It's the kind of story that starts a legend. One of the founding myths of Duke basketball. The day the Blue Devils began their rise to college basketball pre-eminence.
It starts with an embarrassment-a 109-to-66-sized embarrassment to Virginia in the first round of the 1983 ACC Tournament. At Denny's early the next morning, someone raised a glass: "Here's to forgetting about tonight."
Third-year head coach Mike Krzyzewski was quick with the reply: "Here's to never forgetting about tonight."
As the next season started, Krzyzewski constantly reminded his team of its 43-point loss, plastering 109-66 on the Cameron scoreboard before the first practice.
That 1983-84 team went 24-10 and landed Krzyzewski in the NCAA Tournament for the first time. Two years later, the Blue Devils made their Final Four debut under the once-embattled coach.
Turn the clock ahead 24 years and three national championships. The story of this year's Duke team again starts with an embarrassment-a 22-11 season capped by an Eric Maynor 15-foot foul-line jump shot that lifted VCU past the Blue Devils 79-77 in the first round of the NCAA Tournament.
This Duke team does not need any stern reminders from its head coach about how last year ended; these Blue Devils have gotten plenty from the national media.
"The old Duke is dead. The new Duke is just another team," wrote Mike Freeman of CBS Sportsline following the Blue Devils' earliest NCAA Tournament exit in 11 seasons.
"That's because Duke isn't Duke anymore," wrote alumnus John Feinstein of the Washington Post.
"Playing Duke these days is like playing Notre Dame in a bowl game-it looks like a glamour game, but it's really an easy W," wrote Jim Donaldson of the Providence Journal during the Blue Devils' first four-game losing streak of the year.
Duke starts its rebuttal Friday night against North Carolina Central, prepared to provide some emphatic answers to unceasing questions about the team's heart and the program's seemingly evanescent mystique.
"A lot of dirt was thrown on our face," senior captain DeMarcus Nelson said. "The magnifying glass was on us, and they critiqued our team from top to bottom to figure out why our team wasn't winning like the old Duke teams. Throughout the summer, walking around town, people saying different things to you, it really motivated me a lot.... I've got that competitiveness in myself to want to get back at all those people."
Nelson has taken full responsibility for the team he now captains by himself, a season after he shared the privilege with Greg Paulus and Josh McRoberts. At times last year, the Blue Devils suffered from a lack of leadership, a product of not having one man to turn to. In his final season at Duke, Nelson wants to make sure that does not happen.
"From last year to this year, I've matured a lot," Nelson said. "As the leader of the team, I have to set the tone everyday in practice.... We definitely are equipped with a lot of motivation, a lot of anger. We should have a really hungry basketball team this year."
Nelson is not the only Blue Devil with the stains of last season fresh on his mind. Sophomore guard Jon Scheyer has them etched on his face, in the form a scar under his left eye-the remnant of a Maynor elbow in the loss to VCU. The scar was fresh last March, glistening as tears trickled down from Scheyer's eyes in the wake of what the then-freshman called the hardest loss he had ever experienced.
"It's something I'll remember in the back of my head and use as motivation for this year and for the rest of my life," Scheyer said of the loss.
The scar, like the memory of that game, has faded slightly in the eight months since the Blue Devils last took to the floor in a game that counted. But scars never really disappear, and Scheyer and his teammates understand that the pain of last season cannot be forgotten, only overcome.
And Duke knows that, beginning Friday night in Cameron, it has five months to write the ending to a story that began a season ago. Five months to silence the critics. Five months to create a legend of its own.
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