Maybe not quite to the extent of Secretariat on the backstretch of the Belmont, but the machinery of Duke has clicked into full gear in the last couple of weeks.

“I feel like in the last couple of weeks the maturity of our team – not that we were immature – but the maturity of our team has gone up a lot,” coach Mike Krzyzewski said.

It’s helped, Krzyzewski explained, that the Blue Devils have lessened the quantity of points being made to hone in on a few details.

“We’ve changed a couple of things that we do in not doing as much, but doing fewer things deeper,” he said. “Maybe it’s time for them to absorb more, but with that combination of the timing is right, that little bit of change, really it showed up in our Virginia game.”

The Blue Devils prevailed in that game in Charlottesville, and have proceeded to secure their two most-lopsided ACC wins of the season in the past two games – 97-72 at Syracuse and 86-56 at Pittsburgh.

It’s a shift that the players have felt, too.

“He’s been saying for us to approach the same way we’ve approached these last couple of games,” captain Wendell Moore Jr. said. “We’ve been playing some of our best basketball down the stretch of the season.

“And it’s really been because of our preparation.”

Krzyzewski was quick to point out after the win at Virginia how he’d seen a different version of his team in the days before, and he recounted the exchange with associate head coaches Chris Carrawell and Jon Scheyer.

“We’re running defense and I’m looking, I told Chris Carrawell and Jon, ‘These guys look like a machine out here. They look like one of our old teams,’” Krzyzewski said. “Right now we’re moving the ball better. We just seemed to make a jump and hopefully this game will help us make another jump.”

So maybe the Secretariat, “he’s moving like a tremendous machine,” comparison isn't that far off.

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Here’s what to know ahead of Saturday night’s game:

Time: 6 p.m.

TV: ESPN

Announcers: Dan Shulman (play-by-play), Jay Bilas (analyst), Holly Rowe (sidelines).

Series; last meeting: UNC leads 141-115; Duke won 87-67 on Feb. 5.

Records: UNC 22-8, 14-5 ACC; Duke 26-4, 16-3.

Stat to watch: Duke’s 3-point shooting.

The Blue Devils have been a decent 3-point shooting team for most – remember they only made one against Kentucky? – of the season, but have heated up lately.

Duke made 15 3s against Syracuse, matching a season-high, and followed that up with an 11-for-22 clip at Pittsburgh. The 26 combined 3s is the most in any two-game stretch this season that involves Power 6 teams; the Blue Devils hit 15 in back-to-back games in December against South Carolina State and Appalachian State.

UNC gives up more than one-third of its points from 3-point range, and the Tar Heels allow teams to shoot 34.7% from beyond the arc (243rd nationally, per KenPom). Syracuse made 10 of 25 3s against the Tar Heels on Monday night, elevated by Cole Swider’s 7 of 11 performance.

Matchup to watch: Whoever Brady Manek is guarding v. Brady Manek.

Finding a matchup and exploiting it has been a tenet of Krzyzewski’s tenure and one of the best examples this season came in the first meeting of these teams.

Manek is a skilled offensive player but lacks foot speed to stay in front of versatile forwards – of which Duke has a couple – and it’s led to five similarly skilled ACC players recording season highs against UNC.

AJ Griffin found a rhythm in the first half after UNC initially had Armando Bacot guarding Paolo Banchero, and Banchero drew two early fouls. In the defensive shuffling that followed, UNC assigned defensive stalwart Leaky Black to Banchero, Bacot to Mark Williams, and Manek to Griffin.

Duke’s 6-6 freshman gouged Manek for 27 points.

So the intriguing thing to watch will be who Manek guards. If the Tar Heels don’t have him matched up against Griffin, does he start on Banchero or Williams? He’d be giving up 3 inches to Williams in the post; he’d seemingly be overmatched against Banchero, who’s rediscovered some offensive confidence in Duke’s last two games.

Whoever Manek starts out guarding is likely who Duke will run its offense through, at least initially.

Tar Heel to watch: Armando Bacot, center.

Bacot has put up some monstruous performances recently and inserted himself as a contender for ACC player of the year – though the favorite remains Wake Forest’s Alondes Williams.

A 28-point, 18-rebound, five-block performance against N.C. State last weekend, on 11-for-13 shooting, was quite the display for the 6-10, 240-pound junior. He followed it up two days later with 17 points and 18 rebounds against Syracuse.

Of course, there’s a correlation here between Bacot’s eye-popping numbers and his competition. N.C. State’s frontcourt has been decimated by injuries. When Syracuse lost Jesse Edwards, it lost its only competent interior defender.

In UNC’s loss to Pitt, with 6-9, 280-pound John Hugley, Bacot had seven points and eight rebounds.

Mark Williams limited Bacot’s effectiveness in the first meeting – he had 12 points and five rebounds, and only four of those points were scored in the second half. Williams and Bacot are familiar with each other going back to playing for the AAU circuit out of Virginia.

Blue Devil to watch: AJ Griffin, wing.

As pointed out above, Griffin is a matchup nightmare for UNC if the Tar Heels don’t start Black as his primary defender.

Even then, Griffin might be on enough of a roll to have some success.

The silky-smooth wing clicked into gear with 10 points in the last four minutes against Virginia, then had 20 points against Syracuse and an efficient 12-point, seven-rebound game at Pitt.

Griffin has, somewhat quietly, put together a string of seven straight double-digit scoring performances. Consistency has been the latest evolution in Griffin’s season, as he’s gone from slowly working his way into the lineup and putting his injury history in the rearview mirror to becoming a dependable offensive weapon.

Another 27-point explosion, or something like it, seems unlikely given … well, again, we arrive at playing the guessing game when it comes to UNC’s defensive matchups.

KenPom prediction: Duke wins 83-71.

Devils Illustrated prognosis: Duke turned a corner and became a mature team in the past two weeks – first with the preparation that went into the tight road win at Virginia, and followed up by blowouts of Syracuse and Pittsburgh.

Now the Blue Devils come home as a bit of a changed team from the one that lost to Virginia and struggled to put away Clemson and Wake Forest at home.

“That’s another reason why I’m excited, I feel like people haven’t seen our best basketball at Duke, in Cameron,” freshman Trevor Keels said. “Now we’re playing totally different basketball for (those) three road games, I can’t wait to see how we come out aggressive and attack.”

The inner struggle of this game is fascinating. There’s a degree of human nature to combat, with all of the pomp, circumstance and exorbitant pressure that comes with playing in the final home game of Krzyzewski’s legendary tenure.

And yet, with this team having turned the corner maturity wise, the Blue Devils are equipped with the tools to overcome all of that. They’ve gone from a team that rises to the biggest of occasions but shrinks to lower levels to one that looks like a legitimate contender for a national championship.

It feels like the stage is set for not only the coronation of a legend in his final game at Cameron, but for a proper sendoff of a team capable of still playing a month from now.