BOOST: Texas likely to feel at home

GREENSBORO -- Shortly after Texas won its NCAA opener Thursday night, massive center Dexter Pittman walked out of an insulated locker room and strolled into an arena loaded with North Carolina fans.

They were yelling and booing, although Carolina had nothing to do with it.

The Tar Heels partisans -- perhaps 15,000 out of the 20,001 people in the almost-full Greensboro Coliseum -- cheered passionately for the obscure Binghamton branch of New York's state university system. They hooted and taunted Duke, which eventually won 86-62 and set up a second-round match against Texas tonight about 8:15.

Pittman smiled a big smile, the only kind that matches his 6-11, 298-pound body. He's about half the size of Round Rock, Texas, and a little bit of both.

"All the North Carolina fans were, like, giving it to the Blue Devils and stuff," Pittman said. "I looked at them like: OK. I thought the A&M fans were worse, but they're worse. They said they're going to be in there cheering for us."

Teammate Damion James figures that Carolina blue part-timers can't match Burnt Orange partisans, but he welcomes them all the same. Star A.J. Abrams, a senior guard who hit eight 3-pointers against Minnesota and raised his scoring average to 16.6, finds the bizarre alliances strangely comforting.

"You don't go into a season thinking at the end of the season you're going to have North Carolina fans yelling for you, but it's going to be fun," Abrams said.

Duke diehards possibly fail to detect any humor in Carolina's backyard bellowing, which strikes genteel outsiders as rude, like belching during someone's backswing.

There's always the chance the Tar Heels will beat LSU in the 5:45 p.m. opener and their lungs will go somewhere else to celebrate. There's an equal chance that Western Kentucky will win the national championship. Given $61 tickets and the alternatives, Carolina fans will stay, unless an upset loss triggers a flight to dark, remote rooms.

A reporter wondered if, on the whole, Duke's Mike Krzyzewski would rather be in Philadelphia, taking another route to the East Regional.

Krzyzewski shrugged and elaborated on the recent NCAA system of putting two pods at the same site, which keeps heavyweight teams closer to their home bases. In this case, Carolina is the No. 1 seed in the South and Duke is the No. 2 seed in the East.

"It's just the way it is," he said, "so I don't know how controversial it is. That's the way it is, and it's going to be that way. If you want to change it, finish higher -- you know what I mean?"

Ignoring the surroundings

Krzyzewski portrays Duke's deal as a reasonable compromise. After a tiring title run through the ACC Tournament in Atlanta, he relished staying an hour from campus even if Carolina fans jeer him.

"I've walked into places where everybody's booed me," he said. "The sad part of it is if it's me coming home back to Chicago with my family and they do it. Then, that's a real problem. But if it's walking into an opponent's arena or walking into a lot of different fans, that's OK for me. I think it's a sign of respect."

All four coaches emphasized that the games transpire on the court. Carolina's Roy Williams has beaten Shaq O'Neal on LSU's campus and has lost to Penn on N.C. State's campus, in the 1979 tournament.

"I've never seen a building beat me yet," he said. "Never seen the crowd win the game for me yet. It's got to be the players playing the game. You know what that is."

Williams is more concerned with identifying the players he will use against the Tigers. Point guard Ty Lawson and his sore big toe practiced yesterday. They might start or they might sit, but Williams will not hold Lawson back to see how the game evolves before making a call.

"I've never, ever been in an NCAA Tournament that I didn't think every round after that first round was going to go down to the wire, so that would be sort of like sandbagging in golf," Williams said. "I mean, you throw a few strokes here and there, and when you get ready to play somebody, your game's not there. The fear for me is, No. 1, that we have to play well or it doesn't make a difference how Ty's toe feels. If I'm at Wilmington next weekend or at Wrightsville Beach, I don't give a darn about Ty's toe at that point."

The second round becomes a different animal, the juncture where any season can end quickly. Boston College beat Carolina in Chapel Hill. LSU can beat Carolina in Greensboro, especially if string-bean center Chris Johnson (6-11, 210 pounds) and his incredibly skinny legs can withstand Tyler Hansbrough's pounding.

Duke lost with Carolina fans booing in Chapel Hill. Duke can lose to Texas if Pittman throws his weight around inside and a Turkish point guard named Dogus Balbay exacts revenge on Duke students calling him bogus.

The human chemistry seems especially odd, but it's the second round. Two teams will flunk their final exams, and few things get weirder than that.

■ Lenox Rawlings can be reached at lrawlings@wsjournal.com.