If the ACC was a Warner Brothers cartoon, Duke would be a giant boulder flung from a catapult and every other team would be Wild-E-Coyote holding up a sign that says, “Meep.”
 
That was the sounded that echoed out of Winston-Salem Sunday night, as Duke thrashed #22 Wake Forest 82-64. Couple that with N.C. State and Maryland getting blown out and a Boston College team who doesn’t look like they can hack it on the road, and anyone who isn’t a Blue Devils fan is starting to come (if they haven’t already) to a very sickening realization: Nobody (the font settings on this computer do not go large enough for me to over emphasize ‘nobody’) stands in Duke’s way.
 
A unanimous #1, Duke is led by All-American candidates J.J. Redick and Sheldon Williams under the “Julius Hodge maxim”, which states that any player who can score over 20 points in a game while making opposing fans throw up in their mouth can stay in school for an additional four years. Combined with a couple McDonald’s All-Americans from a year ago, the token 6^th man floor-slapping guy off the bench a coach who has three times as many consonants as he does vowels in his name, and Duke looks unbeatable on paper.
 
But you could argue that they’re only slightly better than last years squad, a team that won yet another ACC tournament but finished third in the conference behind North Carolina and Wake. So how did they go from third to invincible?
 
It’s not that Duke is so much better than it was last year, but that their competition is so much worse. Yeah, the ACC is always tough, and on any given night yadda yadda yadda. But Duke (who was a top five team last year) brought nearly everyone back, while almost all the other major contenders in the ACC lost the one player who made them a national title contender. Consider that:
 
N.C. State lost the aforementioned Julius Hodge (either he went pro or enrolled in another university).
 
Georgia Tech said goodbye to Jarrett Jack and Wake Forest parted with Chris Paul after both decided to leave early for the NBA.
 
And the defending National Champions… well they should get props just for being able to field a team this year.
 
Those players were the rock of their team, the glue who held everyone together, the guy who got the ball when the game was on the line, and the one player who enjoyed taunting the opposing crowd. Now they’re gone. Suddenly all those teams’ ships are sailing without a captain. And if Duke was able to beat those teams with those players, imagine what Duke will do without them.
 
So that leaves that other team that Duke is guaranteed to play twice every year.
 
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When the ACC expanded to 12 teams, the league had to get rid of its traditional round robin format because there were simply too many games that would have to be played. Instead, each team was given two “rivals”; two teams that you are guaranteed to play home and home every year, while rotating a schedule between the other nine teams.
 
Obviously, Duke’s first rival is North Carolina, the rivalry that defines college basketball. Every year there are always two games circled on Duke’s calendar: Carolina at home and Carolina away. The Carolina game has always been the measuring stick for Duke; a season without beating UNC doesn’t mean anything.  
                    
Then there’s Maryland.
 
The Duke-Carolina rivalry is so great because both schools are so eerily similar. Honestly, if you could just make that Carolina blue a little darker, it would be like watching Duke play itself. With Maryland it’s the exact opposite. If Duke-Carolina is The Godfather of college basketball, then Duke-Maryland is the Goodfellas, just as intriguing to watch but not for the same reasons. Duke-Maryland has become the most intense rivalry in college basketball because Maryland is everything Duke is not.
 
Duke has All-Americans while Maryland has blue chip seniors. Duke always plays consistent; Maryland plays down or up to the level of competition. Maryland fans put too much emphasis the Duke game. Duke fans don’t treat Maryland like a viable threat. Maryland wants respect; Duke just wants to be left alone. Maryland students are too blunt with their jeers; Duke students are too clever with theirs. The list goes on. It’s a rivalry fueled not only by the actions and results on the court but by deeper social issues as well (public school vs. private school, north vs. south, etc).
 
For a while, it was hard for anyone to call that game a rivalry. You’ll still be hard pressed to find anyone in Durham call it that, simply because they don’t want to give any of the Maryland faithful the satisfaction of being right. A couple years ago, the argument was made that it wasn’t a rivalry because rivalries aren’t supposed to be one sided (as Duke had dominated prior to 2000). But it’s not that way anymore. Last year Duke was undefeated at the same point in the season, until an unproven Maryland team came into Cameron and won. Maryland is the only team who has beaten the Blue Devils in the ACC Tournament in the past seven years. Since 2000, Maryland has beaten Duke in Cameron three times. J.J. Redick, for his career, is 3-4 vs. the Terps, and has lost the last three meetings.
 
