When it comes to Carolina and Duke, there's more to the Sports Illustrated-dubbed "Unrivaled Rivalry" than what you'll see in the Dean Dome tomorrow.
During the last 15 years, both schools have had tremendous success in men's basketball and as such, their meetings have enjoyed much fanfare and publicity.
And rightly so, I say, for the Battle of the Blues is one of the games that makes college basketball so great. It's part of why I'm here. For when Michael Jordan and the terrible Tar Heels knocked off Georgetown in the 1982 national championship, North Carolina and their lame shade of blue became the enemy. For the rest of the decade, I ached for a team to usurp the Heels' fame and beat the hell out of UNC on a regular basis.
Enter Coach K and Duke. While never a diehard fan of the team, I did find myself rooting for many victorious Blue Devil squads in contests with North Carolina.
After a couple of standardized tests, and an essay citing Dick Vitale as the person who stirred my interest in the athletic/academic balance of the university by screaming about face-painted, 1,400 SAT scorers, I came to Duke, poised to cheer on the Blue Devil men's basketball team against UNC. Little did I know that there was so much more to this rivalry than men's basketball.
This year, the Duke-Carolina game on Feb. 2 was special long before Jeff Capel's overtime heave slipped cleanly through the net. Through the seasons, the Blue Devils and the Tar Heels have also met on the gridiron, the hardwood and the soccer turf. Almost always, fans witness college athletics at its best and most competitive level.
My memories of this season's Duke-Carolina matchups are like books in a Time-Life series: I keep only the one's I want and can cancel at anytime. When graduation takes me in May, my collection will include these games:
UNC football 41, Duke 40: This was simply the most entertaining football game I've ever attended. Duke started well, then fell apart early in the third quarter. A 10-point lead at halftime became a 10-point deficit early in the fourth quarter. Then came the play: Bailey Luetgert blocked a UNC punt and the game was on. Two touchdown drives put Duke on top and the crowd in hysterics.
The Blue Devils couldn't hold on, but the spurt that Duke put up in that short stretch of the fourth quarter after the block was remarkable. Duke football impressed me more with that comeback than it did with its final record. And the ovation for head coach Fred Goldsmith at the men's basketball scrimmage that evening impressed me more than all the clever chants the Crazies came up with during my game days in Cameron.
Duke women's soccer 3, UNC 2: They called it an upset when the Tar Heels lost a women's soccer game for the first time in 103 games. Funny, but the Duke fans that rushed Fetzer Field in Chapel Hill didn't seem upset.
A 1-1 game turned on a goal straight out of the World Cup. A perfect pass from Kari Juncker to a perfectly positioned Katherine Remy gave the Blue Devils a lead they would never relinquish.
UNC bounced back pretty well. It beat Duke in both the ACC tournament final and the NCAA tournament South Regional final. And the Tar Heels won the national championship again, making that nine in a row.
Doesn't matter. We beat 'em.
Duke women's basketball 74, UNC 72: Alison Day sunk a 12-foot jumper as time ran out to snap a 32-game winning streak for then-No. 3 UNC, last year's national champions. North Carolina sprinted away from the Blue Devils last Saturday, showing Duke that it's not yet ready to crack the top of the conference. But Duke's earlier victory moved the team to 15-2 for the year and proved that the program was ready to compete with--and beat--the powers of the ACC on a given night.
Two other sports stick out: Volleyball showed signs of slippage when it fell to UNC in a five-set match at home early in the ACC season to end Duke's 27-match ACC win streak. But the Blue Devils regrouped well enough to return the favor in Chapel Hill on their way to a fourth straight ACC championship.
And men's soccer, injury stricken at seemingly all times this past season, couldn't patch together a defense to stop then No. 2 North Carolina during the teams' regular season meeting, a 4-3 loss. But a late-season roll included a 2-0 victory over the Tar Heels in the first round of the ACC tournament to seal an NCAA bid.
Upsets of national champions, great comebacks, streaks broken and late-game miracles. What matters isn't the game. What matters are the names--Duke and North Carolina. Tune in tomorrow for the next book. Operators are standing by.
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