Duke opened its 1984 ACC schedule on January 7 in Charlottesville with something to prove. Duke was coming off back-to-back 17-loss seasons and had lost nine straight games to the Virginia Cavaliers. Duke was young-at a time when youth frequently was fatal-and very thin. Duke’s six-player rotation consisted of junior Dan Meagher, sophomores Johnny Dawkins, Mark Alarie, David Henderson and Jay Bilas and freshman Tommy Amaker. Doug McNeely was the only recruited senior and the nominal seventh man. But he averaged only 11 minutes per game.
Dawkins, Alarie, Henderson and Bilas had taken their lumps as freshmen in 1983, going 11-17.