One has to wonder what Gary Williams and his Maryland Terrapins see when they look in the mirror these days.
Is it the squad that beat the No. 1 and No. 2 teams in the nation? Or is it the team which got run out of its own building by 32 points on Jan. 3?
Either way, you can bet that the one thing Williams is seeing more of this year is gray hair.
As it heads into tonight's rematch with the Duke team (18-1, 7-0 in the Atlantic Coast Conference) that dealt it its worst home loss in 29 years, Maryland is still trying to figure out who it is.
At 5-3 in the ACC, the Terps (12-6) will open the second half of their league schedule on pace to finish above .500 for just the second time in Williams' eight years at the helm. But those numbers don't tell the whole story.
How do you explain the Terps' 86-83 win over No. 2 Kansas and their subsequent loss to George Washington? Or their 89-83 shocker over No. 1 North Carolina, just two weeks after the Duke debacle?
"It's not the same team [that we played the first time]," Duke center Taymon Domzalski said of the Terps, whose string of three straight wins over top-25 teams has vaulted them back into the national rankings.
"They're a lot more confident team now. LaRon Profit has it going; Terrell Stokes is back in his groove. Plus, put in Obinna Ekezie and you have a tough team to stop."
Ekezie was tough enough to stop the first time these teams met. The 6-foot-10 junior scored a career-high 23 points against the Blue Devils. But Ekezie's contributions hardly mattered in the face of Duke's school-record 14 three-pointers, and the Blue Devils rolled 104-72.
Duke has won 25 of the last 30 meetings in the series. A win tonight would give the Blue Devils their best ACC start (8-0) since 1991-92.
Records aside, there may be motivation problems for Duke, whose much-anticipated showdown with No. 2 North Carolina looms a week away. How can it focus on topping a 32-point road win?
"You can't [top it]," Steve Wojciechowski said. "And that's our motivation."
"We don't expect that to happen again. They're a good basketball team, and they're playing really well right now. They're going to come in here fired up."
The senior from Severna Park, Md., may be facing his "hometown" team for the last time tonight. Wojciechowski, who grew up watching Maryland basketball, has had mixed success against the Terps, posting a 6-4 career record.
He'll miss playing in front of friends and family, he said, something that has made the series a special one for him.
"It's a lot of fun for me to play Maryland," Wojciechowski said. "It's been a great rivalry aside from the last game. We've had some close calls."
For the Terrapins, tonight's game means everything. A win puts the Terps back in the race for the ACC title, something the other six schools in the conference had conceded to Duke or UNC in the last two weeks.
Maryland's Jekyll and Hyde personality is as dangerous to the Blue Devils as it is taxing on Williams' psychological well-being.
In their win over UNC, the Terps held the nation's top shooting team (54 percent) to just 46.7 percent from the field. They outrebounded the Tar Heels, who lead the league in that category, by a whopping seven boards.
But to Williams' chagrin, the Terps then suffered a letdown, playing sluggishly throughout their next game, a 72-60 loss to Wake Forest. They arrive in Durham on the heels of two straight wins, including a 74-69 victory over Clemson, which knocked the Tigers out of the polls.
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