Duke

Everybody around Philadelphia basketball has Gerald Henderson stories. Temple coach Fran Dunphy was asked yesterday if he had an early memory of Henderson. "At West Catholic," he said, "there was like a 20-foot pass along the baseline thrown to him. " Dunphy isn't known for tossing around superlatives, but here's more of his commentary: "There's no way humanly possible that anybody could have made the catch. Somehow, he did. He was running almost full speed toward the basket, and he stretched his arm out [past the baseline]

John Wayne swaggered like a rodeo bull, thundered like a storm over Monument Valley, and towered over the West like a craggy butte. And he looms as large in death as he did on-screen. Duke, as he was universally known, died the year Heath Ledger - a very different kind of cowboy - was born, in 1979. Ever since, when pollsters ask Americans to name their favorite actor, Wayne, whose centennial is this week, routinely makes the top 10. The iconic figure of westerns and war movies placed third in the 2006 Harris Poll, behind Denzel Washington and Tom Hanks.

The committee that selects the teams for the NCAA tournament obviously has a sense of history, because they sent Kentucky and Duke, the combatants in the epic East Regional final 20 years ago at the Spectrum, to the same region again, the South. This time it's the Wildcats who are the No. 1 seed and the favorite to win the whole tournament. Kentucky has a player of the year candidate in Anthony Davis and players like Terrence Jones and Darius Miller who were on its Final Four team of a year ago. The No. 2-seeded Blue Devils played the nation's second-toughest schedule during the year and have one of the best freshmen in the nation in Austin Rivers.

When a small suburban district elected former Ku Klux Klan Grand Wizard David Duke to the Louisiana state legislature in February, political analysts and pollsters said that it was a fluke and that he would never be taken seriously. They apparently were wrong. In just over 60 days since he took office, Duke (R., Metairie) has emerged as a popular political leader here, using a recent statewide campaign against an unpopular tax-restructuring plan as his step to legitimacy, political analysts say. Two weeks ago, voters rejected a fiscal plan touted by Gov. Buddy Roemer, a Democrat, that would have increased some taxes to offset the state's $702 million deficit.

The national media is on a death watch, monitoring Duke's heartbeat, waiting for the two-time defending national champions to expire. "We've had our fun, but I wouldn't call it a fun season," Duke coach Mike Krzyzewski said last night. "You have fun when you accomplish things maybe someone said you couldn't accomplish, when you achieve something together. "Anything these guys have achieved together hasn't been recognized as an achievement. It's been recognized as status quo. Even now, as we enter the tournament, the main article being prepared for us is, 'When will Duke lose?

Temple and Duke are working on a two-year agreement to meet on the basketball court in a home-and-home series starting next season with a contest between the teams in Durham, N.C. "It's one of those things we're hoping for, and right now we have agreed to play home and home, but no contracts have been signed," Owls coach John Chaney said. "We have not finished the agreement. We have not decided where we might play here, and we have not agreed on the dates or the money. " "It's tentative right now," said Temple associated athletic director Joe Giunta, who is in charge of scheduling for the university.

You do not let Duke take a big early lead. Connecticut spotted the Blue Devils a 14-4 head start. You then do not complicate things by allowing Duke to outscore you, 14-1, and hold you without a field goal for five minutes, 55 seconds. Duke played out Connecticut's worst case scenario in the nightcap of the Midwest Regional semifinal at the less-than-full Pontiac Silverdome last night. At the end it was Duke 81, Connecticut 67. It grew ugly - Duke 38, UConn 20 - early and did not get better for the 11th-seeded Huskies.

This is no big deal, the monstrous dome, the hovering media, the raised stakes. Duke and Maryland are antagonistic league rivals, forced to coexist but yearning to beat the bejesus out of each other. So stage the game on a neutral playground, or in the other's gym. It does not matter. The Final Four? That could be cool - unnecessary, but cool. This is what it has come down to for the Blue Devils and Terrapins. Only one can advance tonight, to extend their season for one more glorious game.

Top-ranked Duke treated Roy Williams the same as the last two North Carolina coaches: The Blue Devils won again, in Chapel Hill, N.C. Chris Duhon's reverse layup with 6.5 seconds left in overtime last night gave Duke an 83-81 victory, the Blue Devils' 16th straight overall and fifth in the last six years on No. 17 North Carolina's home court. This one was over first-year coach Roy Williams, and the former assistant to Dean Smith left the court as did predecessors Bill Guthridge and Matt Doherty, losers at home to Duke.

Duke and Kansas, with 125 NCAA Tournament victories between them, were into the final minute. This NCAA Tournament had long since gone crazy. Could it get wilder, still? Could Kansas, leading by a bunch early and trailing by a bunch late, really be leading by a point? Could the third No. 1 seed go out in 24 hours? Could the Jayhawks, starting three freshmen after a season with several blowout losses, really beat Duke at the Lawrence Joel Veterans Memorial Coliseum, an hour from Duke's campus?

