Loud cheers rippled through Lawrence Joel Coliseum on Sunday when, 30 or so minutes before Duke and Kansas tipped off, NorthCarolina’s upset win over Stanford was announced.

Duke head coach Mike Krzyzewski, slightly more restrained than the fans, was standing in a hallway watching the final minutes on TV.

“It looked like (center Brendan) Haywood was playing great, and there’s nobody like him in the country when he’s playing like that,”Krzyzewski said. “I told my staff yesterday that I think Carolina’s going to win, basically because they’re good.

“And they come from the ACC.

“Which is a good conference — worthy of more than three teams in the tournament.

“This was a paid-for political announcement,”he added with a laugh.

Krzyzewski also praised former Duke star Tommy Amaker for coaching Seton Hall to an upset win over No. 2 seed Temple. Tulsa’s win over No. 2 Cincinnati made it a tough day all around for the favorites. Except Duke, of course.

“We’re all college basketball fans,”junior forward Shane Battier said.

“We’ve been watching the games the last couple days and we’ve seen that the top seeds have been getting knocked off. If that’s not motivation, I don’t know what is.

“To make matters worse, in the lull of the action today, they kept saying the scores during timeouts and you couldn’t help but hear it and think. We can’t really control what other teams are doing. We came out and we worried about Duke.”

The BlueDevils also worried about Kansas, which looked ready to add an upset of its own with a quick 13-4 lead.

“With all the high seeds falling today, we were like, ‘Deja vu, it’s going to happen to us,’”senior guard Chris Carrawell said.

While the Blue Devils rebounded 69-64 and moved on to the Sweet 16, the always-colorful Carrawell did offer a theory as to why so many favorites are heading for home.

“When (Cincinnati’s) Kenyon Martin got hurt it was like, ‘OK, it’s wide open.’ Other teams sensed that, so now you’ve got some teams playing with a lot of tight (butts),”Carrawell said. “They go out there and they’re like, ‘We know we have a chance since the player of the year got hurt.’ So you go out there and you’re playing tight, and that’s why a lot of the top teams are losing.

“You just have to go out firing all your bullets. Shoot the shots you normally shoot,”Carrawell explained for how the BlueDevils haven’t succumbed to the upset bug. “If you’re going to go down, go down playing like you’ve been playing all year.”

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much ado about nothing: Roy Williams and Krzyzewski appeared to engage in heated conversation during a TV timeout in the first half. But it wasn’t like that at all, they said.

Kind of.

After a sequence of plays early in the first half that left both coaches screaming, a TV timeout stopped the action. Williams, who had been screaming at one of his players from about five feet on the court, was about to go to the huddle when he saw Krzyzewski screaming at one of the officials right next to the Duke bench.

The ref and Krzyzewski stood there talking so long that Kansas’ Williams thought it was about time he should get some words in, so he headed all the way down to the Duke bench. A heated scene followed.

“I thought he (Krzyzewski) was concerned about me being out of the coaching box, and any coach doesn’t like to see what looked like a coaching clinic with the referees going on there,”Williams said. “But it wasn’t a big thing.”

Agreed, said the Duke coach.

“I didn’t say anything to Roy and Roy didn’t say anything to me. It was about the officiating,”Krzyzewski said. “I think he was trying to protect his turf and I was trying to protect mine. It was not heated against Roy Williams. No way would I do that.

“Was I angry with the official? Absolutely.”

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looks can be deceiving: Duke freshman point guard JasonWilliams had one of the worst statistical games of his brief career.

AgainstKansas’ tough defense, Williams was only 2-for-15 on field goal attempts, was 0-for-7 from 3-point range and committed eight turnovers. The six points he scored were the second lowest of the season, but he did clinch the game with two free throws with 2.2 seconds to play.

“The stats look so bad, but I thought he played well,”Krzyzewski said. “We hung him out to dry a lot of times because of their denial defense. We didn’t give him receivers. Jason was out there a little bit more trying to do things.

“Stat-wise he’ll do better than that, but we wouldn’t have won the game without him. He had to withstand a lot of that pressure all along.”

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About those free throws … Williams and fellow freshman Carlos Boozer didn’t succumb to rookie nerves.

With Duke clinging to a 61-59 lead with 1:57 to play, Boozer calmly drilled two free throws. Then Williams took full advantage of his shot to ice the game by hitting his two freebies.

“This is an NCAA, big-time game, and to see Carlos hit two free throws and Jason hit two free throws, those are big accomplishments,”Krzyzewski said. “I’m proud of them.”

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