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Senior Day `94 basketball supplement
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Blue Devils pull upset with ACC regular season title**
On Wednesday night, the men's basketball team scored the biggest upset of the 1993-94 Atlantic Coast Conference season.
No, not the 73-69 win at Maryland. Duke's big coup came a full hour after the Blue Devils had dispatched the Terps, showered and boarded the team bus. The victory came when the uniforms and shoes had long since been packed away.
It came when North Carolina fell to Wake Forest, 68-61. Suddenly, the ACC regular season race was over. Duke had won.
The defending national champion Tar Heels were supposed to dance all over the rest of the conference this year. It would be their triumphant encore performance, a chance to make a run at the nation just as Duke's 1992 title winners had. All of college basketball would crumble at Carolina's feet. They would be invincible.
Instead, the Tar Heels will have to settle for second best. Or maybe even third.
Nothing really worked out as UNC had planned. Carolina didn't expect its Final Four MVP, sharpshooter Donald Williams, to spend half of the season on the injured list. It did not expect a second-team All-ACC performance from center Eric Montross, who might be the least-deserving Naismith Player of the Year nominee in the award's history. And the baby blue faithful probably thought that UNC's talented freshman class would more than compensate for last year's loss of power forward George Lynch. The newcomers have been impressive, but ask head coach Dean Smith how much he misses Lynch right now.
North Carolina's five conference losses have come against inferior teams -- Virginia, Clemson, Wake Forest, and Georgia Tech. In fact, the schizophrenic Yellow Jackets from Georgia Tech swept a pair from UNC.
In the ACC, every team can expect to fall victim to a couple of upsets over the course of a season. Maybe even three.
But UNC has five.
Consequently, the Tar Heels enter Cameron Indoor Stadium tomorrow playing for nothing but pride. That is what Duke-Carolina is all about, anyway. But for two hours Saturday afternoon, they'll have to stare down the sideline at a bench full of Blue Devils who simply got the job done this year.
Back in November, head coach Mike Krzyzewski told anyone who would listen how much he loved this team. He often repeated it for emphasis. He meant it.
Then Krzyzewski proved it by turning in the best coaching job of his career. He took a young, inexperienced Blue Devil team and brought it carefully through the season. He expected Duke to improve with every game it played. On the few occasions when it didn't, Krzyzewski said the right things, made the correct adjustments and ran the proper practice drills. He gave the Blue Devils every chance to win and they almost always did.
But Krzyzewski would probably give credit to his players, and they certainly deserve it -- none more than the three seniors who will play their last game in Cameron tomorrow night. Antonio Lang and Marty Clark have had their best seasons in Duke uniforms, and their careers have been as successful as any in school history. As captains, they've lead by example.
But even Lang and Clark know that Grant Hill is the true leader of this squad. He, too, is having his best year in blue and white. For obvious reasons, his jersey number is headed to the rafters after the season.
For the three seniors, Saturday is a chance to cap an amazing season -- some might even call it "special" -- as well as a phenomenal career.
No current North Carolina player has ever won a game in Cameron. On their day, the Blue Devil captains are gunning to keep it that way.
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