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Friedlander: It’s fitting that in the final year of the ACC as we know it, UNC and Duke will play for the title
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CHAPEL HILL, NC – It might seem as though the ACC’s regular-season basketball championship always comes down to the traditional final showdown between North Carolina and Duke.
But it doesn’t, really.
It’s only happened 15 times in the league’s previous 70 seasons. In fact, it’s been 11 years since the rivals last met with the title on the line.
The Tar Heels won that 2012 game and clinched the outright championship with an 88-70 victory at Cameron Indoor Stadium behind a 20-point performance by point guard Kendall Marshall.
A UNC win on Saturday, also in hostile territory, would produce the same result. Only this time, the Blue Devils need the victory to earn a share of the crown.
But that’s not the only reason this latest renewal of the nation’s best rivalry holds so much significance.
Because of the addition of 3 new members – including 2 located in California – and a conference tournament that will exclude the bottom 3 teams from participating, the league will look and feel a lot different starting next year.
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With so much change coming, it’s only fitting that the last regular-season basketball championship contested in the ACC as we now know it will be decided by a game between its 2 signature programs.
“As long as it’s fitting that we’re in there, that’s the main thing,” Duke coach Jon Scheyer said with a chuckle. “It’s an interesting time. The fact that they’ve done well and we’ve done well is why this game is as significant as it is.
“I don’t know what to expect going forward. But I know the ACC … I want to keep doing this at a high level.”
Scheyer’s 9th-ranked Blue Devils and Hubert Davis’ No. 7 Tar Heels have been the top 2 teams in the league for nearly the entire season. And both come into Saturday’s game seemingly playing their best.
Duke is 8-1 since a 93-84 loss to UNC in Chapel Hill on Feb. 3, with the only blemish being a well-played 4-point setback at Wake Forest. Its 3 most recent victories – against Louisville, Virginia and NC State – have come by an average margin of 22 points.
The Tar Heels, meanwhile, have awakened from a midseason lull that saw them go just 2-3 in a 5-game late-January early-February stretch to win their past 5. At 16-3 in the conference, they have a 1-game lead on their rival.
Their late-season surges haven’t just put the teams on a collision course for the regular season championship and the top seed in the ACC Tournament next week in Washington DC. They’ve also put the winner into position to possibly grab a No. 1 seed in the NCAA Tournament beyond that.
Those stakes have the players as juiced for the showdown as the fans of their respective teams.
But then, that’s the case whenever these teams meet. Even on those occasions when they’re not both ranked among the nation’s top 10.
“It’s going to be a highly anticipated, energy type of game,” said the Tar Heels’ RJ Davis, the frontrunner for the ACC’s Player of the Year award. “We’re having UNC and Duke kind of seasons. I’m expecting a big-time game and a big-time matchup. I don’t expect the energy to be any different, because it’s always going to be up there.”
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That’s especially the case when the game is at Cameron with its Crazies right on top of the court and the heat in the building turned up, literally.
That environment won’t be foreign to the Tar Heels, of course. Even some of those in their first season with the program. Cormac Ryan and Jae’Lyn Withers both played at Cameron during their previous stops at Notre Dame and Louisville.
The only members of UNC’s regular rotation who haven’t been through the Cameron experience are Stanford transfer Harrison Ingram and freshman Elliott Cadeau. Ingram has at least been into the arena. But only to watch his sister Lauren, a freshman on the Duke volleyball team, play.
“It’s a place you can’t really replicate until you play there,” he said. “It’s going to be loud, it’s going to be fun. It’s going to be an experience I’ll never forget.”
Having a short memory, however, is an asset in this rivalry.
That’s because the venues in which they’re played are so different. And the circumstances between the 2 games, though usually only a month apart, bring about a different urgency.
Especially for the team that loses the first meeting.
There’s no better example than in 2022, when after losing by 20 in Chapel Hill, UNC returned the favor by winning at Duke to spoil retiring coach Mike Krzyzewski’s festive home farewell.
“I don’t know if we had any business winning that game, honestly,” Tar Heels center Armando Bacot said with a laugh.
That’s how it is with this rivalry. It’s been that way for a long time. And it will continue to be, even as the ACC closes 1 chapter and prepares to begin another.
“You talk about the ACC as we all know it. But not me,” Hubert Davis said. “I remember when it was 8 teams and everybody was playing each other twice and you didn’t have to get on an airplane. It’s a little bit different. Regardless of Stanford, Cal and SMU joining the conference next year, the ACC will always be the ACC.”
Just as UNC-Duke will always be UNC-Duke. Even when there’s not a championship on the line.
RELATED: On March 11, 2024, North Carolina online sports betting will launch, thus allowing legal sports gamblers in the Tar Heel State the chance to place online wagers on the ACC Tournament, NCAA Tournament and more.
Award-winning columnist Brett Friedlander has covered the ACC and college basketball since the 1980s.
