About a month ago, Duke was upset by North Carolina in front of a large crowd at the Dean E. Smith Center in Chapel Hill, as the volleyball match led right into “Late Night with Roy,” the Tar Heel basketball program’s annual season curtain-raiser.
This weekend, the Blue Devils hope to give North Carolina a taste of its own medicine.
Duke hosts the Tar Heels Saturday at 7:30 p.m. in Cameron Indoor Stadium immediately following the men’s basketball team’s 3 p.m. game against Radford. In the past years, the two teams have met with students already gone for Thanksgiving break, but head coach Jolene Nagel said she hopes for strong crowd support this weekend.
The Blue Devils first host N.C. State, the worst team in the ACC, Friday night at 7 p.m.
Duke (24-5, 14-3 in the ACC) needs to win both matches to stay in contention for a conference title, though the odds of reaching the ACC summit at this point in the season are slim. The Blue Devils trail Florida State by two games in the standings with just three to play.
Unforunately for Nagel’s squad, the Seminoles own the head-to-head tiebreaker, though, having beaten Duke twice this year. The Blue Devils would have to win out and have Florida State lose all three of its remaining contests to earn the conference title.
The Blue Devils’ defeat in Chapel Hill is one of the reasons the Blue Devils fell off the pace the Seminoles have set all year. The Tar Heels (15-13, 11-6) are fifth in the conference and have no chance of winning the ACC, but have registered some quality wins thus far. The Wolfpack (7-25, 0-17), on the other hand, have had a miserable year, and Duke swept N.C. State Oct. 17.
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