'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.

Donald Wine, the Duke student govement head line monitor, said that Saturday's game, and Monday's if Duke advances, may be shown on big screens in Cameron Indoor Stadium

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,'Vern Lundquist, Raftery's play-by-play partner, said. 'What a player. What a man.'

What nonsense.

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.

This ignores the fact that Duke beat Xavier not because of its great play or The Genius K's strategy, but because it got the right calls at the right time and Xavier didn't. Not saying anything about the officials' intent or the impact of Duke's reputation on how the refs call a game. Just stating the facts, is all

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.

...

The fact the Blue Devils have all that talent isn't galling. It's admirable that Krzyzewski has been able to get so many great players to come to Duke and that he has gotten so much out of them. The galling part is Coach K's insistence there is something different about his program, some higher purpose that has made it what it is. It's called 'great athletes,' Mike.

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 touament two years ago. That kid learned at the knee of the master.

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...

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.

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.

...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.

'It's real,' Krzyzewski said Monday of the animosity he feels is being heaped on his team. 'It's not imaginary. And there's nothing you can do to prepare yourself for it. Normally, that kind of hatred is reserved for pro franchises. It's uncharacteristic to see it directed toward an amateur sports team.'

Junior forward Josh Childress said he and his teammates were taken aback by their standing behind Duke in the first year the committee has announced its ranking of the No. 1 seeds.

'In all honesty, we were a little disappointed,'' Childress said. 'Duke seemingly, no matter what happens to them, will continually be the nation's No. 1 team. I don't know if that's the media or who that is.''

After ascertaining that the Blue Devils, who were beaten by Maryland on Sunday, already have five losses, Childress continued.

'No matter what program I watched, no matter what newspaper I read, they were a lock for a No. 1 seed. What makes them continually the top program in the nation?

Olson even suggested sarcastically Sunday to the UA Rebounders Club that, 'I don't think (TV analyst) Dick Vitale likes Duke, do you think?' and noted that ESPN 'does a great job recruiting' for Duke and the rest of the Atlantic Coast Conference.
....
'The only people who like Duke are the people who went to Duke,' Olson told his booster club audience, later adding: 'I would think there would be the Duke fans, but there are strong feelings about basketball in the state of North Carolina one way or another.

'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.''