Time to demonstrate to Duke their inferiority again. The game is on all the channels, 9 pm.

Duke makes shots. Plain and simple.

The Blue Devils have the fifth most efficient offense in the country, while UNC has the 17th, a difference of 6.7 points per 100 possessions, according to Ken Pomeroy's stats. In ACC play, that margin is even wider. But the two teams go about getting their points in very different ways, and it all begins with Duke's field goal percentage.

Barring the occasional year when Duke has a strong player at center, the Blue Devils typical rely on perimeter shooting, and this year is no exception. Only Boston College attempts more threes than Duke, and the Eagles don't find the bottom of the net nearly as often. So it's no surprise that the most shots are taken by two pure guards, Austin Rivers and Seth Curry, followed by 6'11 Ryan Kelly, who still takes a third of his shots from behind the arc.

Curry is a known quantity at this point. In his two games last season against the Heels, he scored over twenty points in each. He takes an equal number of shots from two and from three, but against Carolina he's more likely to rely on the latter; in Duke's loss in Chapel Hill last season he was the only Blue Devil to sink a three. He had six.

That game in Chapel Hill augers well for the Heels. Their perimeter defense was strong, and of Duke's 67 points, 50 came from two players, Curry and Nolan Smith. Smith's 30 points have graduated, and Austin Rivers hasn't been able to replace him. Not for a lack of trying, as Rivers takes more shots and scores more points than anyone else on the team, but he's been incredibly streaky. He's been benched more than once, had games where he's been a non factor, like Georgia Tech and Clemson, his first two ACC road games. He has the worst effective field goal percentage of any of the Duke starters, although not by much, and will be the easiest to force out of his rhythm. He may be halfway there already, expecting to defended by Harrison Barnes when it's more likely he'll see Bullock's hand in his face.

And this brings us to Ryan Kelly. Kelly is tasked with replacing Kyle Singler as the big man who spends surprisingly little time in the paint. Instead Kelly is more often using his size on the perimeter, drawing out a defender to an uncomfortable position and either draining the three or driving to the hoop. Unfortunately for him, UNC's big men are quite comfortable outside, and John Henson's wingspan can be a game-changer. Playing alongside Singler last season, Kelly was a non-factor in his two games against UNC, scoring 2 and 4 points. He's improved as he's been thrust into a more prominent role, but I still expect him to struggle.

Surprisingly, the best shooter on the team at the moment is Mason Plumlee, middle child of the Plumlee clan. He too has had no success in past games against the Heels, but this year he's emerged as the team's best rebounder and the player with the highest effective field goal percentage. He does get a lot of his points off those offensive boards though, which may make for slow going against Tyler Zeller. Plumlee's older brother has watched his minutes decline this year, but I expect him to get a lot of time tonight as Krzyzewski throws bodies at the UNC interior. We might also see more of freshman Michael Gbinije, who although smaller than the Plumlees could present interesting matchup problems for the Heels.

The player I do expect to have a big night, besides Curry, is Andre Dawkins. He too has been streaky, and also has had little success against UNC, but can have big nights when the bigger names are drawing all the defensive focus. He's more of a three-point shooter than his fellow guards, but also picks his shots a bit more carefully than Rivers does.

The big unknown in all of this is exactly what type of lineup Krzyzewski will go with for the majority of the game. He may try to go big to try to slow down UNC's offense at the expense of his own shooters; he may prefer to go small and swarm the perimeter, denying entry passes and taking his own chances with Duke's perimeter shooting strength. It's almost guaranteed the Blue Devils will slow the pace down, although if their smart they'll challenge the offensive boards more than a lot of recent teams – State especially – have attempted. Duke will need second chances at the rim to score enough to keep the Heels at bay, but I'm not sure it will be enough. In their last two games against Carolina, only Seth Curry among the current roster had any success against the Heels. While there's been some improvement, and Austin Rivers is a big unknown, I don't see this team having the talent and maturity to keep up with UNC.

Carolina wins by ten.

