Duke-Carolina is almost always a great basketball game. This one, however, was a classic.
The unranked Blue Devils almost lived up to the "national championship contender" billing attributed to them by Tar Heel head coach Dean Smith before the game. But after a series of monstrous momentum swings and unthinkable comebacks, UNC snuck out of Cameron Indoor Stadium with a 102-100 double-overtime victory Thursday night.
"I've never seen anything like that," said Smith, who is in his 34th year as Carolina head coach. "[The] two teams [were] just so competitive and going after it . . . That's the best team we've played [this year] based on that game."
With the win, the Tar Heels improved to 17-1 (7-1 in the Atlantic Coast Conference) and edged into a first-place tie with Maryland in the ACC. The Blue Devils (10-10, 0-8) have now fallen twice by two points to top-five teams this week. Duke lost 74-72 to the fifth-ranked Terps in College Park Saturday.
Entering this contest, UNC looked like the clear favorite. But the second-rankedTar Heels needed two overtimes to dispose of Duke. And even then, the Blue Devils were just one short jump-shot away from a third extra session.
With time winding down, freshman guard Steve Wojciechowski dribbled up court before launching an eight-footer with three ticks left on the clock. But the ball rimmed out, and Greg Newton's put-back effort fell short as time expired.
"I decided to penetrate and nobody came out to help, so I took the shot," Wojciechowski said. "It really did [feel good]. I thought I was going to hit that shot."
But the jumper didn't fall, and the Blue Devils' finished the first half of their ACC season without a conference win. And although Duke was just inches from a 102-102 tie, the Blue Devils relied on a basketball miracle just to get into the second OT.
Duke was down by six with a mere five seconds left in the first overtime. Duke sophomore Jeff Capel narrowed the gap to 95-92 after converting on a drive and the ensuing free throw. He then immediately fouled UNC's Serge Zwikker with four seconds remaining. Zwikker missed the first of his two free throws, and the Tar Heels called timeout.
Duke set up a desperation comeback play in case Zwikker missed his next attempt from the charity stripe. And indeed, the Tar Heel seven-footer could not put the Blue Devils away, as he failed to convert on his second free throw.
Duke center Cherokee Parks dished the rebound to Capel, who dribbled downcourt. As the clock ticked down to its final second, Capel launched a 30-foot trifecta, and with it hung Duke's final gasps of hope.
"I felt it was going in the minute it left his hands," UNC's Jerry Stackhouse, who finished with 25 points on the night, said of Capel's shot.
The jumper swished through the net and sent the Cameron crowd into an uproar: Duke 95, UNC 95.
"In the timeout, [assistant coach Mike] Brey diagrammed the play," Capel said. "He said when they miss the [free throw], we would have Chris [Collins] and Trajan [Langdon] in the corners.
"We thought there would be more pressure. I think they were really concentrating on Trajan and Chris, so I just took the ball across halfcourt and shot it . . . Luckily it went in."
Based on the fans' reactions, Capel had nailed one of the most memorable shots in Duke-UNC history. In his post-game reflections, however, he didn't even consider his game-winning bomb to be the most dramatic of his career.
"I hit one in high school to @ital@win@ital@ the game," he said. "That's what made it more dramatic."
Thanks to Capel's miraculous long-shot, Duke did take UNC to a second overtime. But from the opening tipoff at the beginning of the game, it didn't even look like the Blue Devils had a prayer.
Just three and a half minutes into the game, Carolina was sitting pretty with a 12-2 lead. Duke had tallied more turnovers than points when it burned its first timeout at 16:23 of the first half.
"I don't know what happened in the first five minutes," senior center Erik Meek said. "They just jumped on us. We felt like we had been slapped in the face. [Eventually] we just stepped up and decided to start playing."
The Blue Devils were down by 17 points, 26-9, before they started to rally. Sparked by a Newton dunk with 6:50 left in the half, Duke went on a 12-0 run before finishing the half with a 34-29 deficit.
"Thank goodness we were able to regroup," Duke's acting head coach Pete Gaudet said. "At the 10-minute mark, it started to be a great college basketball game."
Duke staged its first-half comeback despite shooting a woeful 1-of-10 from three-point land. In the second stanza, however, that changed.
Two minutes into the half, Langdon went on one of his characteristic scoring tears for the Blue Devils. He scored nine straight Duke points, including a three-point play followed by two jumpers from behind the stripe, to give the Blue Devils their first lead of the ballgame.
"I think I'm just feeling confident -- a little more comfortable with the other players," Langdon said. "In the first half, I missed two threes, and they were right on line. I came out in the second half and hit the first one. Then my stroke felt really good."
Behind Langdon's clutch shooting and some phenomenal offensive ball movement, the Blue Devils built up a 12-point lead, 68-56, with just under 10 minutes left in regulation. But when UNC sophomore Rasheed Wallace threw down a thunderous dunk off a putback with 9:27 remaining, the momentum pendulum started to swing back the other direction.
"It was a game of big plays," Gaudet said. "And both teams made big plays. It was a college basketball game at the highest level."
Carolina climbed all the way back into it and carried an 81-79 advantage into the final minute of regulation. With about 30 seconds left, the explosive Stackhouse elevated for dunk that would have sealed the game for UNC. But Parks stepped in the way and stuffed Stackhouse's attempt.
"I knew he was going up for the dunk," Parks said of his defensive anticipation.
But Carolina's Dante Calabria came up with a huge offensive rebound and could have won it for UNC with an open short-range jumper. His shot didn't fall, however, and Wallace put Parks on the free-thrown line when he fouled out with 0:19 to go.
The Duke center knotted the game at 81-81 as he drained both shots from the charity stripe. Then UNC's Jeff McInnis missed a 10-foot jumper over Wojciechowski with four seconds left. And after Blue Devil Ricky Price snarled the rebound, his full court heave sailed wide, and the teams headed into OT.
"I hope [the players] are upset thay they lost," Gaudet said of his players. "I told them I was very proud of them tonight, and they couldn't have fought harder. Let's pack our bags quickly and get on to the next game."
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