You can expect a raucous crowd in Cameron Indoor Stadium today as Duke hosts Pitt.  There are multiple reasons for this.  The first, of course is the return of Mike Krzyzewski to the sidelines after in season back surgery.

The legendary coach will take over for his Jeff Capel who has the Blue Devils coming off consecutive ACC road victories over Wake Forest and Notre Dame.  With the Blue Devils starting to show consistency the Cameron Crazies will be primed to greet their team and will be hungry for more success.

The team has started to play together in a more cohesive way.  Their outing against Notre Dame was perhaps their best road performance of the season.  But make no mistake, there is plenty of work and improvement needed.

Krzyzewski is returning during a key home stretch of games against Pitt, North Carolina and Clemson .  Winning these games is possible and critical with four of their last six ACC games coming on the road.

Duke will have to take things one game at a time.  They will first have to focus on today's game with Pitt without looking ahead to the game with their arch rival.

Pitt showed against North Carolina that they can be dangerous even as a last place team in a loaded lead.  They hung in there with the more talented Tar Heels and had a chance to win down the stretch,.

The Panthers have a solid one-two punch of two All ACC hopefuls in Jamel Artis and Michael Young.  Both of these players can go off on offense.  But Duke got a warning in the close Pitt loss to the Tar Heels.  That being that other players can have big games if you focus on the teams big two.  Pitt has wins over Marquette and Maryland .

In a sense, this would normally be a classic trap game, but the return of Krzyewski to the bench could trump that.  Duke in no way wants to take anything other than a step forward with their play.  They seek continued momentum and it is important to team psych to see consistency.

Duke seems to be turning a corner after a season of unrivaled adversity.  At this point, they want to be playing their best basketball in March.  To do that, anything other than a good effort against Pitt today would still bring about questions.

The Pick - Duke 88 Pitt 67