The year is 2050, nearly a half-century after the four major North Carolina basketball schools made their last stand on Tobacco Road. Scholarship limitations, academic casualties, ice storms, yadda yadda, have conspired to render the former "Big Four" not that particularly big anymore.

Duke has finally turned Coach K out to pasture and hired the longtime "program coordinator of the K Lab" -- his oldest daughter, Debbie Krzyzewski Savarino (Coach KS) -- to lead the Blue Devils back to prominence.

	Coach K will finally hand over the reigns to ... Coach K.

North Carolina, having cleaved through Dean Smith's successors like sausages at the Jimmy Dean (no relation) factory -- Matt Doherty, Roy Williams, Michael Jordan, David Brinkley, Stuart Scott, James Taylor and John Edwards (the former president of the United States) -- has reversed field and rehired El Deano himself, now 119 years old.

Similarly, North Valvano -- uh, Carolina -- State is still living in the past, still running around looking to get hugged. The team has returned to a Euro/Harlem look: the Evtimov/Hodge Epoch having produced little Packs of Bulgarians and the infamous 145th Street twins, Tyrone (Ice Cream) and TyOneOn (Full Scoop) Kone, both of whom have surpassed David Thompson as State's all-time heroes.

Which leaves little old Wake Forest, no longer suffering from the secondary smoke in Winston-Salem, to stay the genetic course. The R.J. Reynolds Clone Lab has responded by transforming wondrous athletic amalgams of Arnold Palmer, Curtis Strange, Brian Piccolo and Tim Duncan into Next Ones (not to mention Fives).

In short, the Big Four are once again a microcosm of the college hoops universe, just as they were back in that watershed year of 2003, when everybody had to rely on youngins to negotiate old pressures, and parity reigned supreme. (Remember how the ACC was supposedly dead and buried -- then Clemson beat Cincinnati?) Once again, roundball rubberneckers find themselves winding through the Carolina pines, where they've un-paved paradise and turned Tobacco Road into rock-pick-and-roll nirvana once more.

"Screw the relationships," says Coach KS, hissing past her heritage. "It's all about the W's."

***

Safe to say, the current keepers of the flame in the central Piedmont are hardly cynical about the future. Then again, the denizens of Tobacco Road have hit enough speed bumps over the years -- UCLA, the Big East, the NBA "hardship" rule, those pesky Turtles up in Maryland -- to make even Duke's ultra-successful Mike Krzyzewski wary of dwelling on old truths: "You must anticipate as much change as possible."

That's undoubtedly why he had an entirely new team of studs ready, a sort of lowercase Fab Five plus a sixth man, when pro dollars overwhelmed three-fifths of his starting lineup for the second time in three years. And why the rookies so quickly had to learn the Blue Devil system of communication -- or, as assistant coach Steve Wojciechowski puts it, "how to make each other better through voice commands."

The Dukies have played progressively better as the freshmen have worked out the kinks. But even J.J. Redick, the confident first-year guard who leads the team in scoring (15.8 ppg through Jan. 2), and who already may be the most dangerous long-range marksman in college, concedes that "the hardest thing to learn has been the talk."

Dukeversation starts at the beginning of every practice, when players repeat the commands for each stretching drill and count repetitions aloud. Later they call out names to emphasize who's open or who's getting the pass or who's blocking or screening. "At first," says freshman guard Sean Dockery, "I was like, 'Talk? For what?' But it's a learning experience." Adds wizened sophomore swingman Daniel Ewing: "It's about asserting yourself. When you don't get the ball, it's because you didn't call for it. Communicating is the basis of becoming a team."

Krzyzewski himself, finally rid of last season's constant pain after March hip surgery -- and clearly re-energized by the youngsters -- finds it easier to communicate now that he's more hands-on. "I can demonstrate stuff again, the slides and the moves," he says. "Last year I had to sit at most practices. Now I can actually touch the kids and say, 'Look, it's like this.' These things bring you closer. You might hit the right spot with a kid."

	Nothing motivates a Dookie more than being told he stinks.

After 6'10" freshman forward Shavlik Randolph was benched early against UCLA, then sat all but seven minutes against Ohio State, K's haranguing hit the spot all right. "I told Shav there's not a guy at Duke who Coach hasn't told how terrible they're playing and how worthless they've been," says junior sub Nick Horvath. "You can't take it personal. You just have to go out and perform." Now Shav's back in the starting lineup, averaging 10 points and 5.5 boards a game.

From Randolph to Redick to rebound-happy Shelden Williams, the frosh are sending a message of their own. "In a selfish way, this year is more fun for me," says junior PG Chris Duhon. "I feel I'm in complete control of this team. Not to put down the guys who left, but this is a fresher scene. The new kids bring hunger and motivation."

