The sold-out Dean Smith Center was feeling good about its chances when the buzzer sounded for tip-off between Duke and Carolina Saturday night.

About five minutes later, the mood was very, very bleak.

A red-hot shooting start from the Blue Devils and early foul trouble on junior forward Armando Bacot snowballed into a 31-8 hole for the Tar Heels midway through the first half. Carolina attempted to rally, cutting the deficit down to 11 points at halftime, but the mountain was too steep to climb, and Duke walked away with a dominant 87-67 win in head coach Mike Krzyzewki’s last visit to the Smith Center.

“We got punched in the mouth, right from the tip,” said senior wing Leaky Black. “We came out, I guess we thought it was gonna be easy, I’m not sure. But we got punched in the mouth, and that’s just what it was.”

After Carolina fans dreamed of a comeback to begin the second half, Duke freshman wing A.J. Griffin quickly snuffed that out with 10 straight points to begin the period. He would finish with a career-high 27 on 11-17 shooting, including three three-pointers and a thunderous dunk over graduate forward Brady Manek.

“He was making a lot of tough shots,” Manek said. “He was hitting threes, getting there in the paint, and he was making some tough ones. Contested, off-balance. That’s all you can really ask for, is to put a hand up, and do the best you can. He played really well today, and we’ve just gotta focus more on that and try to get stops.”

UNC had no answer for Griffin on offense. After playing well in both games against Duke in 2021, sophomore guard Caleb Love struggled mightily in the first game of the 2022 series, scoring just eight points on 3-10 shooting and committing four turnovers. Manek was Carolina’s lone bright spot, scoring 21 points and hitting six of 10 three-point attempts. Outside of Manek, Carolina shot just 3-12 from outside. Inside didn’t prove to be any easier; the Tar Heels made only 15 of 47 two-point attempts (31.9 percent). The Blue Devils shot a much rosier 57.6 percent from the field.

Griffin took up the scoring mantle for Duke on a night when projected NBA lottery pick Paolo Banchero was relatively quiet, scoring 13 points on 5-14 shooting. But it was Carolina’s defense on Banchero which created controversy early. Rather than match up Black with Banchero, head coach Hubert Davis chose to put the bigger Bacot on him. Bacot quickly committed two fouls, and had to sit for a large majority of the first half as Duke built its insurmountable lead.

“We didn’t feel like we had a really good matchup in terms of defending [Banchero],” Davis said. “One of the things that I was thinking about was with Armando’s size, it would limit him to… the perimeter, as opposed to posting up.”

It’s safe to say Davis’ plan backfired spectacularly.

UNC sorely missed the presence of sophomore forward Dawson Garcia, whose six-foot, eleven-inch frame would’ve been an invaluable defensive and rebounding asset against the bigger Blue Devils (Duke won the rebounding battle, 40-24). But with Garcia still away from the team and no timetable for his return, Carolina is left staring down a rematch in a month’s time in Krzyzewski’s last home game.

To put it lightly, it’s a scary thought for Tar Heel fans.

Even scarier? The thought of UNC missing out on this year’s NCAA Tournament. Carolina is now 0-7 in Quad 1 games this season, with many of those losses being blowouts akin to Saturday night. Three Quad 1 opportunities remain for the Tar Heels, but all come on the road. First up is the team’s very next game: a road trip to Clemson Tuesday night. The Tigers’ Littlejohn Coliseum has not always been the friendliest environment for UNC, but if the team hopes to see its season continue into March, failure is not an option.

“One of the things that I told them after the game… I said that they’re left with two choices,” Davis said. “One of the choices is to stay down and whine and complain and point fingers and not get back up. The other choice is get back up and start working and competing and fighting back.”

 

Featured image via Todd Melet. For a photo gallery of the game, click here.

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