Trajan Langdon, Elton Brand, Will Avery, Corey Maggette — gone to the NBA. Chris Burgess — transferred to Utah. Taymon Domzalski — graduated.

In their place, seven eager freshmen stood ready to prove that Duke basketball is still Duke basketball. They’ve got a 37-2 record and a world of expectations to live up to.

“It was a little odd,” Battier said. “But I think it’s far enough into the school year where any longing for players that were once here is gone. Now I look up and I’m the old man in the locker room.”

Actually, that title goes to Carrawell, the team’s lone senior.

“It was kind of like, where are these guys going?” Carrawell said. “It’s probably bad for Duke, but good for me, I guess, individually.”

As far as the Blue Devils are concerned, graduation and early departures for the NBA don’t matter a bit. After falling three points short in last year’s NCAAchampionship game against Connecticut, Duke was picked to finish second in the Atlantic Coast Conference according to media members at the recent ACCOperation Basketball meeting.

That would be a downer for Mike Krzyzewski’s team, which went 16-0 in the league last year and has won the conference the past three seasons.

“Externally people think that our chips are down, but internally we know that we have Coach K, we have Cameron Indoor Stadium,”Battier said. “We’re going to hold ourselves to the same high expectations that Duke has been all about.”

The brilliant season enjoyed by Brand, the farewell tour of fifth-year senior Langdon and Maggette’s splash onto the scene in his freshman season often stole the limelight from the rest of the Duke squad. Carrawell started all 39 games and averaged 10 points and five rebounds a game. The 6-foot-6 guard also dished out the second most assists on the team behind point guard Avery.

Battier, a 6-8 forward, generally sparked the squad on the defensive end by taking charges and leading the team in steals. He scored nine points a game on 55-percent shooting and also shot 42 percent from the field on 3-pointers.

But their combined 19 points per game must increase for Duke to be successful.

“The establishment of their roles right now is much more important than anybody’s role,”Krzyzewski said. “They have to be the foundation. They have to show up every day and put up good numbers and be veterans and really good players. They’re doing that, and they’re getting better as a result.”

Both players have started taking more shots in practice and impressing a strict work ethic on Duke’s younger players. When the season opens Nov. 11 in the Coaches vs. Cancer Classic in New York, two unquestioned leaders will be on the court.

“This year I have to be more selfish. And I can use my offense to create options for other guys,” Carrawell said. “I’m just going to try to make plays.”

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Just how many plays Carrawell must make depends on one person — freshman point guard Jason Williams.

The national prep player of the year out of New Jersey was expected to spend a season under the tutelage of Avery. Now the 6-2 guard will start immediately and learn as he goes about life in the ACC.

“It’s a hell of an opportunity. The biggest thing is to handle playing against this level of competition day in and day out,”Krzyzewski said. “Secondly, to play with the amount of talent you have on your own team. Those are adjustments, but if you think you’re good and you want to become better, then those are exciting things. We have to give Jason Williams an opportunity to experience that”

Krzyzewski said Williams doesn’t have any weaknesses, high praise for a player experiencing his first Duke practices. But the Blue Devils know mistakes will come.

“Jason’s going to be great, but he’s a freshman,” Carrawell said. “He has to learn that if you make two turnovers in a row, you can’t hold your head, you’ve got to go on to the next play. If a guy like (North Carolina’s) Ed Cota sees weaknesses, he’ll take advantage of that. That’s what we’ve got to get away from.”

That’s something all Duke’s freshmen will have to learn.

After Williams, the next most-heralded recruit comes from Langdon’s native Alaska. Carlos Boozer hails from Juneau and hopes to become the next Alaskan Assassin. The 6-9 center should step into Brand’s spot, but was slowed in the offseason by a broken foot.

The most recognizable of the freshman class could be Mike Dunleavy Jr., son of the Portland Trailblazers’ head coach. Dunleavy is a big guard at 6-7 and has the kind of shooting stroke expected of a coach’s son.

Duke’s other freshmen — 6-11 center Casey Sanders, 6-10 forward Nick Horvath, 5-10 guard Andre Buckner and 6-0 guard Andy Borman — wouldn’t have seen much playing time originally. But with everyone leaving, they’ll be expected to contribute almost every night.

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Nate James could help Duke’s cause with a big season.

The 6-6 junior forward showed flashes of the talent that made him a highly recruited prep star, but injuries have limited his playing time, especially in a red-shirt 1997-98 season in which he appeared in only six games.

James rebounded last year to play in all 39 games and averaged five points. His career highs in points (12) and rebounds (10) both came last season, and he showed that he can consistently connect from the 3-point arc (29 percent).

The other question mark for Duke is Matt Christensen, a 22-year-old sophomore. The 6-10 center has one year of varsity basketball experience but just returned from a two-year Mormon mission.

Because Duke now sports unknown players with unproven talents, one of the team’s biggest weapons is gone.

“Now it’s going to be a lot more intense when we go on the road,” Carrawell said. “Other teams could be into it from the beginning, but they always looked like, ‘Oh, God! Elton Brand, Trajan Langdon — the names, the Duke mystique.’ ”

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There’s one sure-fire way for the Blue Devils to put that fear back into the rest of the nation. Win early and often.

But with a schedule worthy of the second-best team in the country, that could be hard. Last year Duke’s only loss up to the NCAATournament came in the sixth game — Cincinnati’s 77-75 shocker in theGreat Alaska Shootout.

This year, Duke opens with Stanford at the Coaches vs. Cancer Classic and could face UConn in the finals there. The BlueDevils travel to Chicago in late November to face Illinois as part of the ACC-Big Ten Challenge. Michigan andDePaul also await in the season’s first month.

“Last year’s team I was trying to prepare for March, and whatever happened in Alaska, that team was good enough and experienced enough to handle it,”Krzyzewski said. “This year’s team I approach differently. Sometimes teams need to experience failure. This team, I think, will have failure introduced more easily than last year, and it needs to know that it can win together, and against good people.”

One positive Krzyzewski can take into this season is his hip replacement surgery at the end of last season. He said he’s pain-free for the first time in five years, which means he’ll be up and yelling at every mistake those freshmen make.

He’ll also be up to congratulate their successes.