Mike Krzyzewski's Blue Devils have lost two of their last three games at home, and he's not happy:

"The last two years, we haven't lost that many, but those teams were very mature," Krzyzewski said Monday on the David Glenn Show. "With Scheyer and Singler and Smith and Lance and Brian, we had older, very dependable guys. You knew what to expect. This year's team is a team that doesn't have those guys.

"One of the best ways of communication is if someone on your team is communicating your message. That's what Singler did on a daily basis through his effort or Nolan Smith through his effort and talk. Or Scheyer, Lance and Brian. They did that as big brothers. That's something we're missing on this team. Not being negative about our team, but we just do not have that. As a result, the message you're trying to get across may not be getting as deep as it needs to be."

As a Carolina fan, I feel compelled to point out that Krzyzewski's entire schtick is that he's a leader who happens to coach basketball and he's built an entire industry around it. So to blame his current woes on a lack of leadership from the team is a little risible. He has four juniors playing over half the game; if a team leader hasn't emerged, isn't that the fault of the guy who teaches leadership for a very lucrative living?

But why leadership problems may be a catch-all for Duke's current woes, I'm more interested in how they're manifesting on the court. Because one thing Krzyzewski does have going for him is an extreme adaptability to the players he has on the floor. When Roy Williams' 2010 team couldn't handle the fast-paced offense like teams in years past with Larry Drew at the point, he ran it anyway. (And in his defense, there's no evidence that team could run a slow, half court set either.) Krzyzewski, on the other hand, had 73.9 possessions per game in 2006, but 67.3 the very next year; he'll run at whatever pace he deems appropriate. He abandoned interior play altogether when he didn't have the players for it, and won a championship with the most unorthodox use of a center I've ever seen. He recruited 6'8" Kyle Singler and then let him hang out on the perimeter on offense all the time.

But there are a few constants, and one of them is defense. Going back to 2009, Duke hasn't allowed more than a point per possession in ACC play. Currently they give up 1.04. Their turnover generation the past two season is also the lowest it has been in that time frame, and their steals considerably. Opponents have always been a little leery of taking threes against Duke's swarming perimeter defense, but this season they're taking more than they did since Elton Brand patrolled the Cameron paint. And the current motley collection of Plumlees are no Elton Brand.

(Selected Duke defensive stats. From left, possessions per 40 minutes, opponent's points per possession, opponent's effective field goal percentage, defensive rebounding percentage, turnovers forced per possession, opponent's three point attempts per shot, opponent's three point percentage, and steals per possession.)

Frankly, the Duke defense hasn't been as fearsome as in previous years, especially on the perimeter. And when an opponent can combine decent perimeter shooting with an athletic big man, it's been trouble for the Blue Devils. Jared Sullinger, Reggie Johnson, and Xavier Gibson all had field days against the Duke interior, and both Miami and Tempe shot 50% from behind the arc, unheard of against most Duke teams.

So I'd look less to leadership issues and more to defensive ones. Particularly Austin Rivers and Andre Dawkins, who are generating very few of the steals that Duke so often relies on. The Plumlees and Ryan Kelly are doing a little better inside, but rely on their height a lot. Stronger or more athletic big men can cause havoc, and I expect Tyler Zeller and John Henson to do just that. And all the leadership in Krzyzewski's little head isn't going to fix that.

This being the week of the Carolina-Duke game, I'm expected to direct a fair amount of hate Durham's way. And I don't aim to disappoint. But it doesn't have to be all vehemence; I'm a gracious man. So let me kick off the week with the nicest thing I'll say about the Cameron Crazies: They're not complete idiots.

A few years ago, Duke professor Dan Ariely ran an economics experiment on the Cameron Crazies. It's become rather famous, being retold in Ariely's book Predictably Irrational, Moskowitz's and Wertheim's Scorecasting, and numerous places on the web. It's also usually told wrong, so I'll turn it over to Ariely himself:

As Ziv Carmon (a professor at INSEAD) and I listened to the air horn during the campout at Duke in the spring of 1994, we were intrigued by the real-life experiment going on before our eyes. All the students who were camping out wanted passionately to go to the basketball game. They had all camped out for a long time for the privilege. But when the lottery was over, some of them would become ticket owners, while others would not.

