically termed 'reorganization'), the threat of other reductions in the Arts & Sciences faculty, and the neglected arts facilities on campus. Just what are the priorities of the fundraisers at this school? And what are our alumni thinking when they spend these sums on the game of basketball?

When it really gets down to the wire, you rush to fit as many CAMERON CRAZIES/YOU PLAY, YOU LOSE, YOU GO HOME-clad 'super fans' into those three polyester-bound rooms, just in time to be there all night long, just as some of the saner undergraduates walk past you on their way out of the gym. This is exciting for you-this bitter cold, this taking the bus over at 2 a.m. with your sleeping bag, this waiting in line to play a game of XBox right outside the first tent, the tent you wish was yours. But nothing is as exciting as when (gasp!) you get a personal visit from Shelden Williams, a 6-foot-9 kid your age who can barely fit in your little contraption anyway. He leaves, and then you freeze some more.

With Vitale praising their "spirit" as a model of what a college basketball fan should be, it is any wonder that other fans are now trying to outdo such nonsense?

We have to get back to the days of fans cheering on their own team instead of trying to humiliate the opposition. That Duke University fans are held up as a model says all you need to know about what is wrong with sports today.

Not that any media body could ever approach Krzyzewski for a comment if it were proven. Coach K has a very standard, very strict, no-interview policy. Not on the sideline, not in his office, not over the phone, Coach K is completely untouchable if he does not instigate the contact. To add even more absurdity, to gain access to his office there is a touch pad that screens fingerprints. I kid you not.

Unfortunately, the paint has dried on Redick. In fact, it dried so long ago it's starting to chip. Even Redick knows it was a mistake for the Magic to draft him.

"The writing's on the wall," Redick said when contacted Wednesday by the Sentinel's Brian Schmitz. "The writing's been on the wall for some time."

For those unfamiliar with the language of the NBA, let me translate what that writing says. It says: "J.J. Redick, the biggest bust this city has seen since Paris Hilton's nightclub."

For years when the Cameron Crazies have entered the stadium for home games, the line monitors have distributed "cheer sheets" full of suggested chants and dirt on Duke's opponents. But since the Maryland game Jan. 26, when a Terrapin fan suggested a chant for the cheer sheet that tricked the Crazies into mocking themselves, the practice of distributing the papers has drawn national attention to the renowned student section.

The ESPN show suggested some players are taking "easy" classes and majors to get their degrees and noted that an unusually high number of players are studying sociology, which is considered a light course taken by only a small percentage of the student body.

Don Mike Krzyzewski, head of the all-powerful Tobacco Road family, consigliere David Falk and underboss Joe Alleva took Duke University's five-day-old president Richard Brodhead to the cleaners, and Brodhead still has no idea that a credit card is missing from the wallet he left in his slacks. Nor does he care.