So how do you prepare for a top-ranked Duke team that has won 28 straight games at Cameron Indoor Stadium and 24 straight overall? It's a team that beat Maryland by 41 points at Cameron in 2009 and by 21 points a year ago.
If you're the Terps, perhaps you simply don't think about the weight of all that history. Maybe you just try to play, and understand that it is just one game — the first Atlantic Coast Conference away game — and that two more road contests will quickly follow after Sunday night.
"This isn't the seventh game of the World Series," Maryland coach Gary Williams said Saturday.
Not all the recent history favors the Blue Devils. Maryland was the last team to defeat the defending national champions. The Terps won, 79-72, at Comcast Center last March on an adrenalin-fueled Senior Night.
And then there was the 2007 game at Duke — Greivis Vasquez was a freshman — in which Vasquez finished one rebound short of a triple-double as Maryland beat the Blue Devils, 85-77.
Vasquez — clearly not intimidated in that game — may have exhibited youthful arrogance. Williams said Saturday that a coach can rarely predict how a freshman will react playing their initial game in noisy, confined Cameron Indoor Stadium.
"I didn't know that going into the game," Williams said of the depths of Vasquez's bravado.
Vasquez had 25 points, eight rebounds and seven assists the next season in a Duke win at Durham, N.C. Maryland hasn't beaten the Blue Devils at Cameron since the 2007 game.
Vasquez has graduated and is with the NBA's Memphis Grizzlies. On Sunday night, Maryland may start another freshman guard — Terrell Stoglin.
Stoglin made his first career start against Colgate in Maryland's last game, scoring 12 points. Senior Cliff Tucker, a starter for most of the season, came off the bench and also scored 12 points.
Another freshman guard, Pe'Shon Howard, has started two games and is also a candidate to start at Cameron.
Williams declined to commit Saturday to a starting lineup. He did say he enjoyed the luxury of bringing Tucker off the bench.
"It all depends on how practice goes," the coach said. "I'm not evaluating Pe'Shon or Terrell in the paper."
It can be daunting for freshmen playing at Duke.
'My freshman year, the ball went up and I was kind of nervous," said junior Sean Mosley. "The noise carries throughout the stadium. It's so small inside."
Stoglin and Howard are both brash. Both have said they looked forward to playing Duke.
"They're both ready," senior co-captain Dino Gregory said. "That's what they signed up for when they signed their letter of intent."
It will be Maryland's first ACC road game, but Williams said his newcomers have been tested away from Comcast Center. Maryland played two games — losing to Pitt and Illinois — at Madison Square Garden in November and won at Penn State last month. "We'll see how those experiences lead to tomorrow," Williams said.
Duke has long given Maryland trouble with its size. The Blue Devils had 20 offensive rebounds last season in its win at Cameron.
Duke lost freshman guard Kyrie Irving to a toe injury last month. Senior guard Nolan Smith — taking on an added role — has scored 20 or more points in the last five games.
Sunday will be the first of three road contests in seven days for the Terps, ending with a trip to Philadelphia to play No. 7 Villanova.
"If I'm a player I kind of like it," Williams said of facing such a challenge early in the conference schedule.