LONDON -- So, this is where Duke's 2002-03 season starts, right here in a conference room of the Admiral's Club at Raleigh Durham International Airport. This is where the real season begins, the time when one of the tallest, and youngest, Duke teams assembled by coach Mike Krzyzewski gets down to business -- the business of bonding.

It is here where the two worlds of Duke collided for a few minutes before the Blue Devils take off for London on Friday. It is where senior Dahntay Jones and junior Chris Duhon teach a few of the freshmen a game of cards. It is where junior Nick Horvath reads Hemingway amidst the game. It is where Duke looked like Duke, sometimes cerebral, sometimes jovial, and always together.

Across the Pond

ESPN.com's Andy Katz is traveling with Duke during its five-day tour of London. He will file daily reports from inside the Blue Devils' camp. Here is a look at Duke's itinerary: FRIDAY (ET) 6:35 p.m.: Depart Raleigh-Durham Airport SATURDAY (GMT) 6:30 a.m.: Arrive at London Gatwick Airport 2 p.m.: Scrimmage vs. Racing Basket Antwerpen SUNDAY (GMT) Int'l Challenge Series Noon: Game 1 vs. Racing Basket Antwerpen 6 p.m.: Game 2 vs. London Towers MONDAY (GMT) Int'l Challenge Series 1 p.m.: Game 3 vs. Brighton Bears 7 p.m.: Game 4 vs. London Towers TUESDAY Noon GMT: Depart London Gatwick Airport 3:30 p.m. ET: Arrive at Raleigh-Durham Airport

That was the purpose of this four-day sojourn to London -- to get the six freshmen and the few vets to think like a cohesive team. The trip is one to teach the newcomers what it is to be Duke Blue Devils earlier than any other Duke team; to do it while having a good time playing the game, and to return to Durham as one. If successful, a collection of selfless players will return as a group willing to make enough sacrifices to keep Duke in the top 10 and maybe make yet another Final Four run.

Plenty of teams have made foreign trips in the spring and summer. A few, notably North Carolina and Kansas, once took trips over Christmas breaks. But no one to anyone's recollection has begun the season abroad, getting 10 practice days in advance to prepare while the rest of the country waits for Midnight Madness.

Duke is breaking ground -- yet again. Duke haters are bitter that the Blue Devils are abroad during their fall break when everyone else is just dusting off the balls. But, as one ACC compliance officer said last week, "they're simply smarter than the rest of us because they thought of it first."

A smooth flight
As for the trip across the pond, it couldn't have been smoother for Duke, considering the usual bumps that occur when flying over the Atlantic at night.

American Airlines' relatively new Boeing 777 is the ultimate flying machine, more flight attendant and customer friendly than any other plane in the fleet. Every seat has a TV (like Jet Blue) with four movies to choose from throughout the flight. There is more room in coach and for the players, who were stashed in business and first class because of their height. The room for players to spread out was probably as good as one of the NBA-sponsored charters Duke usually flies to games during the season.

Even though most players slept less than two of the six-plus hours, the team seemed rather refreshed with the cool Saturday morning rain in London hitting them in the face once they got outside. For Krzyzewski and assistant Chris Collins it was a eerie case of déjà vu after taking the same flight from RDU to London's Gatwick Airport two weeks ago for a home visit with Luol Deng's parents. Krzyzewski and Collins spent 24 hours in London, visiting with Deng's family, checking out the hotel and the suburban London Crystal Palace Sports Training facility where the games would be held this weekend.

"Can you believe it's Midnight Madness," assistant Johnnie Dawkins said to assistant Steve Wojciechowski as the two waited in line to go through customs at 7 a.m. London time, some five hours ahead of the eastern United States.

"It's just ending and for the West Coast it's not even beginning," Wojciechowski said.

The players didn't get bogged down with the potential physical strain of carrying too much baggage. That was left to the managers, who had trunks worth of balls, Gatorade, water (yes the Blue Devils brought their own), towels, jump rope and video equipment to load onto the doubledecker bus. The Duke staff is one of the most active army of managers a team has in the country. Duke has 12 on its roster, but five made the trip: Nick Arison, Max Perkins, Mike Egan, Brian DeStefano and Thayer Swallen.

