Maybe you saw the recent news that supposedly in a galaxy 400 million light years away, called NGC6240, two "supermassive'' black holes are out to get each other. They are "drifting toward a violent merger, an eruption of energy that will warp the fabric of space.'' You could call it, "a looming collision of giants.''

Remembering Valvano

Would the late Jim Valvano have cared much about a women's basketball tournament carrying his name? North Carolina State's Kay Yow, for years Valvano's coaching counterpart with the Wolfpack, said yes, he would have. N.C. State is host Sunday to the Jimmy V Classic doubleheader, facing Connecticut after Duke meets Tennessee. Earlier this week, Yow talked about her friendship with Valvano and remembered how their programs co-existed with respect, something that doesn't happen even today at many schools. "I'm so grateful to the folks at ESPN that got behind this, and also to the other three teams that are participating,'' Yow said. "Having coached with Jim for 10 years, having fought my own battle with cancer, and with him and my mom passing away within a few months of each other because of cancer ... what more could I ask than to raise money to fight cancer while playing great basketball?'' Yow told of the day, while she was undergoing treatment for breast cancer, that Valvano and his staff showed up at her house to bring her lunch when she got home from the hospital. She said there were times when there would be a conflict in practice schedules and Valvano would work with Yow to solve it, rather than say, "Look, I'm the big cheese here, I don't have to budge.'' "I remember him saying, 'Just give me 45 minutes, and then you can have it the rest of the time. You have a tough game coming up, and I don't,' '' Yow said. "He knew all about women's basketball. He knew who the top coaches and players were.'' Valvano passed away in 1993, so he didn't get to watch Yow reach one of the pinnacles of her career: a Final Four appearance in 1998. The Wolfpack beat Connecticut in the East Regional final to get there. They've met once since, with UConn winning in the East Regional semifinals in 2001. "I believe people in the area are as excited as I am to have these three teams come here,'' Yow said. "We are in basketball country, and women have to put the very best out there to get the attention of people. I hope we have a tremendous crowd.'' Yow is a board member on the V Foundation, which has raised more than $24 million for cancer research. This tournament hopes to be another contributor to that cause, the lasting legacy of Valvano. "We both majored in English and just had a lot in common,'' Yow said. "I think he'd be so pleased to have this event in Raleigh.'' -- Mechelle Voepel

Meanwhile in our Milky Way galaxy -- to be more specific, in Raleigh, N.C., on the planet Earth -- No. 1 Duke will face No. 2 Tennessee.

OK, so "the fabric of space,'' probably will be unaffected. Not all collisions of giants are created equal.

But at least you don't have to wait very long for Duke-Tennessee, which is the opener of the Jimmy V Classic doubleheader at 2 p.m. ET Sunday (ESPN2). Apparently, this big deal in NGC6240 won't happen for about several hundred million years.

(For what it's worth, Webster's defines "black hole'' as a "hypothetical object.'' Of course, the telescope folks could tell most of us anything because we don't know what they're talking about. They say these NGC6240 black holes have the mass of "millions of suns.'' Oh sure, whatever. Why not make it billions of suns? How about trillions? What's the mass of the sun anyway? Just once at some astrophysicists' news conference, do you think anybody ever looked at the pictures that resemble flash-photography accidents, heard the "illions'' being tossed around and said, "Sure y'all are making this up?'')

But as for a very small orb -- the basketball -- here's what's interesting: Duke isn't quite a giant yet. At least not in popular opinion, if chat rooms and the like are any indication.

Duke seems on the verge of giant-dom, especially after snagging recruits Brittany Hunter and Alison Bales for next season. But the Blue Devils are new to this No. 1 mantle, and a lot of folks seem to think they'll lose it quickly to perennial big-wig Tennessee.

Duke lost projected starter Monique Currie to an ACL injury just 5 seconds into its first exhibition game. The Blue Devils have a lot of freshmen with impressive pedigrees who will be playing just their second game (Duke opens with East Carolina on Friday).

The whole country seems on board with Duke's Alana Beard being the stuff, but many folks still give the edge to Tennessee, thanks to the bulldog leadership from Kara Lawson and the forceful grace of Gwen Jackson, among other things.

Now what people "think'' is going to happen ultimately is as irrelevant as whether the supermassive black holes will collide in 100 million years or 200 million years.

But neither team wants this game to be bigger than it actually is. That's probably more the case for Duke, which is defending a No. 1 ranking for the first time. Win or lose, it's going to be easier for Tennessee to say, "So what? It's November.'' But Duke is trying to think the same way.

"It's a great opportunity for us to play a team like Tennessee this early,'' Duke coach Gail Goestenkors said. "We don't have a great emphasis on the outcome, we look at it as an opportunity to find out about ourselves. It's not about being your best now, it's about preparing to be your best later.''

That might sound like a concession speech before the fact, but Goestenkors is just being honest about the uncertainty of how some of her younger players will deal with facing "Tennessee the legend'' along with the actual flesh-and-blood team.

Plus, Tennessee did learn about itself already against Oklahoma on Nov. 10 at the State Farm Tipoff Classic. And it's hard enough facing Pat Summitt without her having two weeks of practice working toward one game.

"I think that if you're playing the best team in the country right out of the block, it gets your attention in practice,'' said Summitt, eagerly setting up Duke on a pedestal to knock over. "You don't have to worry about motivation with your players.''

Now along with this No. 1 vs. No. 2 game being weird because everyone seems to think No. 2 is the favorite, you have the fact that Connecticut will be in the house, too.

And not in the "main event,'' so to speak. UConn faces North Carolina State in the second game.

Has there been an occasion where Summitt and Geno Auriemma and their respective squads have been at the same place at the same time but no one was talking about them squaring off?

We'll see our now-traditional UConn-Tennessee game on Jan. 4. In the meantime, the more zealous among those programs' fans can keep arguing about which one owns the coveted title of "most hated by the jealous peons elsewhere in the world'' while simultaneously trashing Duke.

There is a lot of talent out there at so many different programs. All the power conferences have at least one team with real Final Four potential. Louisiana Tech keeps on trucking. And it can't be said enough: "Purdue won it all in 1999! Notre Dame won it all in 2001!''

But in the recruiting high-rent district, UConn and Tennessee both have been in the penthouse for awhile, often losing their most-coveted recruits only to each other.

With Duke's last three classes, though, it's almost as if Godzilla and MechaGodzilla -- fighting over who got to destroy fake Tokyo next -- both looked up and said, "Oh, crap, here comes Mothra.''

Normally, you wouldn't think anything could please UConn followers more than Tennessee getting beat ... but they might desire a little Blue Devil blood now because Hunter said yes to Duke even though UConn really wanted her.

Which brings us back to ... one of the telescope people said this was the first time they had evidence of two of these supermassive black holes co-existing in the same galaxy.

So if there can be two, why not three? Or more?

Mechelle Voepel of the Kansas City Star is a regular contributor to ESPN.com. She can be reached at mvoepel@kcstar.com.