Adds Horvath: "Last year, defending the title, it seemed like we always figured we were the best team, but we dreaded having to prove it all over again. We didn't play in the moment. This year there's more excitement, enthusiasm, guys needing to prove themselves first, us needing to play well to win. That's a lot more fun."

***

When it comes to talking the talk, North Carolina's infant Tar Heels often seem to be speaking different languages. Are they as quick, fearless and indestructible as they looked against Kansas and Stanford in New York? Or as overconfident, careless and defensively clueless as they looked in blowout losses to Illinois and Kentucky?

Okay, they're still teenagers. Grades, girls, z's. In the Nelly zone. Like, all that. But no team seems to derive more personality from its coach, the mercurial, silver-haired Doherty. Over the past two seasons, Director D'Oh has gone from national coach of the year to 8–20 chump of Chapel Hill. Of course, he's only 40 himself -- and he's definitely still learning.

Early on in Carolina's comeback over Rutgers on Nov. 20, Doherty went ballistic, smacking the scorer's table and screaming at everybody in sight. "I had pent-up frustrations for eight months, and they were all coming out in that game," he says. "But immediately I realized I wasn't helping the cause. This is too young a team for that. They need soothing." So Doherty apologized at halftime; he said if they'd all relax, then he would too. In the second half, with the Heels down 11, he told them, "This program's had a lot of great comebacks. This will be your first." Although sophomore forward Jawad Williams later admitted, "We really couldn't remember any," UNC recovered to win the kind of game that last season's sorry bunch would have frittered away.

It's not just knowledge and ability that the high-profile trio of Rashad McCants, Sean May and Raymond Felton have brought to campus. It's confidence and swagger. Whether or not Carolina can sustain that without May is a big if. (The 6'8", 272-pound center, the team's only legitimate post threat, is out six to eight weeks after breaking his left foot in a loss to Iona on Dec. 27.) But remember the rookie Jordan's tongue hanging out as he bottomed the basket that won the national championship in 1982? Well, McCants -- as brash and brave a scorer (18.9 ppg) as any UNC newcomer since MJ -- hardly stops wagging his tongue. According to one tale, the 6'4" wing trash-talked Duke's Randolph while dropping 42 points in a high school tourney -- never mind that Shav was merely sitting in the stands. And at Madison Square Garden in November, McCants kept braying and winking at Dick Vitale as he slashed his way to MVP honors at the Preseason NIT.

When Brian Butch, a star 6'11" center from Appleton, Wis., chose his state university over Carolina in October, he said he didn't know if he had "the cockiness and swagger" to play for the Heels. "We liked that image of us," McCants says. "I like it too," Doherty adds. "When the lights come on, this group is not afraid to perform. They like the big stage."

At the same time, the coach knows he can't hide some glaring weaknesses. Both Illinois and Kentucky exposed UNC's soft underbelly. And May's injury depletes an already thin squad. If McCants or the point guard Felton is forced to sit with fouls, Carolina could be hard-pressed to handle Hampton (a lost moment from last season that Williams just might remember).

Somewhere in the catacombs of the Smith Center, Doherty speaks with the building's namesake almost daily, in person: "He's been through all this, the ups and downs." But while The Dean preaches patience, aren't the locals intolerant of such mundane categories as On The Bubble and Making The Dance? "I've figured that out, too," says the guy who helped set up MJ for that championship shot, a smile now spreading across his face. "I'm a lot smarter than people think."

***

NC State's Herb Sendek is constantly trying to live down the notion that he's some brained-out freak. Pretty hard to do when you graduate from high school with a 4.0 GPA, attend Carnegie Mellon on the prestigious Carnegie Merit Scholarship (finishing with a 3.95 -- whoops), and give off a geeked-up academic's persona that recently inspired junior forward and team wise guy Marcus Melvin to pronounce, "In the Herb Sendek movie, Coach would be played by that nerdy professor in Back to the Future." (Actually, he means inventor, but you get the point.)

In Sendek speak, "positionless" describes the Wolfpack offense, which is inspired by Princeton's classic backdoor screens and cuts. "We don't have the prototypical point guard, but we can buffer that by relying on interchangeable parts," Sendek says. "So that like the stonecutter, it's not the final blow that breaks the stone so much as each successive blow that chips away until the final crumbling." Wahhh? Oh, and State doesn't move the ball, the team "transports" it.

Sendek is so different, he doesn't even like golf. "We're totally opposite," says assistant Larry Hunter, an avid linkster and the former headman at Ohio U, whom Sendek -- as stunningly secure as a man can be on the verge of losing his job -- brought in last season to help the Pack earn a much-needed Tourney berth.

	If the NBA doesn't work out, Julius is ready for the And1 Mix Tape Tour.

