CHARLOTTE - The men's basketball team entered its ACC tournament opener last night bearing several similarities to last year's squad but with one important difference.
Just as was the case last March, a top-ranked Duke team strolled into tournament play coming off an emotional win over North Carolina with a matchup against overmatched Virginia, the ACC's last-place team.
But unlike a year ago, the Blue Devils brought one more thing to the Charlotte Coliseum: a killer instinct.
"We always want to play harder than our opponents," Will Avery said. "We just wanted to come out and show everybody we're going to play hard every game. We want to stay focused for 40 minutes."
The last time around in '98, Duke was less than stellar in a 63-41 win over the Cavaliers. The performance did not improve as the Blue Devils needed a buzzer beater to knock off Clemson before falling to the Tar Heels by 15 in the tournament's finals. That inability to put away opponents continued in the NCAAs, when Duke slipped by overmatched Oklahoma State and Syracuse before the infamous collapse against Kentucky.
Whether or not it makes a difference for the rest of the postseason we'll have to wait and see, but Duke certainly came out with a killer instinct in last night's 104-67 win. The Blue Devils were focused, opportunistic and relentless.
They burst out to a 13-3 lead, then 21-5, 37-16, 47-17 and so on. Virginia scored consecutive baskets just once during the entire first half. The Cavaliers missed their share of layups, six in the first four minutes, and got no second chances. Duke was dominant on the boards against a Virginia team that has just one scholarship player, 6-foot-11 Kris Hunter, taller than 6-6.
Height wasn't the only factor as the Blue Devils continued their habit of outfighting the opposition. That translated on the rest of the court, as Duke maintained its focus even with the lead swelling over 40.
"We wanted to keep improving," Chris Carrawell said. "We weren't really looking at the score. We just happened to be up by 38. We wanted to come out in the second half and be precise and just keep playing hard."
Granted, the Blue Devils' performance was no different than it has been all season, but significant because a year ago they blew out the Marylands and UCLAs of the world regularly until March, when that killer instinct disappeared and cost Duke a trip to the Final Four.
The Blue Devils, you can reasonably expect, won't get a laugher of this proportion for the rest of March. Only a potential NCAA first-round opponent may be this undermanned. But by opening strong from the tip-off last night and maintaining the pressure for the rest of the evening, the Blue Devils served notice that they intend to make this postseason quite different from the last one.
"We don't really worry about who we're playing against," Elton Brand said. "We just wanted to come out and show everybody we're going to play hard every game. If we do that, we'll be fine."
And count in one opponent who also thinks Duke is doing just fine.
"We got discouraged," Virginia coach Pete Gillen said. "It happens all the time when you're playing a great team. We've got a team with six scholarship players going against a great team like this. It's like pros versus young men. What are ya gonna do?"
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