OUR LEAGUE: Another Carolina classic?

Scattershooting around the ACC, while anticipating another North Carolina-Duke showdown tonight at Cameron Indoor Stadium ...

Duke’s Cameron Crazies usually chant “Our House” at each home game, but that hasn’t been the case of late when the Blue Devils host North Carolina. The Tar Heels have won three in a row there, and conversely, Duke has won two of the last three in Chapel Hill.

Those three wins in a row mean that UNC seniors Tyler Hansbrough and Danny Green can go a perfect 4-0 in their careers at Cameron with a win tonight.

Tonight’s game should be a shootout, but don’t expect the coaches to use those previous meetings as any kind of motivation.

“All those things don’t have anything to do with this game,” Duke coach Mike Krzyzewski said during this week’s ACC coaches teleconference. “Me being in the Hall of Fame or Roy [Williams] being in the Hall of Fame doesn’t matter. It’s what these teams do right now.

“I don’t even bring it up,” Coach K said. “You can’t keep bringing up history. Kids can’t identify with history. They’re just too young. People bring up records, but they don’t care. This is a hell of a game and both of us are tied for first place. We have to talk to them about right now. Those are now things.”

Krzyzewski said the Tar Heels are such an offensive juggernaut that defense is premium in this game.

“They put a lot of pressure on you in how [Ty] Lawson brings it down the court. He brings it down as fast as anybody in the country,” K said.

But that’s only part of the problem. There’s the two wings, Green and Wayne Ellington, who can shoot, which puts another kind of pressure on a defense. And then, there’s Hansbrough, the All-American center who puts even more pressure on a defense.

Williams said that it’s no secret that his team will attempt to exploit the inside game against Duke, but that he tries to do that against every opponent.

He’s not taking anything for granted going into tonight’s battle.

“I said before the season and I will say it now, Mike Krzyzewski knows more about his team than anyone else, but from a distance, Roy Williams thinks this is the best Duke team since I came back to Carolina,” Williams said.

“The ACC is tough,” Williams continued. “This is a fantastic league and you have to understand that it’s a marathon.”

Quote of the week

Virginia Tech coach Seth Greenberg on N.C. State’s Ben McCauley, who has been a thorn in the Hokies’ side for the past several seasons:

“I’m going to go to McCauley’s graduation,” Greenberg said. “He might get a present from me. Is that against NCAA rules?”

Stat of the week

UVa needs to find a way to get sophomore guard Mustapha Farrakhan to the line more often. Farrakhan is perfect from the line this season, 18 for 18, on a very good free throw shooting team (the Cavs are second in the ACC in free throw accuracy).

The record for going the longest without a miss to open a season at UVa is by Jeff Lamp, who made 32 in a row to open the 1980-81 campaign.

Quote of the week deux

This one comes from Maryland football coach Ralph Friedgen, who was told that a recruiting rival informed a recruit’s high school coach heading into signing day that the Fridge was going to retire.

“Well, Penn State was recruiting [the kid] and so was Boston College. I said, ‘Well, [BC coach Frank] Spaziani is 64 and [Joe] Paterno’s pushing 90. You’re worried about me retiring?’ No, I don’t think so.”

Friedgen, by the way, is 61.

Spaziani, who used to be George Welsh’s defensive coordinator at Virginia, is really only 61 and not 64, as Fridge claimed. However, at 61, Spaz became the oldest head coaching hire in ACC history.

A lot of Seoul

Maryland coach Gary Williams joked during this week’s ACC coaches teleconference that the Terps are big in South Korea thanks to Jin Soo Kim, the first Division I men’s basketball player from that country.

“Because of Jin Soo, we’re No. 1 in Korea,” Williams said. “They delay our broadcasts over there. So, if he hits a three, that’s a big story in South Korea.”

Football update

It was interesting to see Maryland name James Franklin as the Terps’ “coach in waiting” to eventually succeed Ralph Friedgen.

Franklin, 37, worked previously at Maryland, then went to Green Bay as receivers coach in 2005 and was former UVa assistant Ron Prince’s offensive coordinator at Kansas State in 2006-07) before returning to College Park this past season as offensive coordinator.

With Prince being fired this past season, that left Miami’s Randy Shannon as the only black head coach at a BCS school and only seven in major college football. Shannon and former Wake coach Jim Caldwell (now head coach of the Indianapolis Colts) are the only two black head football coaches in ACC history. Franklin, should the Fridge ever hang it up, will be the next.

Oddly, the majority of head basketball coaches in the ACC are black: BC’s Al Skinner, UVa’s Dave Leitao, N.C. State’s Sidney Lowe, Clemson’s Oliver Purnell, Georgia Tech’s Paul Hewitt, Florida State’s Leonard Hamilton and Miami’s Frank Haith.

Mt. Rushmore

A couple of weeks ago we asked readers that if they could choose four legendary sports figures from the state of Virginia to put on an imaginary Mt. Rushmore of the Commonwealth, just who they would choose.

The results are in, and while my top four differs from the overall vote, here are the top four selected by readers: Arthur Ashe, Sam Snead, Bruce Smith and Lawrence Taylor.

Personally, my list would have been Ashe, Snead, Ralph Sampson and Bill Dudley.

Here’s the top 10, followed by others receiving votes:

1. Ashe; 2. Snead; 3. Smith; 4. Taylor; 5. Sampson; 6. George Welsh; 7. Frank Beamer; 8. Dudley; 9. Secretariat; 10. Tiki Barber (or Ronde) — who could tell the difference if you put their mugs on the side of a mountain?

Interestingly enough, there were several Hall of Famers that didn’t make the top 10, two of them with local roots: Eppa Rixey, who we believe to be the only Virginian in Cooperstown (he played at UVa and won 266 Major League games as a pitcher during a 21-year career); Charlottesville’s own Roosevelt Brown (New York Giants); and Georgia Tech football coach Bobby Dodd (from Galax); and golfer Curtis Strange (from Norfolk).

Free throws ...

Virginia’s schedule is listed to date as the nation’s fourth-toughest by the RPI (10 ACC teams are ranked in the nation’s top 55 in terms of schedule strength). ... By beating Miami in overtime over the weekend, Duke has now won at least 20 games for the 13th consecutive season. ... Lawson is on a shooting tear, having hit 60.3 percent of his shots (38 of 63) in his last six outings. ... Don’t look now, but FSU has won 11 of its last 15 and the four losses came by eight or fewer points each. ... K.C. Rivers needs only three 3-pointers to become Clemson’s all-time long-range bomber. ... The ACC football schedule will come out Thursday, much earlier than usual, but we already know Virginia’s nonconference games: TCU, William & Mary and Indiana (all in Charlottesville) and Southern Mississippi on the road.