S EUN OLUBODUN , 31, of Northern Liberties founded Duke & Winston, a line of casual tees, polos, hats and ties ranging in price from $24 to $68. He launched the company in 2009, and last December raised $30,000 on Kickstarter.com. The money allowed Olubodun to hire a full-time assistant and a part-timer, and to begin attracting wholesale buyers. The Temple grad was born in Great Britain and moved here with his family when he was 10. Q: How did you come up with the idea for Duke & Winston?

Lynne Duke, 56, a journalist who brought an emotional clarity to the most trenchant stories, from the crack epidemic that terrorized a Miami housing project to the legacy of apartheid South Africa, died Friday at her home in Silver Spring, Md. The cause was lung cancer, said her husband, Phillip Dixon, a former city editor for the Washington Post and former managing editor of The Inquirer. She worked at the Post from 1987 to 2008, retiring as a Style-section editor after assignments reporting from Johannesburg and New York.

SUNDAY WAS a bittersweet day for 76ers coach Doug Collins, none of it having to do with his basketball team. Collins was at Lucas Oil Stadium in Indianapolis to watch as his son, Chris, sat on the bench for the final time as the associate head coach of the Duke Blue Devils, who were ousted from the tournament by the Louisville Cardinals in the Midwest Regional final. The younger Collins played four seasons for coach Mike Krzyzewski and was on the bench with him in a coaching capacity for another 13 years.

INDIANAPOLIS - With tears in their eyes after a terrible injury to Kevin Ware, there was no way the Louisville Cardinals were losing this game to Duke. Russ Smith scored 23 points, Gorgui Dieng had 14 points, 11 rebounds and four blocks, and the top-seeded Cardinals put aside the shock from the gruesome broken leg suffered by Ware in the first half to earn a second straight trip to the Final Four with an 85-63 victory over Duke on Sunday. Ware, a sophomore guard, was injured when he landed after jumping and attempting to block a shot.

INDIANAPOLIS - With tears in their eyes and Kevin Ware in their hearts, there was no way Louisville was losing this game. Russ Smith scored 23, Gorgui Dieng had 14 points, 11 rebounds and four blocks, and top-seeded Louisville (33-5) put aside the shock from Ware's gruesome leg injury to earn a second straight trip to the Final Four with an 85-63 victory over Duke (30-6) on Sunday afternoon. As the final seconds ticked down, Chane Behanan put Ware's jersey on and stood at the end of the Louisville bench, screaming.

INDIANAPOLIS - Mike Krzyzewski and Rick Pitino are finally doing an encore. For the first time since their teams played perhaps the greatest game in the history of the NCAA tournament, Krzyzewski and Pitino will meet in the NCAA tournament Sunday when top-seeded Louisville faces Duke. In the Midwest Regional final, no less. Never mind that few of their current players were even born in 1992. Or that Pitino is no longer at Kentucky, having switched sides in the state's civil war after his brief trip to Boston and the NBA ended badly.

INDIANAPOLIS - Michigan State coach Tom Izzo and Duke coach Mike Krzyzewski have been teaching young men how to play basketball for decades. On Thursday, they demonstrated why they are so good. They stay loose. Instead of getting tense and out of sorts the day before the Midwest Regional's well-hyped coaching matchup, the pair took turns praising each other's style, their loyalty to their schools and their teams' penchant for limiting mistakes. "I consider him a great friend.

INDIANAPOLIS - Louisville survived its first test. Russ Smith matched his career high with 31 points to lead three Cardinals in double figures, and top-seeded Louisville showed it can win close games, too, beating Oregon, 77-69, on Friday night in the Midwest Regional semifinals. Kevin Ware added 11, and Gorgui Dieng had 10 points and nine rebounds for Louisville, which has won 13 straight. Coach Rick Pitino improved to 11-0 in the regional semifinals of the NCAA tournament. "We dug ourselves a pretty big hole and weren't able to come back," Oregon coach Dana Altman said.

If Duke basketball is a religion, its sanctuary is a quirky campus arena located 350 miles south of Philadelphia, where the Blue Devils made yet another NCAA tournament appearance this weekend. Thanks to Duke's prolonged run of excellence, 73-year-old Cameron Indoor Stadium - quaint, intimate, home to a noisy and whimsical student section - has become the most ballyhooed symbol of history and charm in a sport that typically pays little attention to either. Classically Georgian in design, Cameron has girdered ceilings, a utilitarian pre-World War II elegance, and an acoustical magic that can transform several thousand voices into an earthquake.

Duke has played parts of three NCAA tournaments in Philadelphia, and it has never lost a game. The sixth win came as Sunday night turned into Monday morning when the second-seeded Blue Devils sealed a 66-50 win over seventh-seeded Creighton in the round of 32 at the Wells Fargo Center. The Blue Devils advanced to play Michigan State in Indianapolis on Friday. It will be their fourth Sweet 16 in the last five seasons. It's not often that a Duke game is anticlimactic, but that's what happened when the Blue Devils took the court following the frenzy of Florida Gulf Coast's unexpected run. And the game featured a different style, too. It was a physical, grinding contest of attrition rather than a full-court highlight reel.