University of North Carolina Athletics
Jacobs: The Window
March 2, 2012 | Men's Basketball, Featured Writers
March 2, 2012
by Barry Jacobs, TarHeelBlue.com
We're bound to hear it.
Most likely it will come in the glib form of TV patter, filler to accompany the video clips. Or perhaps the cliché purveyors among us will offer it up as sage commentary on North Carolina's Saturday night visit to Cameron Indoor Stadium to finish the regular season.
Whatever form it takes, you can bet someone will pronounce either exactly, or words to the effect that, "When these two ancient rivals meet, the record book can be thrown out the window."
While this sounds good, especially to window replacement companies, the observation isn't as sage as you'd expect.
For instance, if you didn't consult the record book you wouldn't know the Duke-North Carolina finale isn't the perennial fixture we believe it to be. As recently as 1987, at the behest of television the Tar Heels concluded the season with a game against Georgia Tech in Atlanta. The Heels won handily en route to a 32-4 record.
Given the ratings for every modern meeting between UNC and Duke, it's difficult to believe some TV savant thought this arrangement a good idea. But then Nike once thought male basketball players would take to wearing form-fitting unitards too.
North Carolina also capped the 1977 regular season with a divergence from form, facing and beating Louisville in Charlotte. That game likewise was made for TV at a time when only 21 ACC contests were scheduled for over-air broadcast. The '77 matchup with Louisville, an NCAA-caliber team from the Metro Conference, was the only non-league contest involving an ACC member that was televised that year.
Otherwise you must go back to 1954, the ACC's inaugural season, to find the Tar Heels finishing with anyone but Duke. UNC ended that regular season by visiting The Citadel, a former affiliate in the Southern Conference.
Since 1988, when matters got back to a normal footing, the series formula has been unwavering. Well, almost.
Where in '88 the first meeting of the season between Carolina and Duke came on Jan. 21, these days the teams don't butt heads until the first week in February.
This scheduling allows ESPN to market one of the college game's premier attractions beyond the gigantic shadow cast by the NFL. The initial Duke-UNC encounter of the year was shifted to February in 1992, allowing the game to follow the Super Bowl. The timing proved fortuitous, particularly for the Tar Heels, who delivered the first of only two defeats suffered that season by the top-ranked Blue Devils, a 75-73 verdict at Chapel Hill.
Now the routine is well established, with the clashes occurring within a one-month window, with the honor of hosting first alternating sites annually.
Whether there's a predictive element to the results is difficult to say, although there are patterns worth noticing.
Most significantly, since Roy Williams took over the UNC program in 2003-04 all five of the first meetings with Duke that came at the Smith Center were won by the Blue Devils. That includes this year's stunning result on Feb. 8, when freshman guard Austin Rivers' 3-pointer not only confounded the Heels but arguably transformed Duke's previously wobbly prospects.
Come to think of it, neither team has lost since that game.
In years that begin with a contest at Chapel Hill, the second meetings of the Williams era have been won twice by the Heels (2006, 2008) and twice by the Devils (2004, 2006). Note that both of Duke's victories in such circumstance came against UNC squads that were not powerhouses.
North Carolina has won 8 of 17 regular-season games against Duke during Williams' tenure. But, and this bodes well for 2012, the Tar Heels are 6-2 since 2004 in all second meetings with the Blue Devils. (When the series' first encounter is at Cameron, a Williams team has yet to lose a Dean Dome rematch.)
Other factors can of course be parsed as well, from the teams' various rankings to the stakes involved when they meet.
What is clear is that in the quarter-century the rivalry has been played out according to its current form, Duke has won more first meetings (15-10) and Carolina has been more successful in the return engagements (13-11), particularly of late.
There's one more quirk to consider.
For what it's worth, UNC and Duke have captured seven NCAA championships in the modern era. During those triumphal years they split their regular-season series four times -- 1992 and 2001 when the Devils won it all, and 1993 and 2005 when the Heels did. Duke won both meetings before earning titles in 1991 and 2010; Carolina swept the table in 2009.
