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.

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.

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.

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 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.

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.

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.

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.

"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.

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

"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.

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."

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.

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?

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

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.

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

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

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.

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

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.

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.)

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.

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?"

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.

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."

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."

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.'

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.

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.

Duke is the exception to the notion that everybody loves a winner.

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 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."

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

They wish they went here.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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

'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.

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.

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.

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.'

"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.

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

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.

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?"

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.

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?

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.

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."

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.

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).

(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.)

Many of us waited three hours in the driving rain on Friday night just to see Dicky V go wild...

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.

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.

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.'

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.

'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.'

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

"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."

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.

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.''

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.

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").

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.

"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."

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...

The animosity goes beyond winning. No one detests Lance Armstrong. It speaks to the way Duke wins, to the aura and mythos surrounding a program with vaunted student-athletes who are expected to drop words like aura and mythos casually.

Duke avoids serious scandal. Players mostly graduate. Problems pop up -- former center Casey Sanders ran afoul of the law, former walk-on Reggie Love ran afoul of a North Carolina frat house and Krzyzewski cusses refs with the bluest of 'em -- but receive scant attention, barely besmirching a pristine reputation

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.

"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"

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.

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

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.

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).

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

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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."

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

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?

'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.'

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.

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."

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 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

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.

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.

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."

'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.

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.'

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.

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.

"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

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.

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. "

I can't see what my future has in store

But I move forth with the strength of a condor

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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 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."

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.

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

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.

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.

When Vitale talks of Duke, he gushes. I want to reach through the television screen and beat him over his shiny bald head.

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

"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."

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.

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 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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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

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!).

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.

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.

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."

"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."

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.

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?")

PERCEPTION: Duke's basketball players, in contrast to many major college athletes, are squeaky clean.

REALITY: Those who have had brushes with the law the past two years include J.J. Redick (marijuana), Casey Sanders (assault), Reggie Love (DUI) and Chris Duhon (underage drinking).

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 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."

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."

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.

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.'

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

We already have the "cheer sheets" back--a big step up from last year.

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.

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....

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.

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.

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.''

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.

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 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.

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?

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.

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.

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.

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."

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?

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.

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

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."

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 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.'

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.

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.

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.

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.

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."

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.

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

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.

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.

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

But this team can recruit nat