Finding Duke's answer

Immediately after another disappointing loss Sunday, making Duke 2-4 in its last six games, I received the following three text messages within seconds of each other:

"Let the annual late-season collapse begin!"

"Why can't we ever be as good in late February as we are in mid-January?"

"What happened to you guys? It's like you lost your Duke aura."

Some would say the Blue Devils are in the midst of another late-season slump that will ultimately end in early exits from the ACC and NCAA Tournaments, just like Duke faded in 2007 and 2008.

They appear to have lost the mental edge they had over opponents before the new year-and even Mike Krzyzewski agreed with some of his naysayers Sunday.

"We have to play with a tougher mind than we are right now," Krzyzewski said. "We're not as tough-minded as we have been in the main part of the season. It's like we're a different team."

Based on the past two weeks, it's difficult to argue to the contrary. Duke's 74-47 loss to Clemson seems to have shaken the Blue Devils' confidence. Duke took an extra five minutes to best Miami, was outplayed down the stretch against North Carolina and squandered a 13-point first-half lead against Boston College.

It won't be easy to gauge whether the Blue Devils have recovered against an opponent like St. John's Thursday. A truer test will come Sunday against Wake Forest, the team that incited this 2-4 stretch.

But somewhere down the line, it seems likely that a Coach K team would find its way back into elite status. Krzyzewski did not explicitly state such a sentiment, but seemed to imply the next few games would play a major role in defining this team's season.

"You get knocked back in tough stretches-it happens in our league," he said. "How do we respond? You should become a better team."

The Blue Devils relied on the same type of rhetoric last season, but time and experience should distinguish this year's squad.

When the core of this team was made up of freshmen and sophomores, it was easy to let the highs get too high and the lows too low. You can see this now with a youthful Wake Forest squad, which was able to defeat the Tar Heels and the Blue Devils, but also lost to Georgia Tech and Miami.

With Greg Paulus leading the charge as a senior and every other key player on the team having at least one year of meaningful experience, it's much easier to rise out of these slumps because they've been there before.

A similar thing happened in 2004, which, coincidentally, was the last time Duke went to the Final Four.

That team, led by Chris Duhon and supported by the likes of J.J. Redick and Luol Deng, lost back-to-back contests that year against N.C. State and Wake Forest right in mid-February. Duke dominated Maryland by 23 four days after losing to the Demon Deacons and would only suffer two more losses before falling to eventual national champion Connecticut in the semifinals.

Overwhelming talent certainly played a big role in helping the Blue Devils come two wins short of their fourth national title that year. But the time to recover and senior leadership were two essential cogs in that run-and those are two things this Duke team shares.

Most pertinent to the team's rebound, though, is what I heard after the loss to the Eagles. I didn't hear what-ifs or whys or excuses. Instead, one of the captains spoke confidently, if not knowingly, about the team's home stretch.

"We'll bounce back," junior guard Jon Scheyer said. "I don't know what we're going to have to do, but we want to figure it out as soon as we can and we've got to get going."

Put that in writing so I can text my friends back.