Is This the Real Title Game?

The skies here opened with a fury Friday morning, a downpour of rain followed by spectacular flashes of lightning and rolling thunder that shook the Alamodome.

Crash. Bang. Boom.

It seemed an appropriate prologue to the national semifinal today between Connecticut and Duke, a battle of college basketball behemoths that began the season ranked No. 1 and No. 2 in both polls and met for the national championship as recently as five years ago.

Surely, it is a matchup worthy of Monday night when the title will be on the line. Just ask any bald, pizza-schilling, over-the-top television broadcaster who adds a rollicking, “Baby!” to the end of every sentence, and he will scream for a re-seeding of the Final Four.

The brackets being what they are, however, the Blue Devils, Atlanta Regional champions and the lone remaining No. 1-seeded team, are in the unfamiliar role of underdogs.

Not that there’s anything wrong with that.

“We never talk about what other people think,” Duke Coach Mike Krzyzewski said. “I guess it’s good not to talk about it now since somebody says we’ll probably lose. I think that’s healthy [to not talk about it].”

Health has been a major issue of late for the Blue Devils and Huskies, whose mix of gritty guards and powerful post play enabled them to pound their way to the Phoenix Regional title. Connecticut has won its four NCAA tournament games by an average of 17.5 points.

Which leads to the question -- who has the bigger and more exposed Achilles’ heel, Duke with senior point guard Chris Duhon’s bruised ribs, or Connecticut, with All-American junior center Emeka Okafor’s chronically sore back and recently injured right shoulder?

Duhon, who injured himself diving for a loose ball in the Atlantic Coast Conference tournament, said he has been pacing himself in practice and should be near full strength.

Even if his ribs are not completely healed, he is confident.

“You guys think that we’re underdogs; we don’t think that we’re underdogs,” Duhon said to a throng of reporters surrounding his locker room cubicle. “We’re going to go out there and play the game that we’ve been playing to get us to this point and ... the best team is going to win.”

Underdog or not.

“We feel that we’re always pressured,” he said. “We’re the team that’s hated the most and we don’t want to give you guys anything to add to your columns ... so we’re just going to go out there, play ... and hopefully make you guys write about us for two more days.”

Okafor led the nation with an average of 4.2 shots blocked a game and missed three games with numerous maladies -- a stress fracture in his lower back, back spasms, a hairline fracture in his nose and the shoulder stinger. He proclaimed himself fit.

“Yep, I’m 100%,” he said. “Full throttle and all that.

“It’s fun to play Duke. But anyone else, we’d play just as hard.”

And that’s the pace at which Connecticut hopes the game is played, hard and fast.

“The more the floor is open, the better we are,” Husky Coach Jim Calhoun said. “You don’t expose, maybe, some of the things that we don’t have.”

Playing at a half-court pace, Calhoun said, may mean the Huskies rely too much on Okafor.

Many observers expect the winner today to win the national championship. That’s par when Duke is involved.

“We do get kind of forgotten about,” Connecticut forward Charlie Villanueva said. “We want to fit in with the Dukes and the North Carolinas and those big-time programs that everybody talks about. People don’t really acknowledge Connecticut as a big powerhouse, but we’re definitely making a name for ourselves. If we win this whole thing we definitely put ourselves on the map.”

Krzyzewski, ever the target, agreed -- to a degree.

“The story,” he said, “is usually Duke losing.”