A glance at the preseason polls may not reveal it, but something is different about Duke this year.
In 2006-2007 and 2007-2008, the Blue Devils entered the season as the 12th- and 13th-ranked team in the country, respectively.
But both of those years ended in losses in the first weekend of the NCAA Tournament. Virginia Commonwealth upset the youngest Duke team since World War II in the first round in 2007. Lone senior DeMarcus Nelson carried last season's squad for much of the year, but he-and, consequently, his team-faltered in the postseason, bowing out to West Virginia in the second round.
And so as the 2008-2009 season tips off against Presbyterian at 7 p.m. Monday in Cameron Indoor Stadium, the No. 8 Blue Devils are aware that preseason rankings and regular season success mean little if they are followed by March struggles.
But they also know that this squad isn't a reincarnation of any team of the past-and their opponents know it, too.
"What they have this year maybe more so than they've had the last few years is they've got some upperclass kids that have been around for a while," Lenoir-Rhyne head coach John Lentz said after his team's 95-42 preseason loss Wednesday. "I don't care how talented you are, you can't overestimate that experience. If you don't have it, the kids are talented, but they haven't been there before, and you don't know what they're going to do in certain situations.
"[Kyle] Singler, [Greg] Paulus, all those guys, you know what you're going to get from them, and that's important."
Whereas the 2006-2007 team relied on three first-time captains-two of them sophomores-this squad has three leaders with a combined 10 years of experience.
While the 2007-2008 team had just one senior, Duke now has four players who have been a part of the program since 2005.
And in contrast to the little postseason experience of both of those Blue Devil teams, this year's squad knows firsthand how difficult it can be to advance in the NCAA Tournament-and how much that can affect the perception of a season.
"Absolutely we should [play with a chip on our shoulder]," junior Gerald Henderson said. "We feel like last year we didn't accomplish some of the things that we thought we should have accomplished. We kind of underachieved, and this year, that's definitely going to be in the back of our minds."
Duke will be judged largely on whether it can return to the Final Four for the first time since 2004, but the team knows that the journey starts tonight, and it cannot take anyone lightly-not even the Blue Hose, who went 5-25, and 0-23 on the road, last year.
"For most of us, it's going to be our third season opener," Henderson said. "We've been here before, and we know how exciting it is to get the season started.... When the season starts for real, you know it's no going back or erasing anything. Every game counts."
Once again, the Blue Devils find themselves in a familiar spot when the contests start to matter: in the top 15.
But after the postseason struggles of the last two years, Duke knows how little preseason rankings mean in March. Theoretically, its experience, from two four-game losing streaks to two early Tournament exits, that should help the Blue Devils prevent it from happening again.
The task of translating that onto the court starts tonight.
"We have good depth, and we're healthy," head coach Mike Krzyzewski said. "We're a really good basketball team. I just want to be a great basketball team."
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