BY STEVE HANF
SALISBURY POST

The 49th annual ACC Tournament …

Mike Krzyzewski said he wasn’t sure he’d ever experienced something like this.

Matt Doherty is sure he doesn’t ever want to experience it again.

When the Blue Devils and Tar Heels square off Friday night in the Atlantic Coast Conference Tournament, it’ll mark the first time since 1944 that the legendary hoops neighbors played in back-to-back contests.

The Duke-Carolina contest at 7 p.m. may not be the best game of the day at the Charlotte Coliseum, but it’ll certainly be one of the most anticipated. In the 211-game series history between the schools —Carolina leads 122-89, while Duke holds a 9-8 tourney edge — never have Carolina and Duke matched up in the ACC Tournament quarterfinals.

For Doherty, an opening assignment for his No. 7 seed against No. 2 Duke is little reward for avoiding tonight’s play-in game.

“We’re glad to have a straight path to the quarterfinals and not go through the play-in game, but the consolation is you get to play Duke again,”Doherty said Tuesday during the ACC coaches teleconference. “It’s going to be tough to play them again because they are so good.”

Duke, ranked third in the nation, smoked the Heels 93-68 Sunday in Cameron Indoor Stadium behind 37 points from Jason Williams. In the first meeting at Chapel Hill, Duke rolled 87-58.

“As far as having the opportunity to win three games against a team in a year, if it’s spaced out more I think that becomes a little bit easier,”Krzyzewski said. “Not that it’s easy — you just get a little bit further away from the preceding game.

“If you’ve lost the preceding game, there’s a motivation to win the next one, of course,”Krzyzewski reasoned.“Sometimes the team that’s just won, you have to be careful you don’t assume it’s just going to happen.”

The record books don’t give a clear edge to either team in the back-to-back situation. In the 1943-44 season, Carolina and Duke actually played four times and split, including one home-and-away series.

That marked the only time the schools played back-to-back in the regular season. In 1940-41, Duke beat Carolina 35-33, then turned around a week later for an equally thrilling 38-37 win en route to the Southern Conference Championship.

It was the Heels’ time to shine in 1936-37, as Carolina beat Duke 37-32 to end the regular season, then managed a 34-30 win in the first round of the Southern tourney.

Not that the trip to the record books has all that much meaning, of course. Keep in mind that Duke was playing teams in that era with names like Hanes Hosiery, the Quantico Marines and Carolina Pre-Flight — we can only surmise that had something to do with airplanes rather than the state of the game before dunking became the norm.

The Terps enter the tournament as the top seed for the first time since 1984, but head coach Gary Williams quickly dismissed the notion that his team is the favorite.

“I would say that Duke and ourselves would be co-favorites,”Williams said. “We split during the year and we’ll see how that goes.”

The same scenario played out last year in the regular season and the Blue Devils got the tourney win on Nate James’ remarkable putback in the waning seconds.

That play sent Maryland into the NCAA Tournament on a losing note, which didn’t turn out to be such a bad thing. The Terps rolled into the Final Four in Minneapolis, where they once again faced Duke and lost.

“I would’ve rather gone in with a win, but I don’t know if it helps or hurts,”Williams said. “One thing about a conference tournament — it’s three days. What we did for 21/2 months this year is the most important thing to us.

“You want to win, but at the same time it’s another chance to play some games against some very good teams and prepare yourself for what’s ahead,”Williams said, referring to the NCAA Tournament in which his Terps likely will own a No. 1 seed. “You can really use the tournament as a stepping stone.”

Maryland would enjoy nothing more than winning its third tournament title (in addition to crowns in 1958 and 1984), but won’t let a loss spoil its sparkling regular season.

“Dean Smith used to talk about this all the time, about how he took a great deal of pride in the regular season,”Williams said. “It’s a 16-game thing where you play everybody twice. The regular-season championship is very important to me.”

Krzyzewski is used to March Madness, but his never-ending crop of talented players still face butterflies in the big games.

That’s one of the reasons the Blue Devils’ coach so enjoys the ACC Tournament. Especially for freshman Daniel Ewing, along with 2001 red-shirts Dahntay Jones and Nick Horvath, the league tournament is a great way to prepare for an NCAA Tournament they didn’t participate in last season.

“I always look at this week as a celebration of our conference,”Krzyzewski said. “Last year I thought the ACC office did an amazing job of creating what I considered a Final Four atmosphere and I’m looking forward to how they’re going to do that again this year.”

