The last time the men's basketball team faced off against the UCLA Bruins, everything was on the line.
It was the 2001 Sweet 16 in Philadelphia and the fourth seeded Bruins gave top seeded Duke a fit for most of the game, until halfway through the second frame when then-sophomore Jay Williams rattled off 19 straight points in seven minutes, not missing a shot and leading the Blue Devils over the Bruins, 76-63, en route to a national championship.
After 20 months, a lot has changed.
This time around, when No. 6 Duke and No. 14 UCLA square off Saturday Nov. 30 at 1 p.m. in Conseco Fieldhouse in Indianapolis as part of this season's Wooden Tradition, neither team's season will be on the line, both are facing--by their astronomical program standards--relative rebuilding seasons, and both are led by a pair of older players looking to come into their own.
"They have a great team," Blue Devil junior Chris Duhon said. "They're different from the last time we played them. They don't have Earl Watson and Dan Gadzuric, but I know they have a great point in Cedric Bozeman and they have [Jason] Kapono so they're going to be a team that's really good."
While Duhon and Bruin leading scorer Kapono are the only two impact players returning from the game in Philadelphia, both Bozeman and Duke's Dahntay Jones are primed for breakout seasons--and a big game on national television could be just the place to make them household names.
In the end, Duhon should matchup with Bozeman while Jones will most likely be isolated on Kapono, but the Blue Devils say they haven't worked out all the kinks in their game plan.
"We haven't looked at UCLA so we don't know much about them, but we know they are a good team and they will be ready to play us," Jones said.
Krzyzewski agreed, saying he could not comment directly on UCLA because he had not even begun to study tapes since he was focusing on Duke's game with Davidson.
"I don't even know who they start," he said.
One of the biggest factors for Duke, however, could be which Jones shows up. If it is the Jones that lit up the preseason, leading the Blue Devils in scoring in their seven exhibitions, then the Bruins could be in for a rough night.
But, if Jones plays the way he did against Davidson, scoring only nine points and getting into foul trouble early, the Blue Devils will have to rely on their inside game and get tight wing defense from another source.
"UCLA's going to be a huge game for us," freshman Shavlik Randolph said. "We can use [the Davidson game] as a learning tool and look at the things we did wrong and improve. In the big picture it's going to be more positive than negative for us when we face UCLA."
After a rougher game against the Wildcats than many expected, Duke will take today off before going to the drawing board for the contest against the Bruins. Following Monday's contest Krzyzewski said that his young team needed to work on its inside play and not force the ball into a double team, but rather find the open man on the outside.
Regardless of the next few practices, all of the team is aware that they cannot make the same type of mistakes they did against the Wildcats and expect to beat a top-15 program.
"They're a great basketball team and a great basketball program and they have been that way for years," Duhon said. "So we're excited to see a game like that on our schedule. It should be a good game, we'll get a chance to find out the type of team we are."
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