Duke-Carolina is traditional, classy and seems at times to be a celebration of the game of basketball more than anything else. There is only one word that describes the Duke-Maryland rivalry: nasty. The gestures and language used by the home students when the other is visiting would rival those of any of the Die Hard movies. “Maryland is the worst school to visit,” said Duke forward Lee Melchionni in the most recent edition of ESPN the Magazine. “They say things that can bring a grown man to tears if he’s not strong-willed.”
 
Underneath all the hostility, you might find a sprinkling of respect for the other. For every idiot who screams “F*** you J.J.”, there are 10 others muttering in disgust about his sweet jump shot. For every fool who made jokes about Juan Dixon’s parents, there were others at Duke who admired Dixon so much that they couldn’t wait until the day when he was “Juan Gone.” It may not last very long as anyone from College Park will tell you that Duke is the most overrated #1 team in the past decade, and anyone in Durham will say they shouldn’t have to deal with a team who can’t beat Clemson. It’s not much, but its there.
 
* * *
 
So on Wednesday night, how will Maryland be able to hang with Duke, especially with Duke coming off an 18 point drilling of Wake, and Maryland deciding to spend a little too much time on the beaches in Miami (they lost by 14)?
 
Remember Maryland lost its best point guard in John Gilchrist to the NBA draft last June. They are bringing back everyone from the Maryland team who snapped a streak of 11 straight appearances in the NCAA’s. A Terrapin team who lost to bottom feeder Clemson an astonishing three times last season. How are they going to match up with Duke’s All-Americans and raucous home crowd?
 
As Lt. Col. Frank Slade said, “You're in no position disagree with me, boy. I got a loaded .45 here. You got pimples.”
 
But Maryland has something that no team can coach or recruit. They’re immune to Duke’s greatest weapon: fear. Most of the time, teams walk out onto Coach K court and know they’re going to lose, they just go through the formality of showing up for the game. That intimidation won’t work on Maryland, because they know they can win there.
 
On the court, Duke causes match-up problems, but it isn’t anything Maryland hasn’t handled before. Redick’s a great player, but Maryland has two players who have guarded him before and came out with the win, so they know it can be done. When D.J. Strawberry was lost for the season last year after tearing his ACL, Chris McCray was required to guard the opposing teams best player, and he has evolved into a very capable defensive player because of it. Now with Strawberry and McCray both back and healthy, they’ll be able to switch off on Redick and neither should get exhausted chasing him around screens.  
 
Gary Williams has the right defensive mindset against Duke, that is, he knows to concede 40 points to Redick and Williams. Redick and Williams are great players. They’re going to score no matter what. Williams has figured out that it’s impossible to stop them, so let’s just try to contain them. Let Redick and Williams get their points and lock down everyone else. Make Sean Dockery or Lee Melchionni beat you. 57,63, and 68 points: that is what Duke scored in the NCAA tournament last year in three games, and it was the result of Duke’s opponents copying Maryland’s strategy.  
 
On top of that, deep down Maryland knows that they secretly have the support of all the other ACC schools. It’s the one thing every team in the conference has in common; they’re always rooting against whoever’s on top.
 
Think of it this way: Imagine the ACC is like one of those large extended families, something out of Cheaper by the Dozen. Duke would be the lone kid in the family who goes to private school, while everyone else attends public school. He’d be the honor roll student who played lacrosse, rowed boats and ate ivy. Every other child would resent him because the parents pay more attention to him then they do anyone else. Maryland would the foul-mouthed brat who ends up in detention at least once a week (think Judd Nelson from the Breakfast club). The other kids wouldn’t like him either but if they had to pick sides between the private school snob or the detention bound ruffian, they’re all going to take the ruffian.
 
Maryland may look outmatched on paper, but on any given night…
 
Chris DiIonno wants to be sure J.J. Redick is graduating this year. He can be reached at .