The question was this: would the students who had won tickets – who had ownership of tickets – value those tickets more than the students who had not won them even though they all "worked" equally hard to obtain them? On the basis of Jack Knetsch, Dick Thaler, and Daniel Kahneman's research on the "endowment effect," we predicted that when we own something – whether it's a car or a violin, a cat or a basketball ticket – we begin to value it more than other people do.

[...]

That night we got a list of the students who had won the [ticket] lottery and those who hadn't, and we started telephoning. Our first call was to William, a senior majoring in chemistry. William was rather busy. After camping for the previous week, he had a lot of homework and e-mail to catch up on. He was not too happy, either, because after reaching the front of the line, he was still not one of the lucky ones who had won a ticket in the lottery.

"Hi, William," I said. "I understand you didn't get one of the tickets for the final four (sic)."

[...]

William and Joseph were just two of more than 100 students whom we called. In general, the students who did not own a ticket were willing to pay about $170 for one. The price they were willing to pay, as in William' case, was tempered by alternative uses for the money (such as spending it in a sports bar for drinks and food.) Those who owned a ticket, on the other hand, demanded about $2,400 for it. Like Joseph, they justified their price in terms of the importance of the experience and the lifelong memories it would create.

What was really surprising, though, was that in all our phone calls, not a single person was willing to sell a ticket at a price that someone else was willing to pay. What did we have? We had a group of students all hungry for a basketball ticket before the lottery drawing; and then, bang – in an instant after the drawing, they were divided into two groups – ticket owners and non–ticket owners. It was an emotional chasm that was formed, between those who now imagined the glory of the game, and those who imagined what else they could buy with the price of the ticket. And it was an empirical chasm as well – the average selling price (about $2,400) was separated by a factor of about 14 from the average buyer's offer (about $175).

From a rational persective, both the ticket holders and the non–ticket holders should have thought of the game in exactly the same way. After all, the anticipated atmosphere at the game and the enjoyment one could expect from the experience should not depend on winning the lottery. Then how could a random lottery drawing have changed the students' view of the game – and the value of the tickets – so dramatically?

Ah, those silly, irrational Duke students. They can't even get a market to clear! We should take them all around back and have them shot.

Except they're really not being irrational. Did you catch the key part of the experiment? The Final Four. This is the part most overlooked in retellings of the experiment, which just assumes the games are in Cameron. But the fact that it's the Final Four explains the true difference in buyer and seller values – we're looking at two different markets.

(Keep in mind, this analysis assumes the description in Ariely's book is accurate; the paper it comes from (PDF) makes it sound like this was just a phone survey the Friday before the FInal Four, where no students queried actually had tickets.)

Those looking to buy tickets were competing for the 23,674 seats in Charlotte Coliseum in 1994 (give or take). Surprisingly few of them would go to Duke students. Assuming the number was similar to that UNC would distribute three years later, I'd put it around 500 or so. Instead, the majority of the tickets are distributed to coaches and the general public; people, who if they're smart don't really have a strong desire to see Duke cut down the nets. Often, you can get tickets for the game outside the stadium or through brokers for twice or so the face value – not to far removed from the bids students were offering.

The students selling tickets however, basically have two people bidding for their seat – the guy on the phone, presumably also a guy rooting for the Blue Devils, and their own inner Duke fan. The inner Duke fan is going to win that auction every time. But it doesn't mean he's putting an irrational value on the ticket.

How do I know? Well, think about what happens when your team loses in the semifinals. Lots of fans of the losing team cut their losses and sell their tickets – I did in 1997 in Indianapolis. I knew what a fan of a team in the NCAA finals values a ticket at, because I valued it at exactly that price a mere five minutes earlier, before Arizona ended UNC's hopes. And yet I sold at a price much closer to what those ticketless Duke students were bidding. The market cleared.