Julius Hodge, he of the grand nickname "Da Jules of Harlem on His Way 2 Stardom," was Sendek's other significant addition. "When Coach came to recruit me, we were walking outside, it's freezing cold and the guy didn't even have a coat on," Hodge recalls. "Then a fight breaks out on the street. I think a gun went off or something. And he keeps walking and talking, never batted an eye. I didn't know whether he was some tough little dude who couldn't care less what was going down in the neighborhood, or if he didn't have a clue. [The latter, Sendek confesses.] Whatever, I was really impressed."

Hodge, a 6'6" sophomore, is so spindly that his long neck and perpetually bobbing head give him a look more ET than PTP. And yet he may be as indispensable to his team as any BMOC, especially with reliable forward Ilian Evtimov out all season with a torn left knee. Handling the ball, scoring, rebounding, defending, hot-dogging, jawing with opponents, Da Jules and his street-corner 'tude totally belie the professorial look on the State bench. Which is probably just what Sendek needed to change the stuffy atmosphere in Raleigh. Last year Hodge was suspended one game for elbowing Maryland's Steve Blake in the head -- Blake called him a "punk" afterward -- but it was the kid's late three-point bucket that helped the Pack upset the Terps five weeks later in the ACC tourney.

So far this season, Hodge has been more bold (19 ppg, 4 apg) than brash. Except when a team staffer asked if he liked The Mag's season preview photo spread of him. "Uh, no," Da Jules replied. "Why was Luke Walton on the cover and not me?"

***

The first thing most outlanders learn about Wake Forest is that it isn't in Wake Forest. Mammoth freshman center Eric Williams (6'9", 270 pounds) already knew this -- he's from that little town on the outskirts of Raleigh. But senior swingman Josh Howard, who actually grew up in Winston-Salem, didn't even know Wake Forest was there. Whenever his parents drove him by campus, all he saw was "a bunch of trees."

Typical. All most people remember about Wake Forest is a bunch of golfers: Arnie, Curtis, Lanny Wadkins, Scott Hoch. The Demon Deacons once made the Final Four with a guard named Billy Packer, and later struck gold when Tim Duncan found his way from St. Croix to the beauteous little campus that the presidents Bush, father and son, also hold dear (each won debates in the Wait Chapel on his way to the White House).

Outlander Skip Prosser surely inhaled all this -- as well as the fact that Wake is the only ACC school to make the postseason 12 years running -- when he drew a rectangle on his office blackboard after taking the job in April 2001, then asked his secretary to show him what was where in the state. "Oh, Charlotte's west?" noted Prosser, like Sendek, a native of Pittsburgh. "Asheville's in the mountains? Wilmington's by the coast? That's nice." And off recruiting he went. The results are four in-state freshmen this season, including McDonald's All-American Williams (12.7 ppg, 6.4 rpg) and quicksilver guard Justin Gray (11.3 ppg, 4.3 apg), plus three more already signed for next fall, including local jewel Chris Paul, a top-10 PG. "You don't hold a parade because you've had a good recruiting year in this league," says Prosser, whose last gig was Xavier. "You have to get great players or you get buried."

	Justin didn't have to go far to find a school.

The quick start by freshmen not only up Interstate 40 but nationwide has emboldened Wake's own rooks. "We know all those guys," says Gray, an overlooked prep who balled with McCants on the AAU circuit and Syracuse's Carmelo Anthony at Oak Hill Academy. "If they can do it, we can do it. Because we've done it against them. We know Carolina and Duke are the more established programs, but we think we're the future. If my roommate ever figures out how good he can be, lights out."

That roomie is Williams, who weighed 320 before dropping 50 pounds over the summer, morphing into an astonishingly quick big man. His dunks are administered single-paw style because, he explains, "I want to bring down a backboard with one hand." But it was a drop-step spin move and a full-speed, catch-and-slam on the break that captivated Temple coach John Chaney. "We just bounced off this big fella," he said after Wake's Dec. 1 win. "He made our guys look like ushers in a theater. 'Where would you like to sit? Would you like some popcorn?'"

When the Deacons won at Wisconsin three days later, Williams was mostly stuck to the pine with fouls. So Howard, Wake's low-key, self-proclaimed elder statesman -- and the most versatile player in the league -- went out and scored 31 points.

"I've always been an example guy," Howard says. "Now I feel like a father figure to my teammates. When I came here, I was the only recruit in my class, and all I heard was Duke, Carolina, State. But these new guys have chips on their shoulders because they think their class was slighted. By the time our games come around, they'll be ready mentally and physically. We can't wait to get this ACC thing started."

And really, there's no time to waste. Kids will be kids, but the future is now, in a wide-open conference where balance rules the day -- and all roads still lead to Tobacco Road.

This article appears in the January 20 issue of ESPN The Magazine.