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BOSTON — Jay Wright has known Gerald Henderson for a long time, certainly long enough to know the kid could have been playing for Villanova tonight in the NCAA tournament rather than suiting up for Duke against his Wildcats.

Wright recalled Wednesday that Henderson's dad, the NBA player of the same name, brought his little kid to meet the coach way back when.

"(He) was 9 or 10 years old," Wright said of young Gerald. "And (the dad) introduced him to me, 'This is my son. He's going to play for you some day.'

"I was at Hofstra. Little did I know I would be back at Villanova and recruiting him. He went to the same school my children went to, an Episcopal academy, kindergarten through 12, all at the same school. When he was in ninth grade, I said, 'He's going to be special.' "

Clearly, the younger Henderson has become just that, and he's one of the key Blue Devils as Mike Krzyzewski's team looks to advance to Saturday's East Regional final against the Pittsburgh-Xavier survivor.

It could have been Villanova for Henderson.

"In the end, Duke just ended up being the right situation for me," he said Wednesday. "Villanova is a great place. I grew up around there. I have cousins and my sister is a Villanova alum. I have a lot of friends that go there, even on the team now.

"Coach Wright is great in recruiting and has always been good to my family. And Duke just ended up being the right place."

Asked why Duke was the right place, Henderson said, "Coach Krzyzewski and his vision for me as a player was something that was really intriguing to me. And Duke overall and as a school just locked it for me."

Tonight, Henderson gets to play in Boston, where his dad won two championships (1981 and '84) with the Celtics, in the old Boston Garden right next door.

"They took the banners down," Henderson said, noting the NCAA removes any and all reminders of the teams that are usually housed in the buildings where the tournament is played. "They took them down. It's pretty nice to be playing in Boston. It's pretty cool to be playing in the same place as him. I'm sure he'll have fun coming back here and, hopefully, watching me having some of the same success that he had."

Villanova (28-7), one of five Big East teams still in the NCAA field, could have something to say about that. In the Wildcats, the Blue Devils are getting a team that can be called a mirror image of themselves.

"I think we're similar in a lot of respects," Krzyzewski said. "I think the very first thing is we don't have players who are positioned. We have basketball players. You're not going to call (Villanova's Dante) Cunningham a center, but you call him a really good player. (Scottie) Reynolds, he can play with the ball or off the ball. And (Dwayne) Anderson ... we're very similar in the regard."

It's that type of thing that allowed Krzyzewski to switch Jon Scheyer to the point of the Duke attack after the Blue Devils lost at Boston College on Feb. 15. The Devils had lost four of their last six games at that point, but are 10-1 since, defeating Binghamton and Texas in the first two games of the NCAA tournament in Greensboro.

Villanova, a No. 3 seed, defeated American and UCLA in its hometown of Philadelphia.

"They have really good experience," Kyzyzewski said of the Wildcats. "They're probably a little bit deeper offensively than we are, because when they have (Corey) Fisher and (Corey) Stokes off the bench, it raises their offensive abilities."

Krzyzewski says his team is "healthy" and "excited to be here," adding, "We have great kids. They've really done a good job for us these last couple of weeks. We're playing our best basketball of the season. We're excited to get going."