This isn't to say the effect doesn't exist; many other studies have shown it, just on a smaller scale. Just this particular example of it is a pretty poor one. If anything, it's an example of how the initial price a god is fixed at influences its later prices; NCAA tickets are always underpriced relative to the secondary market, and those who miss out on the initial offering are loath to pay too much more when given the chance. But as amusing as it is to see the Cameron Crazies immortalized as irrational consumers, it's still a bad example, demonstrated on bad people.

Later this week: Less economics and more basketball!

Carolina could stand to have a few more games like this. For a while it seemed like everything was going wrong; UNC couldn't score, Maryland couldn't miss. The Tar Heels were coughing the ball out at an unhealthy rate, the fans were... less than welcoming, and Tyler Zeller picked up his fourth foul with just under twelve minutes remaining. Then to make sure the deck was fully stacked against a UNC win, Kendall Marshall went to the bench with his fourth, with eight-and-a half minutes left and a precarious two point lead. It was time to get worried.

Except it really wasn't. Maryland was exhausted. Maryland was in foul trouble as well. Maryland did not have Harrison Barnes. Barnes didn't take the game over in Marshall's absence, but he was the constant threat, bring the ball up more than Stilman White, and drawing the defense to the extent that John Henson and Reggie Bullock could score. The Terrapins could only tread water, and on Zeller's and Marshall's return, they finally collapsed.

It took a lot of work to get there, however. Kendall Marshall had five turnovers in the first twelve minutes of the game. UNC was completely stymied by Alex Len, heretofore unheard of freshman center, who would finish with 12 points, nine rebounds, and four blocks. The team was out-of-sync early, with only Zeller playing close to well on offense. Frankly, they were rather lucky to only be down three at halftime, a fact the Heels backed up by almost immediately going down nine three minutes into the second.

But they held firm, and clawed back. Reggie Bullock was a bit of a revelation during this. Yes, Terrell Stoglin would finish with twenty points, and was beating Bullock off the dribble at the start, but he responded. Stoglin would hit only one of his nine three-pointers and shoot 8 of 21 from the field. Meanwhile Bullock was pulling down key offensive rebounds and otherwise keeping the team together when things looked like they could fall apart with two starters benched with foul trouble.

Was it a great game for Carolina? Not really. Maryland played better than one would expect, and it took the Heels too long to respond. But respond they did. The Terps, who tried to outrun UNC most of the game, were eventually worn down by a team that held strong and for the most part remained patient. It wasn't a great game, but it was a necessary one. And the Heels are a better team for having won it.

Tar Heels vs Terrapins boxscore

Hey! Carolina's back on the real ESPN. 4 pm, be there with bells on.

UNC's two-week tour of the new coaches of the ACC concludes today in College Park, with Mark Turgeon's Maryland Terps. In case you're just coming out of a coma, Gay Wiliams retired after 22 seasons this past spring, the entire internet spent a month hanging out at Testudo Times, and then Turgeon was hired. He, of course, got his start as a Larry Brown assistant at Kansas, and stayed on through the first few seasons of Roy Williams' tenure. But don't expect a lot of Williams' philosophy in this Maryland team – Turgeon almost always runs a slow-paced game.

In fact, this is faster-paced than most of his squads, in part because he's yet to bring in his own players and in part because the team just isn't good enough to impose its will on the speed of play. In addition to losing Gary Williams, the Terps have also lost Jordan Williams, Cliff Tucker, and Adrian Bowie. This leaves the team almost exclusively in the hands of Terrell Stoglin.

Stoglin, only a sophomore, takes a higher percentage of shots than anyone east of the Rockies. He leads the ACC in scoring by over four points per game more than his nearest competitor. His shooting percentage has dropped a bit from last season, because everyone and their mother realizes he's the guy to stop on this team. He's still an offensive force, though. He burned the Heels for 28 points last year, and although Reggie Bullock's defense has been very strong lately, there's only so much that can be done.

