Power of Caring
  presented by CIGNA

When he returned to Duke, McLeod began spending extra time on conditioning, shooting and working on new moves. His game exploded. He averaged 17.5 points and seven rebounds a game in ACC play to help Duke (27-2, 15-1) become the first team in conference history to win 15 league games, and he appears to be improving still. He averaged 20.6 points over the Blue Devils' last nine games—including a career-high 27 against N.C. State and 14 in last Saturday's massive second half. "Everything's different," says Duke senior point guard Steve Wojciechowski. "He's a lottery pick now. Before, he wasn't."

McLeod went out with a flourish in his final home game, hitting 9 of 15 shots and scoring 23 points.    (Bob Donnan)

Still, there's little chance that the Blue Devils would have beaten the Tar Heels without Brand, who began needling McLeod weeks ago, "Ro, you better watch out. I'm coming back, and I'm going to take your spot."

Usually an injury like Brand's—a broken fifth metatarsal bone—takes three months to heal. But doctors at Duke cooked up an elaborate rehabilitation program for Brand that included full-scale conditioning from the day he left the hospital, a series of special training shoes, a daily dose of ultrasound therapy and nights spent sleeping with a packet taped to his foot that applied constant electrical stimulation. In half the usual time Brand was running with no pain. News traveled. He became, suddenly, the key to the ACC tournament, to the NCAAs, to beating the Tar Heels. "I get E-mail every day from random people: Oh, Elton, glad you're back. Now you guys will kick their butts," Brand says. "That's a lot of pressure. I'm still coming back. I'm not the same player I was two months ago. I can't jump as high, maybe I'm running a little slower. But this is why you come to a school like Duke, for that challenge."

In his first game back, on Feb. 22 against UCLA, Brand played 16 minutes and scored 14 points in a 102-84 rout of the Bruins, and by last Friday he was ready to take charge again. That night Brand pulled out the stat sheet from the 24-point loss to North Carolina and said to his freshman roommate, William Avery, "That will never happen again." But the next day it nearly did. Lacking defensive intensity and outplayed on both boards, the Blue Devils dropped into a 25-9 hole and spent the first half looking nothing like a No. 1 team. At that point, Brand says, "I knew folks were saying, 'Duke is terrible. It'll never beat Carolina.'"

But the second half was unlike the first. Suddenly the Blue Devils were gaining poise with every possession, attacking the boards, pushing an obviously gassed Carolina back on its Tar Heels. Jamison may have ruled inside in the first half, but Brand took over in the second. Rusty only at the foul line, he took North Carolina apart inside, banging in 10 of his 16 points in one three-minute stretch that slashed the Tar Heels' lead to five. "We couldn't stop him," said North Carolina coach Bill Guthridge afterward. "I think the coach should be able to find a way to stop somebody. I'm disappointed I couldn't come up with something."

Problem is, for Guthridge—and everyone else who hopes to win the title—Duke has more players needing to be stopped than it did a month ago. Brand's injury had the classic silver lining: Every player who had let Brand take over at the beginning of the season had had to grow up faster without him. So, while Brand works his way back into shape, the team that lost just once in the seven weeks he was gone is only going to get better.

Already, that's noticeable. Krzyzewski was so angered by the Blue Devils' tentative play in the first half against North Carolina that sweat soaked through his shirt and tie. But there was no panic in the locker room at halftime. "I got chills looking at the way the guys' eyes were," McLeod would say later. "I saw guys who were hungry and were going to fight." By the time Duke began its comeback in the final 11 minutes—Wojciechowski whipping the ball inside to Brand and McLeod, junior guard Trajan Langdon hitting jumpers, McLeod forcing turnovers—Krzyzewski felt his team humming at a high level for the first time all season. "It was," he says, "beautiful for me to watch."

No, better than that. It was, as McLeod put it, "delightful." Imagine. McLeod had come so close to never knowing all he could do. Now he has done it. "Thank you for giving me a new home, a new birth," he shouted to the Cameron crowd after the game. Imagine how he feels. He has never been happier.

"But I want more," McLeod says. "We have a great opportunity to get more."

Issue date: March 9, 1998