UNC will host rival Duke at Kenan Stadium Saturday afternoon in the Tar Heels’ final home game of the regular season. The Blue Devils have possession of the Victory Bell trophy after defeating Carolina in comeback fashion in Durham last season. It was Duke’s first win against UNC since 2018.
This year, Duke enters the rivalry matchup with a 5-5 overall record and a 4-2 mark in ACC play. The Blue Devils are mired in a two-game losing streak, having lost to UConn on the road and Virginia at home.
Here’s more on Duke:
Head coach: Manny Diaz is no stranger to the ACC, nor to the Tar Heels. Diaz played at Florida State and spent several years as an assistant both at his alma mater and at NC State in the late 1990s and early 2000s. Diaz returned to the ACC when he was named defensive coordinator at Miami in 2016. Three years later, he became the Hurricanes’ head coach. Diaz struggled against UNC during his tenure, losing all three meetings with the Tar Heels between 2019 and 2021. After leaving Miami for another defensive coordinator job at Penn State, Diaz came back to the ACC again when Duke hired him in 2024. He flipped the script against Carolina in his first season in Durham, beating the Tar Heels 21-20.
Manny Diaz is in his second season as Duke’s head coach. (Image via Associated Press/Scott Kinser)
For whom the Bell tolls: For those who don’t know, the “Victory Bell” trophy given to the winner of the Duke-UNC game is an actual, functioning bell taken from the Southern Railway. The bell’s pedestal is always painted in the colors of the winner, though this can get out of hand during particularly raucous celebrations. After UNC beat Duke in Durham in 2014 to take the bell back from the Blue Devils, the Tar Heels got a bit overzealous in spray-painting the trophy and damaged the visiting locker room at Duke’s Wallace Wade Stadium. The UNC athletic department paid the repair fees.
Opposites attract: For as close as Duke and UNC are geographically, the two teams couldn’t be more different in football terms. While Carolina has relied on its defense to bail out a moribund offense, the Blue Devils have the opposite problem. Its offense, led by Tulane transfer Darian Mensah at quarterback, is one of the most dynamic in the ACC and averages more than 400 yards per game. Duke has scored at least 34 points in six of its 10 games – a watermark UNC has hit only once… against an FCS team. Unfortunately for the Blue Devils, their defense has failed to live up to expectations. Duke ranks 117th out of 134 FBS teams in total defense. Only six teams from the “Power 4” conferences are worse. The Blue Devils have allowed opponents to score at least 33 points six times, including in each of their last three outings. Given Diaz’s history as a talented defensive mind, these numbers are all the more shocking.
Scoreboard! One of the most memorable moments in the history of the Duke-UNC football rivalry came in 1989, when head coach Steve Spurrier led his Blue Devils into Kenan Stadium with a chance to clinch a share of the ACC championship. The Tar Heels were a truly terrible team that year, Mack Brown’s second as head coach. UNC had won its opening game against VMI and promptly lost its next nine in a row, with four of those losses coming by more than 30 points. Duke dealt Carolina another blowout loss in the season finale, destroying the Tar Heels 41-0. In the postgame celebration, Spurrier’s team took a picture by the Kenan Stadium scoreboard, still lit with the final score. UNC clearly felt the slight personally, as it wouldn’t lose to Duke again until 2003. Brown, who had left for Texas by that time, wouldn’t lose to Duke again until 2024.
Duke poses by the Kenan Stadium scoreboard after a 41-0 win against UNC in 1989. (Image via Duke Athletics)
Billy’s first words: Perhaps the most quotable moment of Bill Belichick’s introductory press conference back in December was when he referenced a family story from when he was a toddler. In those days, Belichick’s father Stephen was an assistant coach at UNC under head coach George T. Barclay. Bill Belichick claimed his first words to his parents were: “Beat Duke.” Unfortunately for the Belichicks, the Tar Heels weren’t able to do that during Stephen’s three-year stint in Chapel Hill, losing all three meetings. Duke won 35-20 in 1953, 47-12 in 1954 and 6-0 in 1955. Barn burners, all.
What are the odds? At the time of publication, Duke is a 6.5-point favorite in the game.
Featured image via Associated Press/Scott Kinser
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