Memo to Boston College fans who’ll attend tonight’s basketball game against Duke at Conte Forum: When you win, don’t rush the court.

And you will win.

Playing Duke these days is like playing Notre Dame in a bowl game — it looks like a glamour game, but it’s really an easy “W.”

Everybody beats Duke now — Maryland, on Sunday in College Park; before that, two in a row last week — both, shockingly, at home, in front of the Cameron Crazies — to (gulp) arch-rival North Carolina and (gasp) Florida State; and, before that, a loss at Virginia.

That’s four in a row — the first time the Blue Devils have dropped four straight conference games since the 1995-96 season.

Yes, this is still lordly Duke, a Southern version of an Ivy League institution — the older buildings on campus even look like they were transported (you might even say copied) from Princeton — a school whose halls, and hoop tradition, are hallowed.

The mere mention of Duke prompts television analysts (and the Blue Devils are on TV all the time) like the voluble Dickie V. to ascend to Mount Everest heights of hyperbole and Billy Packer to get all teary-eyed in verbal veneration.

But the fact is that the Blue Devils are 5-6 in the ACC and aren’t even ranked in the top 25, while the Eagles are in first place at 9-2.

And that’s despite dumping shot-blocker supreme — and soon-to-be NBA first-round draft choice — Sean Williams for repeated rules infractions seven games ago.

Instead of falling apart in the aftermath of the talented Williams’ enforced departure, coach Al Skinner’s Eagles have pulled together and gone 4-2 in conference games (5-2 overall), including a win Sunday at Florida State, which — it needs to be repeated to be believed — recently beat Duke in Durham.

So, BC fans, unless you want to look like the sort of total yokels who’d make fans from N.C. State and Clemson seem sophisticated, then when your Eagles beat the Blue Devils tonight, you’ll give them a well-deserved cheer and then say: Bring on the Tar Heels — a real basketball team.

The reality is that Duke isn’t all that good. In large part because their longtime coach, the legendary Mike Krzyzewski, suddenly seems to be having as much trouble winning games as most people do spelling his name.

If ever a man is resting on his laurels, it’s Coach K.

His career record is dazzling: three NCAA championships — in 1991, 1992, and 2001 en trips to the Final Four; ten ACC tourney titles; eleven ACC regular-season championships; a total of 22 NCAA appearances in the last 23 years.

It’s no wonder Krzyzewski already has been inducted into the Basketball Hall of Fame.

But he certainly hasn’t been coaching like a Hall of Famer lately.

Last March, in the NCAA Tournament, his top-seeded Blue Devils, with a roster loaded with high-school All-Americans from across the country, were upset by LSU, led by three kids who went to high school in Baton Rouge.

Then, last summer, Coach K was in charge of the array of NBA All-Stars who made up Team USA in the World Basketball Championships. That star-studded aggregation of top talent wound up losing in the semifinals to Greece, 101-95. Two days later, the Greeks were trounced in the finals by Spain, 70-47 — raising the question of what the Spanish coach knows about defense that Coach K doesn’t?

How can it be that a team comprised entirely of NBA players — supposedly world-class athletes — and coached by a man who has a reputation as a hoops genius, couldn’t hold a Greek team that didn’t have a single NBA player to under 100 points? And yet that same Greek team couldn’t score 50 points against the Spaniards two days later?

Remember that old, homespun line about former Texas football coach Darrell Royal, of whom it was said: “He can take his his’n and beat your’n, or he can take your’n and beat his’n?”

Well, apparently you can give Coach K the most talented players in the world and he can’t design a defense that can keep a team of Greeks from surpassing the century mark.

Just like his more talented —or, perhaps more accurately, more highly touted — Duke team couldn’t beat the Bayou Bengals last March.

And now here are his Blue Devils, once again boasting a slew of highly recruited, high school All-Americans, yet most definitely not boasting of a sub-.500 record in conference play, having lost at home to the likes of Virginia Tech, tied for sixth place in the ACC.

So try to keep things in perspective, Eagles fans. Yes, it’s a kick to have Duke come to Chestnut Hill. But you’re the team in first place, not them. You’re the team favored to win. When you do, don’t rush the court. Everybody beats Duke — and Coach K —these days.

jdonalds@projo.com