Duke sure is pretty. The way Jason Williams drives untouched to the hoop. The way Mike Dunleavy effortlessly breaks down his man with one dribble. The way Dahntay Jones skates up and down the court, Carlos Boozer drains baby hooks, Chris Duhon rains threes. So pretty. But that doesn’t mean, as the Sex Pistols once sang, they’re pretty vacant. "Everyone thinks we’re soft," says JWill, sounding annoyed. "But we don’t back down. We don’t care who you are." Let’s admit this much: Duke ain’t exactly brawny. Boozer is a scowling 6'9", 280-pound monster. Yet Dunleavy, for all his savvy, and Jones, for all his intensity, will always be more at home on the wings, so Duke is without a true 4. And the bench lacks a lunchpail type to muck it up. That’s two reasons the Devils were seventh in the ACC in rebounding and eighth in blocks.

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Another reason? Duke gambles on defense. The Devils aggressively cover the passing lanes. They attack the ball. They rotate in a blur to help out. But that sometimes leaves them out of optimal board-snatching position. Of course, it also creates turnovers, an ACC-best 19.2 per game. Don’t pity them: They take away a lot more possessions than they give back. That’s toughness.

And don’t worry about Duke’s mental chops, either. Granted, this group isn’t always straight in the head. Before the Florida State game on Jan. 6, Mike Krzyzewski warned against playing too loose. The disconnected Devils didn’t listen and lost to an NIT wannabe. Coach K was also horrified by their untogetherness in falling to Maryland on Feb. 17. And their free throw woes (68.4%) bit them in the rump in their defeat at Virginia on Feb. 28, when JWill clanked a game-tying freebie with 12 ticks left.

Still, the true test of a team’s mettle is how well it responds to adversity. This is how the Devils responded to their three losses: savaging Georgia Tech by 25, Wake Forest by 29, UNC by 25. Says FSU’s Steve Robinson: "People come after them, and they’ve held them back all year long. Toughness is not their weakness." On the contrary. It’s their strength.

This article appears in the March 18 issue of ESPN The Magazine.