The ‘Anybody But Duke’ sentiment continues to grow.
Knight Ridder Newspapers

RALEIGH, N.C. – They are arguably the best program in the country. They have a Hall of Fame coach in Mike Krzyzewski, who has won three national championships and taken his teams to nine Final Fours. They are a beloved team in North Jersey and New York City, where many of their alums live, and sell out the Garden and the Meadowlands any time they play there.

Maybe that’s why the rest of the ACC was so happy to scribble graffiti on Coach K’s masterpiece this past weekend at the conference tournament in nearby Greensboro.

The Duke Blue Devils (27-5) got a healthy dose of venom from one of their rivals. Maryland stunned Duke, 95-87, in overtime Sunday, to break Blue Devils’ five-year stranglehold on the tournament championship. There was no question who most of the sellout crowd was rooting for when the Terps rallied from 12 points down in the final five minutes of regulation. There were eight full sections of Maryland fans at the Greensboro Coliseum and noise coming from the huge wall of red drowned out the Duke fans throughout the game.

It is hard to tell who was happier about this fall from grace – Maryland fans or those from the University of North Carolina. Tar Heel fans have always had a healthy dislike for the high-class private school eight miles down the road. They were sick of watching ESPN do a 12-hour infomercial for Duke basketball the previous week when the cable giant erected its “Gamenight” set next to Krzyzewskiville the day of Carolina-Duke game at Cameron Indoor Stadium. And they were incensed when Duke senior point guard Chris Duhon flashed six fingers to the Blue Devil fans after a 85-71 victory over Georgia Tech in the ACC semifinals. One even painted “Go Terps” over his Carolina blue T-shirt.

“There were a lot of happy people out there when we lost Sunday,” Krzyzewski said. “ABC” – Anybody but Carolina, a reference to the Tar Heels’ run under Dean Smith – has been replaced down here by “ABD” – Anybody but Duke.

It never used to be this way. The Blue Devils were fan favorites in 1986, the first time they went to the Final Four under Krzyzewski. They were the good guys in 1991 when they played UNLV in the national semifinals and they were rock stars the following season when they repeated as national champions.

But their persona apparently has turned from cuddly teddy bears to arrogant villains in the eyes of rabid fans from the other eight ACC schools, who seem disturbed that Duke has won too often and are still incensed by the officiating in the 2001 national semis. That was when Maryland’s Terence Morris picked up a third personal early in the second half and the Blue Devils rallied from 21 points down to beat the Terps.

“It’s real,” Krzyzewski said Monday of the animosity he feels is being heaped on his team. “It’s not imaginary. And there’s nothing you can do to prepare yourself for it. Normally, that kind of hatred is reserved for pro franchises. It’s uncharacteristic to see it directed toward an amateur sports team.”

Krzyzewski then went one step further and said he couldn’t remember any ACC school this league – even North Carolina during the glory years of Dean Smith – experiencing this kind of intense backlash. “The reason is they were never a minority,” said Krzyzewski, referring to the Heels’ state school status. “As good as they were and are and will be and deserve everything, there was no run like the run we just had in this conference. Theirs was close, but it wasn’t, like, national. Ours is national.”

Surprisingly, WRAL, the CBS-TV affiliate in Raleigh, was the only local media outlet to pick up Krzyzewski’s comments. But you can feel the underlying bitterness everywhere in this basketball hotbed.

The Dukies, who are the No. 1 seed in the NCAA Atlanta Regional and begin play on Friday in a first-round game against Alabama A&M here, can frost the rest of Tobacco Road again if they make another run.

They might even be able to quiet Digger Phelps of ESPN, who apparently wants to be one of the first to jump off the Duke bandwagon, boldly predicting Arizona would knock off the Devils in a second-round game here Saturday. “Thanks for telling me,” Krzyzewski said. “That means we have a better chance of winning if Digger is predicting that. He always thought his Notre Dame teams would beat us, too.

“When Digger was making that prediction, did he have index cards? Because usually when he was out there coaching against us he had index cards telling him what to do, and I always wanted to tell him that those were the wrong answers.”

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(c) 2004, New York Daily News.

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AP-NY-03-17-04 1949EST