Art’s Angle: Back-To-Back Final Fours

HOUSTON – Carolina’s appearance here marks the 14th time that one Triangle Area college team has followed another to the Final Four the next year.

Fourteen times among UNC, Duke and N.C. State. Pretty amazing.

It began when Duke played in its third Final Four of the decade in 1966. The next year, Dean Smith’s Tar Heels made the first of three consecutive trips. Here are the other 13 times:

1. Carolina played in the 1977 national championship game, losing a heartbreaker to Marquette and retiring coach Al McGuire. Duke came back in 1978, losing the NCAA title to Kentucky and Jack Goose Givens’ 41 points.
2. Smith’s team finally cut down the nets in New Orleans in 1982, and the next year Jim Valvano’s Cinderella Wolfpack did the same in Albuquerque.
3. Fast forward to 1991, when Duke went to the Final Four for a fourth straight year, and this time Carolina went, too. The Tar Heels lost to Kansas on semifinal Saturday; the Blue Devils won the title by upsetting UNLV and beating the Jayhawks on Monday night.
4. Duke returned for the fifth straight time in 1992, winning its second straight.
5. The 1993 Tar Heels, a veteran team admittedly sick of reading and hearing about Duke, Duke, Duke in the same media market reached the Final Four and won Smith’s second NCAA title in New Orleans.
6. But the Blue Devils went right back in 1994, losing to Arkansas in the old Charlotte Coliseum in the closing minute.
7. Carolina answered back and went to the 1995 Final Four.
8. The Tar Heels went again in 1997 and ’98, losing in the semifinals both years, and Duke followed that in 1999, losing to UConn in the championship game.
9. Bill Guthridge’s third and last UNC team went in 2000.
10. Duke one-upped that in 2001, winning Mike Krzyzewski’s third crown.
11. Duke was back in 2004, losing in the semis to UConn, and in 2005 Roy Williams’ second UNC team beat Illinois to win his first national championship.
12. When Williams won his second in 2009, Duke followed with its fourth in 2010.
13. So, after Duke and Coach K won their fifth in 2015, the Tar Heels are here – the 14th  time the back-to-back thing has happened among local college teams, mostly Duke and Carolina.

Besides great players and teams through the years, what else could be causing this ongoing game of one-upmanship?

“It could be jealousy,” Williams said this week before his team departed for Houston. “I know watching other teams having so much fun at the end of the season gets me all fired up to come back and do it ourselves the next year.”

Back in 1993, UNC senior George Lynch admitted that he spent the previous summer stewing over Duke’s consecutive conquests. And it’s more than just another team, even a conference rival, winning the NCAA title right under your nose. Duke and Carolina share the media, with the newspapers and radio-TV stations covering all of the local programs and following them into the post-season.  When one of the teams loses and is out, the local coverage concentrates  on the team(s) still alive. It causes some players and coaches who have lost to stop paying attention, others to take long weekends away.

The theory was that Smith got his second wind into his 60s due, at least in part, to the consistent success Duke was having. Smith and Carolina took care of that, going to five Final Fours in the 1990s and beating the Blue Devils eight of the last nine head-to-head matches before Smith retired.

And as Duke reloads its roster with another No.1-ranked recruiting class, the Blue Devils will be a favorite to go back-to-back with another local team for a 15th time in 2017.

Maybe one of these days, State will be worthy of one-upping Carolina or Duke.