A Revival Meeting That Was a Long Time Coming

"Wow, they now have some very good players."

Very smart, too.

It is not often that Duke is taught how to play by another team. Yet Georgetown tutored the Blue Devils for more than a half, spreading the court, drawing many of college basketball's best on-the-ball defenders to the perimeter before beating them to the goal. Jeff Green, Georgetown's sophomore forward, completely outplayed Duke senior all-American Shelden Williams, who finished with four points in 34 minutes.

Duke was defensively delirious, caught napping as the Hoyas ran backdoor cut after backdoor cut. There was a reason it looked like Princeton vs. UCLA, circa 1996, when the defending national champs were stunned by a bunch of overachieving Ivy Leaguers cutting hard to the basket and making the most of every offensive possession in the first round of the NCAA tournament; Thompson III transplanted the Princeton offense to his father's old campus.

Yesterday, the Hoyas were a bunch of overachieving, smart Big Easters. They went to the floor. They withstood 41 points from the indefatigable J.J. Redick.

Redick hit some absolutely unbelievable layups, using the Hoyas as traffic cones on his way toward the rim. He made six three-pointers. But he was all Duke had yesterday.

"Bowman, Owens and Green, those were all big-time players," Mike Krzyzewski said afterward. When was the last time the most accomplished coach in the college game said that about Georgetown ballplayers?

He also made an important distinction: "It wasn't their offense as much as the unity of their offense," Coach K said.

Essentially, five playing as one knocked off six McDonald's All-Americans.

This win was a much more notable feat than the 1985 win, because the Hoyas were No. 2 when they beat Chris Mullin and Walter Berry's St. John's team. These Hoyas came in unranked. They had lost to every ranked team they had played. In fact, Duke was more responsible for filling the building than was Georgetown.

But this was an afternoon when the Hoyas' past and present fused together, and it felt right. On several T-shirts, sandwiched between the words "Some Have Forgotten" and "We Will Remind Them" was an unusually large Roman Numeral III.

Before tip-off, Big John was told his son's team would win if they played the perfect game.