It was almost 11:30 p.m. Tuesday when Jabari Parker, still sweaty in his Duke uniform, sitting in a locker in the bowels of Georgia Tech’s McCamish Pavilion, made a confession.
“Well, I’m forbidden from saying this,” said Parker, the straight-laced freshman star and top NBA prospect who seems to say and do all the right things. “But I don’t know if class will be an option for tomorrow.”
After dispatching Tech by 17 points, Parker and the Blue Devils were not scheduled to arrive back on campus in Durham, N.C., until after 3 a.m. Normally a Wednesday would have been a day off from basketball for them. But this is not a normal week in what is shaking out not to be a normal season in the newly expanded ACC.
A snowstorm last week forced the Duke-North Carolina showdown in Chapel Hill to become a “makeup” game Thursday night amid an already intense week for the upper echelon of the ACC.
Syracuse, the No. 1-ranked team in the country that was undefeated until its 62-59 loss to Boston College on Wednesday night, has a date with Duke on Saturday night at Cameron Indoor Stadium.
It will be a rematch of arguably the most intriguing game of the college basketball season so far — a 91-89 overtime win by Syracuse in front of a record crowd of 35,446 at the Carrier Dome on Feb. 1.
This will be the first trip to Cameron for Syracuse and Jim Boeheim, the second winningest men’s coach in Division I basketball history behind Duke’s Mike Krzyzewski. Not that Boeheim would talk about it Monday on the ACC’s weekly coaches’ teleconference.
“We’re playing Boston College,” Boeheim said when a reporter asked him about playing at Cameron. “That’s what I’m thinking about.”
So the Orange were trying to ward off the “trap game” mentality? Trying to avoid the hype with the whole one-game-at-a-time thing? Try being Krzyzewski and Duke this week, which had to play Tech and the rival Tar Heels before getting to a third game in five days against Syracuse.
When asked a similar question during that same teleconference Monday, Krzyzewski said:
“Whatever we do (against Tech), the last two games this week are really like a Final Four,” Krzyzewski said. “You’re playing two teams that might be in the Final Four. Carolina is playing great, and obviously Syracuse is the No. 1 team in the country.”
So Krzyzewski probably wouldn’t blame Parker for wanting to skip class Wednesday. But he’s still a coach, which means he mentioned “go to class” second on the agenda for his team’s schedule Wednesday when asked about it after the Tech game.
But even Krzyzewski was sounding a little punchy himself by the end of his postgame interview Tuesday, with a late night of preparation ahead for a Final Four-worthy turnaround, just days after Duke survived potentially its last game of a heated rivalry with Maryland and avoided a letdown at Tech.
Someone asked Krzyzewski his stance on social media with his players, given all the buildup of the big games ahead this weekend. Krzyzewski used an analogy that Twitter should be a “puddle” compared with the “ocean” of voices players should focus on, from their coaches.
Then he made fun of himself for it.
“Geez, I haven’t even had any wine, and I’m going nuts,” Krzyzewski said. “I think it’s the Cremins influence. I’m probably not making any sense, which he didn’t either. And he was … good.”
Krzyzewski was making his first visit to the rebuilt version of Alexander Memorial Coliseum, and he must have been a little nostalgic for his old friend Bobby Cremins, the former Tech coach. It was a momentary mental break from the gauntlet laid out by the modern ACC — an unrelenting 18-game league schedule, featuring Pittsburgh, Notre Dame and Syracuse now, too.
For all the weight that Duke and North Carolina have carried in the conference over the years, both teams (Duke at 21-5, 10-3 and North Carolina at 18-7, 8-4) were looking up at Syracuse (25-1, 12-1) and Virginia (22-5, 13-1) in the ACC standings.
The pace in the new-look ACC is dictated not only by Duke’s 3-point shooting firepower or slashing ability of the latest Tar Heels star James Michael McAdoo. It’s Syracuse and the 2-3 zone, Virginia and its pack-line defense.
Another Tuesday night postgame interview in the Duke locker room gave a glimpse into what’s so different about this week and this season in the ACC.
On the eve of the 236th game in one of the more storied rivalries in college sports, with Duke sophomore transfer Rodney Hood about to play his first game against North Carolina, he couldn’t help but acknowledge what awaits Saturday.
“It’s hard not to look to the next day,” Hood said. “(But) Carolina’s got a good team. They’ve won seven straight. We’ve got to have the right mindset. We can’t look forward to Syracuse and what’s going to happen with that game. We’ve got to try to take care of business on Thursday.”
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