From the time he appeared for warm-ups before playing Florida State at the Civic Center here on Wednesday, J.J. Redick of top-ranked Duke was met by familiar heckling, a crude sign that made an obscene reference to his sister and even a body-painted message that questioned his sexual orientation.
Taunting occurred during the national anthem when someone shouted a curse that Redick was overrated and, when Florida State fans rushed the court with 1.7 seconds remaining in a 79-74 upset victory, Redick said he was briefly grabbed before security guards interceded.
It was further evidence that as Redick and Adam Morrison of fifth-ranked Gonzaga challenge each other for college basketball's scoring title and the national player of the year award, they have become perhaps the country's most polarizing players, highly respected but loathed and subjected to jeering that can be tasteless and cruelly personal.
This kind of fan rebuke is nothing new for Redick, a 6-foot-4 senior whose Duke team is the standard bearer for excellence in college basketball and engenders the same heightened, love/hate emotions that the Yankees do in baseball.
While many say such abusive fan behavior has no place in sports, others say that Redick and Morrison, both possessing a confidence or swagger that is sometimes called arrogance, have been known to give as good as they get.
At the same time, harassment by opposing fans continues to escalate with nasty vehemence, giving a darker meaning to March Madness as the NCAA tournament approaches.
Last Saturday, after a victory over Temple in Philadelphia in which Redick struggled but became the Atlantic Coast Conference's career scoring leader, a local man began screaming and cursing at him across the scorer's table. John Chaney, the Temple coach, confronted the man, who was holding a beer that did not appear to be his first, and yelled at him, "Behave like a human being."
"There's just something wrong with the culture of playing on the road in college basketball," Redick said in an interview after scoring 30 points against Florida State, nudging his season average above 28 points a game and boosting his career total to 2,620 points. "If you say those things on the street, you can probably press criminal charges. But for some reason, in the arena of sport, it's OK"
Morrison, a 6-foot-8 junior forward, also finds himself the relentless target of opposing fans now that he has gained increased visibility with a nation-leading scoring average of 28.8 points. He has been strafed with harsh comments about everything from his sparse mustache to his awkward gait to a battle with diabetes that has forced him to inject himself with insulin as many as five times a game.
On Feb. 18, after scoring a career high of 44 points against Loyola Marymount in Los Angeles, Morrison was waiting for a postgame television interview in an emptying gym when a Loyola student yelled, "Don't have children; we're going to eat them."
The student, Carter Skeath, a 22-year-old senior, drew perplexed looks and seemed stunned by his own remarks. He shook his head and said, "I don't know what that meant."
Two nights later in Malibu, a group of students at Pepperdine debated jokingly whether Morrison's mustache left him looking more like a porn star or a pedophile.
"Amber Alert," some students yelled as the Gonzaga players arrived in their team bus.
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