Not Just `Tree City USA'

DURHAM, N.C.-- The Carolinas seemed resplendent with off-beat road signs.

"Re-elect Sheriff James Holt" hand-lettered signs shouted over and over as we drove through Lee County, North Carolina. Every time a police car drove by, we contemplated getting pulled over on purpose, hoping against hope that our arresting officer might be the good Sheriff.

"Nuclear Visitor Center, next right," announced a sign in McBee, South Carolina. We chuckled, wondering just how many nuclear visitors rolled through McBee on your average day.

In this context, the signs that surrounded Durham--a small town in northern North Carolina--seemed quaint, but not out of place.

"Welcome to Durham, City of Medicine," one sign greeted those who rolled down interstate 501

"Durham, North Carolina," another said, "Tree City USA."

One (small) town, two slogans. It looked like a classic case of municipal identity crisis.

Take Boston, or even any real city in the South--Columbia, South Carolina, say--and you won't see such sloganeering. "Columbia, population 250,027" will do just fine, thank you very much.

Durham, on the other hand, seemed to need not one but two monikers to keep it from being lost in the sea of small college towns.

Pity the fool--or in this case, the college basketball team--who fell for this veneer of insecurity, who thought that this was just another quiet town like McBee.

The signs, and indeed the simple exterior of the very arena--Cameron Indoor Stadium--which houses the nationally third-ranked Duke men's basketball team, indicate the height of modesty.

Pity the fool.

Inside Cameron Indoor Stadium, 6500 fans assembled Monday night, almost all with a single purpose in mind: destroy the Harvard basketball team.

For hidden within the touching signs and unprepossessing exterior lay a national basketball powerhouse--and the Duke student body and basketball faithful weren't going to let anyone--especially the Crimson cagers--forget that.

The intimidation started well before the opening tap when the Blue Devil cheerleaders acted out a Harvard-bashing skit to the Ray Parker-esque tune of Geek-busters.

The festivities were underway.

And over the next two hours the crazies in the stands unleashed a nonstop barrage of chants and slogans.

"BEAT HARVARD, BEAT HARVARD" in the game's early stages became "WE AIN'T GOT NO STARTERS IN" as Duke's second-stringers more than held their own in the second half.

For awhile, the Cameron crowd lowered itself to the familiar "asshole, asshole" chant, but it obediently stopped when Duke Coach Mike Krzyzewski came over to the fans at halftime and requested a cessation of the obscenitites.

"The fans have been great," Krzyzewski said after the game, which saw the Blue Devils triumph, 89-52, "but I don't want them to do that.

"Hey, we're going to beat Harvard no matter what you call them," he continued confidently, "but if you do that against a good team, it will get them real fired up."

And while the fans promoted Duke basketball from the stands, the Blue Devil players themselves were doing a pretty good job of it on the court as well.

Despite sub-par performances by stars Johnny Dawkins (an All-American) and Mark Alarie, the Duke cagers showed why they have been consistently in the top five in national polls throughout the year.

And come NCAA tourney time, this sedate town in northern North Carolina might well harbor the collegiate national basketball champion.

Maybe then, Durham can change "Tree City USA" to a more impressive--and more deserved--slogan.