Recent losses by Duke and UNC makes game even more important to each team
Neither the Blue Devils or the Tar Heels can afford a loss to their rival on Thursday
•
3 min read
This much is always a guarantee: The two Duke-North Carolina games will always be the most hyped matchups each college basketball season.
Get annoyed by it if you want. But frankly, the hype is warranted. You have two Hall of Fame coaches who've been there forever. They play at arenas that are only 11 miles apart but are complete opposites -- the Dean Dome being the cavernous NBA-style arena while Cameron Indoor Stadium is the quaint little gym. The teams always have the star power, whether it's with four-year players we've grown to love (or hate) or one-and-dones who'll soon be in the NBA. You could have made a case that Kentucky vs. Louisville had, at points during the past decade, challenged the Duke-North Carolina rivalry as the nation's best. No more. With Louisville's FBI- and NCAA-related demise, that's no longer even a discussion. Duke-North Carolina is the best rivalry in college basketball. Period.
Yet Thursday's game at the Dean Dome (8 p.m. ET, ESPN) has a slightly different flavor to it than other Duke-North Carolina games of recent years. Both teams have had bizarre, inconsistent, up-and-down seasons. UNC (17-7, 6-5 ACC) is currently ranked 21st in the AP Top 25 Poll; a loss to the Blue Devils would likely cause the defending champions to fall out of the rankings. Duke (19-4, 7-3) is currently ranked No. 9 and a loss to North Carolina would send Duke fans into a tailspin, especially after last weekend's "disgusting" (Coach K's words, not mine) loss to St. John's.
More than just about any Duke-North Carolina game in recent memory, Thursday's matchup has a distinct flavor of desperation to it for both teams.
This is, of course, overstating things a bit. Duke's issues this season (mostly with its four freshman starters struggling on defense) and North Carolina's issues this season (mostly with its inability to consistently get to the rim on offense due to a lack of size) are first-world problems. Ninety-eight percent of college basketball fan bases would kill to be afflicted with these teams' problems. Duke should still be considered a national title contender, but only if it can figure out how to play team defense. And while I don't believe North Carolina has the talent to make the Final Four, I've been wrong about Roy Williams teams each of the past two years – and they have an elite senior point guard in Joel Berry. You know what they say about talented, experienced point guards in March.
I did a bit of research into the recent history of this rivalry. Over the past 30 Duke-UNC matchups, North Carolina has only been ranked lower than 21st in the AP Top 25 in six of those rivalry games; the most recent was on Feb. 20, 2014, when UNC was ranked 26th while Duke was ranked 5th. In those six games, UNC went 1-5.
Duke has been ranked lower than 9th in only eight of those 30 most recently rivalry games; in each of those games, North Carolina was ranked in the top 10. Duke has a 4-4 record in those games.
We're not exactly in uncharted territory here. But we're close to it. If Thursday's game were No. 1 North Carolina versus No. 2 Duke, the hype train would be in overdrive. But I'd argue that a game like this, where both teams have been through pretty serious struggles during the season, is much more important.
North Carolina lost to Wofford (at home!) and is sitting at a pedestrian 6-5 in ACC play. Duke had eye-opening road losses to Boston College, St. John's and North Carolina State (though I'd argue the loss to North Carolina State isn't anywhere close to a bad loss). The bigger concern for Duke isn't those losses, it's the underlying defensive metrics on this team. Despite having three five-star big men in Marvin Bagley III, Wendell Carter and Marques Bolden – guys who should all be elite defenders – Duke's defensive efficiency ranks 72nd in the nation.
Duke is sitting at a No. 2 seed in Jerry Palm's latest mock bracket; UNC is sitting at a No. 6 seed.
So I know we'd rather this be a titanic matchup between top-ranked teams. The hype train would rather have that too. But what we have instead is something even more intriguing: For North Carolina, a loss could knock the defending champions out of the Top 25 for the first time all season. And for Duke, a loss could mean a serious recalibration of what we think the ceiling is for the most talented team in the country.
And I'd take that whiff of desperation in my sporting events any day.