The Blue Devils enter Friday’s game with a nine-game winning streak in tournament play; the tourney record is 10. Duke’s last loss came in the 1998 title game, 83-68 vs. Carolina. This year’s event marks the second straight as a No. 2 seed. Duke has been the No. 1 seed 14 times.

When the Deacs meet Georgia Tech in Friday’s final game, it’ll be Wake’s second huge contest in a row.

A three-game losing streak that included a blowout against Duke, a one-point defeat at Maryland and 13-point setback at Georgia Tech left the Demon Deacons scrambling.

When N.C.State paid a visit to the Lawrence Joel Coliseum last Saturday, plenty was on the line: the No. 3 seed in the league, locking down an NCAA Tournament bid, notching sweeps over Carolina and N.C. State for the first time ever in the same season, and giving the senior class a winning record in the league for the first time.

“We were very honest with them,”head coach Skip Prosser said. “We told them all those things that were hanging in advance of Saturday. It was certainly one we were thrilled to get.”

It was one Wake needed after a pair of three-game skids late in the regular season. As good as the Deacs have looked at times, they’ve lost to Clemson in double-overtime, suffered the defeat at Tech and were swept by Maryland and Duke.

“We’ve been knocked down a few times, dirt thrown on our graves, but we’ve managed to rejuvenate ourselves, come back from the dead,”Prosser said. “Hopefully we’ll continue to do that. It’s an unforgiving league. You can be playing well and lose two or three in a row because of the caliber of teams you have to play against.”

When the Wolfpack lost to Wake Forest, they gave themselves a much tougher road in the ACC Tournament. N.C. State will open against a talented, albeit up-and-down Virginia team it’s already beaten twice.

A win Friday would then pit the Pack against No. 1Maryland in the semis —but that’s a matchup head coach Herb Sendek isn’t even considering yet.

“Any time you play Virginia, you’re in for a war,”Sendek said. “I don’t think it’s about us having beaten them twice already.”

Cavalier fans probably hold N.C. State among the most responsible for their team’s late-season swoon. The Wolfpack handed Virginia its first loss of the season, way back when the Cavs were ranked No. 4 in the nation, in an 81-74 decision at Charlottesville. When State welcomed UVa. into the Entertainment and Sports Arena, the result was a convincing 85-68 Pack pounding.

But none of that matters now, insists Sendek.

“I think that cliché has even greater depth and truth when that team is really good like Virginia is,”Sendek said when asked about toppling a team for a third time. “There may be some teams you could beat a third and a fourth time easily, because there’s a disparity, but in Virginia’s case, they’re a really good team.”

In a bit of area news, West Rowan’s Scooter Sherrill made his way onto the ACColades page of this week’s ACC release. The State sophomore has hit his last 22 free-throw attempts. Interestingly enough, Sherrill’s first Did Not Play of his career came in the State win at Virginia.

Pete Gillen and his players find themselves under an extraordinary amount of pressure this weekend.

An early exit could spell the end of any NCAA Tournament hopes — for a team ranked as high as fourth in the nation earlier this year.

“We’ve just got to go down to Charlotte, play the best we can and try to win the ACC Tournament,”Gillen said when asked about his team’s much-ballyhooed bubble status. “That’s our goal.”

With that in mind, the Cavs are employing tunnel vision from now until Selection Sunday.

“The media a lot of time causes problems for the kids because they either pump them up too much or tear them down too much,”Gillen said. “It’s better if the players just practice and concentrate on playing well. The less they read or hear, I think the better in our situation.”

That situation probably didn’t apply last Friday following Virginia’s stunning comeback win against the Blue Devils. the Cavs entered that game off losses at Wake Forest, at Florida State and at home to Georgia Tech — facing the prospect of ending the season against the third-ranked Devils and second-ranked Terps.

“We really felt we could win the game, believe it or not,”Gillen said of the Duke contest. “I feel that we can beat anybody on a given night with our team, our talent. I feel conversely we can lose to anybody on our schedule, in the league, out of the league.”

In his first season at Tech, head coach Paul Hewitt earned ACC Coach of the Year honors for leading the Yellow Jackets to the NCAA Tournament.

A repeat of that award likely isn’t in the works this season, but perhaps it should be.

Tech, once 0-7 in the ACC, pulled off the biggest turnarounds in league history to finish 7-9 and tied with Virginia for fifth place.

“When we got to 0-7, we felt like we were playing better basketball, that if we could just get one, we could go on a roll,”Hewitt said. “Now, I’m not going to tell you we felt like we were going to finish up eight out of our last 10 and 7-9 when we were 0-7, but we all thought we were capable of something like this.”

