The holiday theme: “It’s a potential St. Patrick’s Day massacre,”offered head coach Mike Deane.

The you-never-know theme: “We’re holding on to that thin thread that suggests that, at some point in time, a 16th seed can beat a first seed,”Deane added.

And the overwhelming choice, the it’s-great-to-be-here theme: “This is a tremendous opportunity for Lamar University. It’s great for these seniors, it’s great for me in my first year in the program to be able to get them to the NCAATournament,”Deane said. “That’s all the good news. The bad news is we have to play Duke in the first round.”

The thought of hisCardinals facing the No. 1 team in the nation and the No. 1 team in the East Regional certainly did nothing to dampen Deane’s sense of humor. The first words out of his mouth at Thursday’s practice day press conference were, “We spent the last three or four days working hard to keep our players not looking past Duke.”

When the laughter subsided, he honestly assessed his team’s chances of beating the Blue Devils Friday night in the late game at Lawrence JoelColiseum. His 15-15 Cardinals, surprise winners of the Southland Conference tournament, don’t match up well with the teams in their own league, yet alone with 27-4 Duke.

“Usually you go into a game with a game plan and figure out, ‘This is the guy we can lay off, this is the guy we’re going to try to take away, this is the guy that has to beat us,’” Deane said. “That’s very hard to find on this Duke team because they’re the most explosive team in the country.”

Flickers of hope do exist. One of Lamar’s losses came at Oklahoma, the third-seeded team in the West Region. Lamar took the 26-6 Sooners down to the wire in a 67-63 defeat.

In addition, Deane guided Sienna to the NCAATournament in 1989 and pulled off a stunning upset when his 14th-seeded Saints bounced No. 3 Stanford 80-78 in the first round. Deane’s Marquette Golden Eagles also landed in the tournament in 1996 and 1997, making him the 24th coach in NCAAhistory to take three teams to the promised land.

He’s still not overly optimistic, however.

“If you’re a low seed playing a high seed, you need a great point guard, three good 3-point shooters and enough big guys to give 20 fouls. In Greensboro with Sienna, I had that,”Deane said. “Our talent level doesn’t compare to that team.”

Lamar does have Landon Rowe, a senior averaging 15 points a game. The Southland Conference tournament MVP averaged 22.7 points and 8.3 rebounds during his team’s upset streak and had a career-high 39 points earlier this season. Junior guard Kenyon Spears is the team’s second option, averaging 10 points a game.

The 63 points per game Lamar averages will be hard to measure up to Duke’s 89-point attack paced by six players in double figures. Since Deane figures his players already know that, he hasn’t let them watch any film of the Blue Devils this week. Why scare them any more than they already are?

“These guys have Duke in their living room the last 10 years. Mike Krzyzewski is very well known. There’s a reason for that,”Deane said of the Duke head coach. “His teams have been so good and his style is very simple and predicated on out-talenting you and keeping the game very simple and fundamental. No sense watching film — the guys know what they’re up against.”

They also couldn’t care less.