Blue Devils, Tar Heels head into first meeting amid grueling stetch

To be the best, you have to beat the best.

The saying may be old, but for defending national champion Duke and ACC leader North Carolina, it holds true as both teams are in the midst of their toughest stretches of the season.

Facing a four-game stretch against ranked opponents, the No. 20 Blue Devils have responded to the lessons taken from a span of four losses in five games earlier in the year, bouncing back with a 72-65 win against then-No. 13 Louisville and a thrilling 63-62 victory against No. 7 Virginia last week. The path does not get much easier, though, as Duke heads back on the road to face the No. 5 Tar Heels Wednesday before traveling to Louisville for a rematch with the Cardinals.

“We’ve been in a lot of close games, a lot of fights that have come down to the last few possessions. We’ve been on the losing end of some, and thankfully now on the winning end of some,” sophomore Grayson Allen said. “For us as a team, I think we’re really coming together.”

Although the Blue Devils seem to have found their identity during their four-game winning streak, it remains to be seen how North Carolina will fare as the stakes are raised. The Tar Heels play three games in the next seven days, with four of their final six conference games coming against ranked opponents.

Despite racing out to a 10-2 start in the ACC, North Carolina has only played one ranked opponent ACC play, and faltered on the road at then-No. 19 Louisville Feb. 1. By taking advantage of their front-loaded schedule, the Tar Heels have built confidence as a team and developed a style of play they are comfortable with on both ends of the floor. But after the first Tobacco Road rivalry game of the year, North Carolina has its hands full with No. 11 Miami and No. 7 Virginia—the two league contenders right below the Tar Heels in the ACC standings—waiting in the wings.

“We had some fortunate games for us early and now we’ve got the teams in the top half of the league in almost all our games down the stretch,” North Carolina head coach Roy Williams said during the ACC’s weekly teleconference Monday. “We don’t feel the pressure of being on the top of the league because we realize it’s an 18-game schedule. We’re trying to be the best team we can be every day on game day.”

Two things the Tar Heels do have working for them as the schedule strengthens are experience and depth. Unlike the Blue Devils—who have just six healthy players averaging more than eight minutes per game—North Carolina boasts a roster with nine players above that mark. Perhaps even more significant is the disparity in experience. Duke relies on three freshmen—Brandon Ingram, Derryck Thornton and Luke Kennard—for heavy minutes, but all nine Tar Heels rotation players took the court a year ago against the Blue Devils.

Despite its youth, Duke made just enough winning plays in its last two games to emerge with victories. Now 25 games into the season, a once-fragile team has moved away from talking about what it does not have and instead is focusing on what it does. Although they may still be without senior Amile Jefferson, the Blue Devils sport one of the top offenses in the nation, scoring nearly 84 points per game. 

“As we’ve gone further and further in conference [play], our guys have been thinking about what we have to do and making spontaneous corrections, instant corrections, on the floor, instead of waiting until halftime or end of game,” Duke head coach Mike Krzyzewski said on a teleconference Monday.

And that ability to adjust is exactly what Duke has working for itself come Wednesday night.

Even though it enters with the better record, North Carolina—by Williams’ own admission—has not played up to its capabilities of late. Although the team got back on track Sunday with a 21-point win against Pittsburgh, the Tar Heels narrowly escaped on the road against Boston College—which remains winless in the ACC—the game before, and dropped road contests against Louisville and Notre Dame during the first week of February.

But the same cannot be said about the Blue Devils.

Duke enters the first meeting between the teams playing its best basketball of the season, with the tandem of Brandon Ingram and Grayson Allen combining to score 45.3 percent of the team’s points. With the improved play of Thornton along with flashes from Kennard, Matt Jones and Marshall Plumlee, the Blue Devils enter Wednesday feeling as good as they have all season.

“The momentum began against N.C. State,” Jones said. “I feel like the games up to that point had been learning experiences, and then against N.C. State we put a couple of things together. To be able to pull those games out with the toughness and togetherness that we’ve had shows a lot of poise on our part.”

With a win Wednesday, the Blue Devils’ train of momentum could continue to chug on toward the ACC tournament. But things will not come easy against a veteran Tar Heel squad looking to build up steam of its own.