DURHAM, N.C.-- The Carolinas seemed resplendent with off-beat road signs.

"Re-elect Sheriff James Holt" hand-lettered signs shouted over and over as we drove through Lee County, North Carolina. Every time a police car drove by, we contemplated getting pulled over on purpose, hoping against hope that our arresting officer might be the good Sheriff.

"Nuclear Visitor Center, next right," announced a sign in McBee, South Carolina. We chuckled, wondering just how many nuclear visitors rolled through McBee on your average day.

In this context, the signs that surrounded Durham--a small town in northern North Carolina--seemed quaint, but not out of place.

"Welcome to Durham, City of Medicine," one sign greeted those who rolled down interstate 501

"Durham, North Carolina," another said, "Tree City USA."

One (small) town, two slogans. It looked like a classic case of municipal identity crisis.

Take Boston, or even any real city in the South--Columbia, South Carolina, say--and you won't see such sloganeering. "Columbia, population 250,027" will do just fine, thank you very much.

Durham, on the other hand, seemed to need not one but two monikers to keep it from being lost in the sea of small college towns.

Pity the fool--or in this case, the college basketball team--who fell for this veneer of insecurity, who thought that this was just another quiet town like McBee.

The signs, and indeed the simple exterior of the very arena--Cameron Indoor Stadium--which houses the nationally third-ranked Duke men's basketball team, indicate the height of modesty.

Pity the fool.

Inside Cameron Indoor Stadium, 6500 fans assembled Monday night, almost all with a single purpose in mind: destroy the Harvard basketball team.

For hidden within the touching signs and unprepossessing exterior lay a national basketball powerhouse--and the Duke student body and basketball faithful weren't going to let anyone--especially the Crimson cagers--forget that.

The intimidation started well before the opening tap when the Blue Devil cheerleaders acted out a Harvard-bashing skit to the Ray Parker-esque tune of Geek-busters.