DURHAM, N.C. — Cameron Indoor Stadium isn’t the sort of place you waltz into and deliver a generational performance.
No. 2 Auburn basketball learned that much in its 84-78 loss to the Blue Devils this past Wednesday. But those of us in the Auburn sporting press who made the trek learned the same.
Having to play Duke is a difficult task. I would’ve had just as hard a time — OK, a much harder time — containing All-American Cooper Flagg as the Tigers did. But covering a game at Cameron Indoor? It’s not that sort of task, though it brings its own unparalleled level of difficulty.
Imagine being asked to do your job as your desk chair rocks and rumbles from a horde of college students sitting inches behind you. Profanity-laced chants hit your ears first. You’ll wipe spit from your computer screen more than once. Bodies belonging to unknown 20-somethings will tumble and use your shoulders to catch themselves, and you will absolutely get conked — at least 13 times by my count.
I thought I knew what I was getting into. Growing up 20 minutes west of Lawrence, Kansas, I’m no stranger to cathedrals of college basketball. I’ve seen dozens of games at Allen Fieldhouse. I’ve waved the wheat and chanted Rock Chalk. So, would Cameron Indoor really be all that different?
It very much was, with an unmatched level of intimacy that somehow packs more bodies than Auburn’s Neville Arena. The Cameron Crazies are organized chaos in its truest form, setting an example for The Jungle that didn’t let up on the players nor the writers. They bring a gameday experience you can’t forget even if you want to, proven by the fact I’m still brushing blue speckles of body paint off my computer as I type this.
I may have been overconfident about what my night would bring, but I did get a forewarning Tuesday evening. It came from perhaps the best person to inform anyone on a top-10 showdown between the Tigers and Blue Devils.
Lucas Lynn is a Wetumpka native. He comes from a long line of Auburn graduates. But the 24-year-old is in his final year of law school at Duke, which he also attended for undergrad. He’s also a head usher at Cameron Indoor Stadium. He’s been a member of their 80-man volunteer group since the 2022-23 season.
When I told Lynn I was completely foreign to the Cameron Indoor experience, he stopped in his tracks before laying it plain.
“OK, so you’re going to have a baptism by fire tomorrow.”
That began right as doors opened. Duke undergrads flooded the wooden bleachers directly behind me. There’s no getting up and down for a bathroom break or a beverage from the interview room. You’re stuck, and so are the students. But it’s not something they mind.
Sivan Nemirof, a 20-year-old sophomore majoring in computer science at Duke who also happened to be hugging my right shoulder Wednesday night, told me he’s already been to 20-plus home games. In fewer than two years. He didn’t miss one of Duke’s 18 home contests last season, and Wednesday night was his fourth of the 2024-25 camaign.
“We’re loud. We want to be here. We want to win,” Nemirof said. “So we get hyped. And we really make a difference, because they can’t deal with our sound, our pressure, our chants — the whole dirt sheet.”
Bear with me: I promise we’ll circle back to the dirt sheet. But before Nemirof and the rest of the Crazies get their hands on 8.5-by-11 inches of dirt, they often have to camp out. He told me he’s one in a dozen-man group that rotates shifts in Krzyzewskiville, a makeshift tent city named for legendary Duke coach Mike Krzyzewski that pops up outside of Cameron for its biggest games.
Nemirof and his friends had been rotating shifts since Monday for Wednesday’s top-10 matchup. He told me that will be a month-long process for Duke’s game against North Carolina on Feb. 1. He’ll have to give about 10 days of his time for it.
Once the camping ends, each of the Crazies gets a copy of the dirt sheet upon entry. It’s something you’d expect from a bunch of Duke students; double-sided, neatly typed in serif font with a rundown of general chants. The majority of the document is dedicated to that night’s opponent, though.
Wednesday’s edition included notes about how few connections Denver Jones had on LinkedIn. There was a bullet point about Miles Kelly’s posting habits on Instagram. And there were several more items that, frankly, aren’t fit for a newspaper.
The dirt sheet is one of the many tangible details that make a night in Cameron so magical. Another example is the banner-filled rafters, including five that are spotlighted for the program’s national titles, and another for the all-time winningest coach in the history of the sport. The intangibles, however, carry more weight.
You feel like you’re in an environment that’s stuck in time, and the dedication of Duke’s fan base is palpable.
For a Bruce Pearl-led Auburn program that’s all about making history, the Tigers came incredibly close to making more of it at Cameron. What Pearl described as a “B-minus” performance had Auburn within two possessions of a win over another talent-laden blue blood.
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This loss can serve as a building block; a chance for the Tigers to grow further after playing incredible basketball in the early-going. But beyond the result was an incredible fact: This Auburn team became just the second in program history to play at Cameron. It’s something those on the floor can say for the rest of their lives.
They certainly won’t forget it. Nor will those of us on press row, or those in the stands who were in opposing colors. What we beheld in the midst of a defeat was a place that knows the privilege it has. It’s one of the meccas of a tradition-laden college basketball, and there’s a reason it delivers time and time over.
“You come to a place like Duke because you want to be a part of something like this,” Lynn told me. “It’s something that’s very unique to Duke. You can say other places try to replicate it, but the Cameron Crazies and Duke, like that’s a special thing.”
Adam Cole is the Auburn athletics beat writer for the Montgomery Advertiser. He can be reached via email at acole@gannett.com or on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter, @colereporter.
This article originally appeared on Montgomery Advertiser: Covering Auburn basketball at Cameron Indoor Stadium was eye-opening
