For the first time in nearly half a decade, the men's basketball team is looking up at .500.
After picking up their first win of the season courtesy of a vastly overmatched Army squad, the No. 16 Blue Devils (1-2) are packing up shop and heading west for the Thanksgiving weekend, taking on USC (1-1) Saturday in the Wooden Classic after tonight's lightly anticipated matchup with Columbia.
And while the Blue Devils have about the same chance to go 0-2 against an Ivy League school and a first-round NIT casualty last season as Jason Williams has of leading the league in blocks, head coach Mike Krzyzewski isn't making any assumptions about his still unproven team.
"We're going to be a developing team throughout the year, but especially early on," Krzyzewski said. "These kids need time on the court and all need time together. Our early season on the road is going to be challenging, but our kids are going to have to grow up early."
Tournament history has shown that the two-game, four-team tournament hasn't been a West Coast cakewalk. Only once in the five-year history of the tournament has a team from east of the Mississippi won a game in the Classic.
Five East Coast teams have entered the Classic-No. 1 Massachusetts, No. 3 Kentucky, a top-25 Maryland club and Georgia-and each team left with little more than a tan.
The lone exception to the East Coast rule was No. 2 Villanova, who upended Purdue back when Kerry Kittles still roamed the Philadelphia campus in 1995.
And Krzyzewski might worry about things like cross-country travel if his team would give him time to worry about such things.
"When you have six freshmen out of 10 guys, you only watch your team," Krzyzewski joked. "Especially when you lost your first two games."
The Blue Devils lost those opening two games largely because they lacked an inside presence. But with a rapidly improving Carlos Boozer-the freshman big man who missed six weeks with a foot injury-struggling in the paint may be a thing of the past against the Trojans.
Yet in the upset-ripe Wooden Classic, anything could happen.
The Trojans were just 15-13 last season and ended their season in unceremonious fashion, falling to Wyoming in the first round of the NIT. But unlike the Blue Devils, who watched three starters fly the coop from last year's team, USC returns four starters.
And in the modern game of watered-down college hoops, experience might just count more than talent.
At least that's what fourth-year coach Henry Bibby is rooting for.
Picked to finish seventh in the Pac-10 this season, the Trojans would like nothing better than a victory over the Blue Devils to solidify their claim as a top-tier hoops team.
"What do they know?" Bibby said of the preseason voting. "We've got four guys back, and they're all better."
No. 4 North Carolina (1-0) indoctrinated the Trojans into ACC basketball last night with a 82-65 thrashing of USC at the Maui Invitational, but it wasn't without the best efforts of center Brian Scalabrine and forward Sam Clancy, who combined for over half of the team's points and pulled down 11 rebounds against Brendan Haywood and the rest of UNC's league-best frontcourt. If Duke has problems with the Trojans, it likely will be that tandem taking advantage of the undersized Blue Devils.
USC will probably be little more than a litmus test in a season-long experiment of blending youth and role players into a national title contender. But how the Blue Devils score on this road test could go a long way to determining their fate come ACC time.
"We want to be really good and the only way you become that is to play a really good schedule," Krzyzewski said. "Certainly, we stand a chance of losing every one of our road games, but we could win every one too. Either way, we have to adjust no matter what the outcome. These kids need to grow up in a hurry and the only way to do that is play difficult schedule."
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