Fortunately, the rest of the team doesn't measure up. The Terps haven't really settled on a point guard, mostly relying on Pe'Shon Howard since he returned from a broken foot, but neither he nor Stoglin is a true PG, and it shows. In also manifests itself on the defensive end, where Maryland is one of the worst teams in the country at generating steals and turnovers. Maryland fills out their backcourt with a collection of average-type players, primarily Nick Faust, Sean Mosely, and Mychal Parker all some purpose on the floor – Parker's is to turn it over, apparently – but don't present much of a threat.

Which leaves the paint. And that means James Padgett. Padgett's strength is on the offensive boards, cleaning up his team's numerous misses. He probably could stand to be involved in the offense more, but he'll have trouble with Zeller and Henson. He's most often paired with freshman Ashton Pankey, another strong rebounder. He has one of the worst +/- stats in the ACC, though. I'd expect to see more of Alex Len, a 7'1" freshman from the Ukraine, who has a decent block rate on the strength of his size alone.

Let's face it, Turgeon's first season has been a bit of a disappointment.The team is trailing below .500 in a weak year for the conference, and has lost four of their last five. There's the potential for a good team in there, like the one that came back from 16 points in the second half to force two overtimes against Miami. But there's the other team, the one that falls behind by sixteen in the first place. If Carolina doesn't get caught looking ahead at Duke, this is an excellent opportunity to shake off their recent road woes and keep the momentum strong coming into the first game against the Blue Devils.

(And as for those road problems, tickets in College Park are embarrassingly cheap. Fan interest has been waning of late.)

The ACC announced today exactly how Pittsburgh and Syracuse are going to fit into the little club we've got over here, and it's killing the college basketball we all love just a little more.

Bt first let's discuss football, as that's the impetus for this entire thing, and it's the sport handling expansion a little better. Pittsburgh will join the Coastal Division, and Syracuse the Atlantic. The conference schedule will extend to nine games, with each team keeping their one game against their cross-division rival and two other games in the opposite definition. No one's rival will change; Syracuse and Pitt will be paired with one another. The face that there will be a uneven number of home and away conference games is apparently going to be balanced by having every team in the division either have the extra home or road game. So despite seeing teams like Clemson only twice every six years instead of four as it currently stands, not much will change.

Basketball is a little rougher. The schedule expands to eighteen games, as previously announced. But each team is reduced to one guaranteed home-and-home opponent; for UNC, that means the end of the guaranteed two games with N.C. State. (The other pairings are Boston College and Syracuse; Clemson and Georgia Tech; Duke and North Carolina; Florida State and Miami; Maryland and Pitt; NC State and Wake Forest; Virginia and Virginia Tech. Maryland gets the worst of it, losing rivalry games with both Duke and Virginia.) Instead, the current system of three additional home-and-home opponents, and three each just home and just away is replaced with four, four, and four, respectively.

This is a bit of a letdown, really. I long ago gave up my dreams of a true equal, home-and-home schedule, but the ACC is taking away games fans have a real passion for, like UNC-State and Maryland-Duke and replacing them with what? A lot of mediocre games that aren't of interest to anyone. There's already more ACC games per evening than ESPN and the local affiliates can handle, pushing more and more games to ESPN3 and ESPNU. And with the ACC in a slump over the past five years, there's less and less reason to tune into the less entertaining games.

We've already lost a lot of what made the ACC special. Now we're trading the sort of games that draw fans in, that guarantee folks in the seats and eyes on the television, with ones no one has any emotional attachment to. I'd never miss a Carolina-State game, but it takes a little more effort to clear my schedule when the Heels play Boston College. Things are going the same route as in football, with officials abandoning the games everyone loves and just throwing out any pairings and assuming the fans will show up. Well I've seen a lot of empty seats this season, and I'm not as confident as others that they'll be coming back.

But hey. I'm sure the five home-and-home's we will have will all be thrilling. And who really cares about those long-standing rivalries with Clemson, Virginia and State. No one gets into college sports for things like that, right? Who needs history when there's... whatever's left?