The win streak started modestly against Florida State, Carolina and Clemson before Georgia Tech lost consecutive games to Duke and Maryland. Then the Yellow Jackets kicked it into high gear, embarking on a five-game spree that included wins over Wake, N.C. State and Virginia — all teams seeded higher than Tech in the tournament.

“I’m pleased with the way we’re playing and very, very happy with the way Tony Akins has closed out the regular season,”Hewitt said of his senior guard averaging 17 points per game.

“I realize come Friday night that all the things we did in the second half of the ACC season are not going to help us,”Hewitt added. “It gives us confidence, but we’re playing a very, very good team in Wake.”

That would be a very, very good Wake team — that Tech beat eight days ago. With that win and the accompanying hot streak, Hewitt’s now fielding questions about postseason bids for his .500 club.

“We realize in order to go to any of the postseason tournaments, we’ve got to win the next game,”Hewitt said. “We have not talked about NIT, NCAA. Even in the ACC Tournament, we haven’t talked about, ‘OK, let’s go win this thing.’ It’s been more about Wake Forest.”

The streak-ending taking place in Chapel Hill has been well-documented this season:first time ever not finishing in the top three of the league, first time in 32 years without at least 20 wins, first time in 27 years not making the NCAA Tournament (barring a run through the ACC Tournament, of course).

So when Clemson paid a visit to the Smith Center last week, all eyes zeroed in on another streak —the fact that, in 47 tries, the Tigers had never, ever won at Carolina.

“I realized more of the pressure of the game than the players. I tried to deflect that,”Doherty said. “I realize with all the streaks we broke this year, that’s the one people would’ve made maybe the most of. I just try to tell them let’s not focus on the streak, let’s focus on playing well.”

Doherty’s message came across loud and clear, apparently. Carolina cruised to a 96-78 victory, its largest margin in the ACC, in what Doherty called the “best game of the year.”

Most importantly, the win avoided another streak-breaker:Carolina had never played in the play-in game of the ACC Tournament.

“I didn’t want to play in that game,”Doherty said.

When the Seminoles opened the ACC season with wins over Duke, North Carolina and Clemson — and losses sandwiched in between to Virginia and N.C. State —things looked great for head coach Steve Robinson.

Florida State was 10-7 overall and looked poised to finally break out of cellar-dweller mode. Since late January, however, the Seminoles found themselves in a steep dive. They’ve lost nine of their last 10.

“We play in a very good league and there is no time off,”Robinson said. “If you do have success in a game, boy, you’d better be able to gear it back up and play at your maximum level every time out on the floor.

“Has our team always been able to accomplish that?No. Part of that’s a learned process.”

And the learning curve once again proved too steep in Tallahassee, despite a pair of solid guards in Monte Cummings and Delvon Arrington. The seniors each earned honorable mention in all-conference voting, although Robinson felt Cummings, who spear-headed FSU’s upsets and averaged better than 15 points per game, deserved more.

“I think he had a chance to be on a different team than just honorable mention, but I don’t control the votes,”Robinson said. “It’s the media that makes the decision about where guys end up.”

It’s the media that also gets to ask the tough questions. When Robinson was asked if he’d been in contact with the FSU administration regarding reports of his potential dismissal, he curtly responded:“Next question.”

It’s bad enough the Tigers have to worry about the present, like being in tonight’s play-in game for the third time in four years.

But even as Clemson gets ready to close the book on this season, problems already loom for the next. Little ones, like:Where will the men’s and women’s basketball teams play?

Structural problems recently were found in the roof at Littlejohn Coliseum, adding to an already proposed list of renovations. Officials don’t sound too optimistic about getting the project done before next hoops season.

Among contenders for Clemson home games are the civic center in nearby Anderson or one of the larger venues in Greenville, such as the Bi-Lo Center.

There are problems with each, however. The Anderson arena only holds 3,000 fans, with a portable seating plan bumping that figure to near the 5,000 mark. Still, that’s nearly half as many people as tiny Cameron Indoor accommodates at Duke —hardly fitting for an ACC team.

But traveling to Greenville to play in a bigger venue isn’t something head coach Larry Shyatt likes at all. Anderson is 15 minutes from the Clemson campus. Greenville is 40.

“It would provide not only the safest venue for our student population and our student-athletes going every day, simply because it’s one-third the distance, but it also is a wonderful community very close to Clemson that could give us a home away from home,”Shyatt said. “I worry a great deal about our Clemson community and our student population.”

Clemson officials are expected to make a decision within the next few weeks.

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Contact Steve Hanf at 704-797-4256 or shanf@salisburypost.com .