Nick Faust

The Terrapins men’s basketball team plays at No. 8 Duke on Saturday for the final time as an ACC opponent. The game holds obvious historical importance and is crucial to this year’s Terps, who are running out of time to add signature wins to an unimpressive postseason resume.

Here are some storylines for the Terps last league game in Durham, N.C.:

1) NOT JUST ‘ANOTHER GAME’

It’s common for coaches to downplay the significance of individual games. They’ll tell their teams and the media that one game doesn’t make a season, that they need to treat each game the same.

Coach Mark Turgeon, though, isn’t shying away from the meaning behind his program’s final conference tilt at rival Duke.

“This game means a lot to a lot of people,” Turgeon said. “So we’re not just trying to treat this just as another game.”

Added guard Nick Faust: “Every game is a big game, but this is big for the school. It’s a big rivalry for us so we’re looking forward to it.”

Faust doesn’t believe that the Terps are pressing despite their acknowledgment of what’s at stake in Durham on Saturday night. The Terps, he said, are keeping the history behind the game in their minds while still aiming to maintain focused on their specific gameplan.

Turgeon said special assistant coach Juan Dixon, who starred in the most intense battles of the rivalry in the early 2000s, will talk to the team at some point prior to Saturday’s game..

“It is a lot of emotions,” Dixon said. “We had a lot of great games in the past. It’s our last game. We just want to go down to Duke and enjoy the atmosphere, enjoy the moment.”

The theme of the coaches’ messages are that the Terps are playing to honor the program’s past Saturday, while also striving to resurrect their season.

“We’re trying to represent a lot of past coaches and past players in a way that they need to be represented tomorrow night,” Turgeon said. “Our guys know that. It’s a big game for us.”

2) DIFFERENT TEAM

The Blue Devils have a much different team this season than they did a year ago. Duke’s two leading scorers — freshman Jabari Parker and Mississippi transfer Rodney Hood — weren’t on the floor last season and the Blue Devils relied heavily on center Mason Plumlee, who’s now a Brooklyn Net.

But Faust said the Terps are still drawing confidence from their two wins over the Blue Devils last season.

“Against them, we’re always up for it and it’s always a good game,” Faust said. “We definitely think we have firepower for them.”

For the Terps to extend their winning streak against Duke to three games, they’ll need to execute a different gameplan than they employed when they topped the Blue Devils in College Park and in Greensboro, N.C., at the ACC Tournament.

The Blue Devils are smaller and more athletic than they were last season. And with the addition of Parker and Hood, the team also has more versatile weapons.

“Across the board, they got guys that can score,” Turgeon said. “They are tough to guard. I think they’re averaging in the 80s the last four or five games so they’re pretty good.”

3) HANDLING PRESSURE

Duke has a reputation for playing pressure man-to-man defense. With guards Quinn Cook and Tyler Thornton in the backcourt, the Blue Devils provide stifling preimeter defense again this year and that could cause a problem for a Terps’ team prone to sloppy play.

The Terps have cut back on turnovers in recent weeks, but face a unique test Saturday.

“They’re defending better,” Turgeon said. “They get after you. They pick you up when you get off the bus.”

So the Terps will have to turn to several different players to combat that pressure. Point guards Seth Allen and Roddy Peters will still do a majority of the ball handling, but wings Dez Wells and Nick Faust could be put in a position to break the press as well.

“I think by committee we’ll handle the ball,” Turgeon said. “We’ve practiced a lot of different things to relieve pressure.”