OMAHA, Neb. _ At Mike Krzyzewski's instigation, as Duke took control late in the first half, three of the players slapped the floor.
Like the old days: Bobby Hurley and Christian Laettner and Grant Hill and Shane Battier, in your face, not getting past us, just try it. The program was built on feisty, floor-slapping man-to-man defense.
But who was this display of it supposed to intimidate? Duke's players weren't matching up with anyone; they were sitting patiently in their assigned spots in Duke's not-so-new-but-still-very-odd 2-3 zone, waiting for Syracuse to come up the court.
Old Duke and New Duke collided in that moment, and even Hill, on the CBS broadcast, seemed stricken by the circumstances.
"Can you do that with a zone?" Hill asked, more than a little pointedly.
As if to reinforce the point, when Duke gave up the first four points of the second half, Krzyzewski called time out, tore off his suit jacket and let his team have in the huddle in the dialect known in some quarters as Army creole. As Old Duke as it gets, that bit.
We still have yet to find out if a Duke divided against itself can stand, but it continues to work so far. The Blue Devils are a game away from their second Final Four in four years after a 69-65 win over 11th-seeded Syracuse on Friday _ the Orange's second straight NCAA elimination at the hands of another ACC team _ but will have to get past Devonte Graham and Kansas on Sunday to get there.
In a game filled with alley-oops and missed open 3-pointers as zone guru Jim Boeheim went against zone convert Krzyzewski, the Blue Devils struggled to put Syracuse away time and time again, letting the Orange hang around by going 2 for 18 from 3-point range in the second half.
But Wendell Carter Jr. and Marvin Bagley III made the difference late, Bagley with the tip of a Carter miss and Carter with the block at the other end. Grayson Allen came down to take _ and make _ his first 2-point attempt of the game and run the Duke lead to nine with 4:07 to play.
It still took free throws to hold off Syracuse, Gary Trent Jr. making the last two with 6.3 seconds to go to secure the win.
So Duke advances, and even if there's something jarring about watching Duke set up in a zone, the sight of Krzyzewski pumping his fist to the crowd in his shirtsleeves was all too familiar.
Two of college basketball's elite powerhouses will meet Sunday for a spot in San Antonio, a Kansas team that looks very much like Kansas teams past and a Duke team that plays nothing like Duke teams past, an experiment that keeps inching closer and closer to success.