By the time the bus was ready to embark on an impromptu tour of London, the five managers had worked up their sweat for the day, schlepping the luggage in the rain and ensuring it went on the right bus. Then they had to make sure everyone had a drink.

Seeing the sights
Most of the wide-eyed freshmen took the posts at the front of the top level of the doubledecker, hoping to get a view of London through the fog and mist hitting the windshield. The vets were in the back, possibly dozing while listening to their own private concerts on headphones.

Horvath was up front, still reading Hemingway.

With Duke program coordinator and one-time "90210" cast member Matthew Laurance providing the humor with a few zingers in response to Isabell the British tour guide, she did her part to keep the Blue Devils awake with her tales of gruesome head chopping and drawn and quartering from the days when the Tower of London wasn't a tourist stop. (Although, it was a bit much in the morning to hear about decapitations and hangings and every other sick way of justice the English performed on each other during Henry the VIII's reign.)

The tour became comical when the rain made it almost impossible to see anything, although the players did see one lone political scene as a man lied on the grass near Prime Minister Tony Blair's residence at 10 Downing Street with signs that read "Don't Attack Iraq." And, according to Isabell, he's not leaving until there is world peace, meaning he better get used to grass stains.

Isabell rattled off St. Paul's Cathedral where Princess Di and Prince Charles were wed; Westminster Abbey where a lot of "famous dead people are buried;'' and oh yeah, "across the park over there is Buckingham Palace,'' the queen's digs.

But the tour had to go on and there was no time to stop and try to get one of the palace guards to flinch. Walk-on Andy Means added to the levity when he covered up the camera on the top level of the double deck so Isabell couldn't see the players and Laurance laughing. It was a light note from a walk-on who did something extremely sensitive when he asked to wear No. 53 this season in honor of former high school teammate and Kentucky signee John Stewart, who passed away two years ago.

But no one was too down about much of anything Saturday morning, even with the rain. When it was time to pull a Chevy Chase scene from "Vacation," and run out to see a tourist attraction, the team sprinted to the bridge by Big Ben and parliament, took a team picture in the rain and hustled back to the bus within five minutes.

When the London driving-rainstorm-tour-in-an-hour concluded at the team hotel, Isabell wished the team -- players she claims were the "tallest human beings she had ever seen,'' -- luck by saying "I hope you have a victory on the basketball pitch."

She wasn't that far off. There were plenty of soccer "pitches," surrounding the Crystal Palace gym. When the team arrived at the facility (after a brief breakfast and a nod at their inviting beds that they had no time to visit), there were few questions as to what they were getting into by the look of the place.

The home of the British Basketball League's London Towers was a glorified community center with a pool on one side and a worn down gym on the other. Ripped up tape marks scattered the floor and the surface looked like it was ripe for someone to slip and tear a ligament or two. But as soon as the coaches walked into the arena, Krzyzewski's lightheartedness changed as he immediately assumed his pregame stare, ensuring that anyone who saw him would know this wasn't time for a court jester to appear. The seriousness of at least protecting Duke's belongings was apparent when a facility manager asked one of the organizers from Basketball Travelers -- the promoters of the trip -- for a key to lock Duke's locker room, because if he didn't, "that stuff will be stolen."

No, this was an oxymoron as there was nothing palatial about this arena. But, to Duke's credit, they didn't seem put off by the rustic nature of the arena.

When the London Towers "B" team and Racing Basket Antwerpen of Belgium were warming up for a scrimmage against Duke (the teams split the four 10-minute quarters, although it became five quarters), the Blue Devils showed no signs of jet lag. They were ready to begin their season. The game didn't count on their record, wasn't even a real game, but it mattered to Duke because it was their first game against someone other than themselves on Oct. 12.

After 10 days of practice and crossing the Atlantic, their quest to be one had begun.

Andy Katz is a senior writer at ESPN.com.