The better team did not win on Saturday afternoon at the RBC Center. Or, maybe it did.

“Sometimes the basketball gods smile on you, and they smiled on us today,” said Duke’s Mike Krzyzewski, who got his 800th career win in 33 years as a college coach, the last 28 at Durham. “It was a remarkable game. I thought N.C. State played superbly. They outplayed us for 32 minutes.”

Which, as the 87-86 Duke victory indicated, was not quite enough.

N.C. State played perhaps its best game of the year, certainly its best game in recent memory. Still, it dropped to 15-14 in a season that started with great expectations and has degenerated into a battle against discouragement and second-guessing. There were 2,000 empty seats for the matchup with the Wolfpack's neighborhood rival on a warm, late-winter day.

Coming after six straight losses, the most at the school since 2000, N.C. State's performance against Duke was as pleasing as it was unexpected.

The Wolfpack led for the majority of the contest. They made 54 percent of their field goal tries, among their best shooting performances of the season.

Freshman forward Tracy Smith, who got his first career start and had a personal-best 14 points, admitted he was surprised at how easily his team scored against the vaunted Blue Devil defense. “We got every shot we wanted,” he said. “Coming into halftime, we were shooting 60 percent. That was very good.”

N.C. State enjoyed a 10-rebound edge for the game. The Wolfpack converted their first 18 free throw attempts, maintaining pressure on Duke in a game rife with fouls. Their 86 points were a season high. They held the Devils to 38.6 percent shooting, 9-of-29 on two-pointers.

“From watching them on tape – I haven’t watched all their games – that has to be as good an effort as they’ve given all year. They were really, really good, really good today,” Krzyzewski said of the Pack. “Their team outplayed us. There’s a part of you as a competitor, you’ve got to feel for the other guy, for crying out loud, in that situation.”

N.C. State got a career game from freshman guard Javier Gonzalez, who had 18 points, a personal best, and controlled the action on offense. His strength and confidence with the ball, long in coming, repeatedly broke down a Duke defense that had been swarmingly impressive in its previous outing, a home win over Georgia Tech.

Gonzalez had been so feckless in a mid-week loss to Florida State, he later went unbidden to coach Sidney Lowe’s office, and apologized. Apparently his mind, and heart, had been elsewhere, distracted by the killing of two friends in Puerto Rico, where he was born and raised. “I was glad to know there was something wrong, because he just didn’t have that look in his eyes,” Lowe said.

With Gonzalez outplaying his Duke counterparts, the Wolfpack took the lead late in the first half, and built its edge to 70-57 with 12:41 to go on a jumper by Ben McCauley, who paced his team with 19 points.

Duke had recovered some of its swagger with consecutive home victories after losing its previous two road games, defeats in which it displayed uncharacteristic lack of focus and intensity. As the Blue Devils fell behind at Raleigh, again playing with little inspiration, Krzyzewski perched motionless on the bench, hands folded in front of his mouth, legs comfortably spread, resembling an unusually well-dressed fat cat who paid his way to watch from the sidelines.

The Wolfpack still led by 10 with 9:17 remaining, parrying every thrust from the increasingly threatened Blue Devils, the nation’s seventh-ranked team.

Krzyzewski had excoriated his squad for its effort during losses at Wake Forest and Miami. This time, he chose to temporarily withhold his emotional and intellectual leadership, challenging his players to fill the void.

“A couple of timeouts, I let anyone who actually would want to talk, and say something that somebody would listen to, run the huddle,” Krzyzewski said. “Teams become really good when they talk to each other, they hear each other’s voices. What happens is, they take ownership. We never took ownership of this game until late in the second half, and State took ownership for 40 minutes.”

As the game ticked toward its conclusion, senior DeMarcus Nelson, the team captain, and sophomore Gerald Henderson asserted themselves in the huddle. That translated into a fierce finish.

Over the final 7:14, Nelson, who shoots nearly 15 percent worse on the road than at home, contributed 10 of his 19 points. His two free throws at the 1:01 mark accounted for the final margin, Duke’s only lead of the second half.

Greg Paulus, braced by Henderson in the huddle, chipped in a trio of 3-pointers during the decisive run. The junior’s last three tied the score at 85 with 1:32 left. Henderson added a free throw as Duke improved to 25-3, remaining tied with North Carolina atop the ACC standings at 12-2.

Meanwhile, the Pack succumbed to the game pressure, Smith admitted, missing 3 of its last 6 foul shots and turning the ball over on a key possession in the final minute.

“This is not a moral victory or anything like that,” said Lowe before leaving the arena to visit his mother in a Raleigh hospital, where she is recovering from a heart attack. “But there were a lot of positives about our team today.”

Just not quite enough to let the better team win. Or, rather, the better team until Duke’s veterans found their voices.