It is one of those Sundays in the contiguous counties of Orange and Durham, where both Carolina and Duke alumni and fans live and root hard.
For 60-plus years, both of those fan bases have woken up with hangovers either from the frills of victory or the agonies of defeat.
This year it is Duke’s turn as the Blue Devils are celebrating an ACC championship under a rookie head coach and Tar Heels are wondering what happened to their second-year man after a magical month of March in 2022.
Just a few look backs.
In 1960, Duke had a rookie head coach named Vic Bubas, hired away from Everett Case at N.C. State to challenge Frank McGuire’s juggernaut at UNC. At 33, Bubas won his first ACC title, stunning the Tar Heels who had drubbed the Blue Devils twice during the regular season by a combined 52 points.
Bubas won three more ACC tournaments and advanced to Final Fours in each year but never winning the national championship. Carolina’s young and beleaguered Dean Smith dethroned Duke in 1967, the first of three straight ACC titles and Final Fours (also failing to cut down the nets).
Fast forward to 1978 and ’79 when Duke won its first of two ACC crowns under Bill Foster who temporarily took the spotlight away from UNC with a Final Four of his own in 1978 before the infamous Black Sunday of 1979 when both schools lost NCAA second-round games on State’s home court and rival fan bases had a rare chance to commiserate together.
Then came the Smith-Coach K era over 17 years that will never be matched. The rivals won two dozen ACC titles and four national championships, their fan bases having sunny and sad mornings along the way.
Smith and Krzyzewski retired 25 years apart, each with the most wins in college basketball at the time. While both coaching, Smith won more ACC regular seasons and tournament titles. Each won two national championships. Coach K, of course, was in his second rebuild and won three more NCAA titles. Roy Williams, Smith’s long-term successor, also won three.
Now we are in the Jon Scheyer-Hubert Davis era, and the graph looks like the stock market on any given day. With the head coach-designate title, Scheyer was by his mentor’s side for the last season that ended with two historic losses to Carolina’s rookie head coach Davis, whose team beat Duke in the first Final Four match-up between the Blue Bloods and lost in the championship game to Kansas.
Hubert Davis shouts and grabs his sweater during UNC men’s basketball’s ACC Tournament quarterfinal game against Virginia. (Photo via Todd Melet.)
This season has been a roller-coaster for both coaches and programs, but Scheyer matched Bubas (and Bill Guthridge, Smith’s short-term successor) by winning the ACC tournament on his first try.
Heading into March Madness, Duke has left Carolina behind after Scheyer’s fabulous final month of the regular season with nine consecutive wins, culminating with Saturday night’s victory over Virginia in Greensboro.
The Tar Heels will miss the Big Dance for the first time since 2010 after a severe reverse of a year ago by going 5-7 in February and March. Davis’ popularity has tanked after being crowned the perfect choice to succeed Williams in 2021.
When Krzyzewski announced that he would be retiring after one more season and had chosen the 33-year-old Scheyer as his successor, he said, “Jon in the smartest guy in coaching.” Not the smartest YOUNG guy in coaching or the smartest guy HE KNOWS in coaching. “The smartest guy.” Period.
Plagued by injuries to two of their best three freshman recruits, the Blue Devils started unevenly and were blown out at N.C. State on January 4 to stand 11-4 and fall out of the rankings for two months. When frosh Derrick Lively II and Dariq Whitehead, the top two players in their recruiting class, recovered and returned, Scheyer had his healthy team together and the improvement was remarkable.
Who knows what will happen in the NCAA tournament, but Duke is playing as well as any team in the country with the best big men they have had in years and an offensive scheme that opens lanes for slashing veteran Jeremy Roach and open looks for 18-year-old freshman Tyrese Proctor. The best player on the team is 7-foot freshman Kyle Filipowski, an inside-outside scorer and leading rebounder.
The experience factor Carolina was supposed to have over Duke (and most of teams in the country as the preseason No. 1 pick) has been almost a complete bust. Preseason ACC Player of the Year Armando Bacot had a good year but not the great year he had in 2021-22. Well-prepared double-teams on Bacot and subpar shooting by guard Caleb Love and nagging injuries to his junior running mate R.J. Davis have resulted in diminished statistics for just about everyone.
Hubert Davis has caught the brunt of the criticism, tagged as unprepared for what he knew would be ramped up defenses and unwilling to use a highly recruited bench when some of the regulars faltered. The worst of the social media zealots are already calling for his removal, which will never happen to any UNC coach after two years and certainly not the strong choice of Hall of Famer Williams.
The one valid difference between Davis and Scheyer is their backgrounds and what they did to prepare for the privilege to take over the greatest rivalry in college basketball, neither perhaps expecting to get the call as soon as they did.
Davis was an all-around high school athlete who proved to Smith and Guthridge he was worthy of a scholarship to Carolina. He was All-ACC as a senior and one of the best 3-point shooters in his 12 NBA seasons. He was a TV star for ESPN, where he watched so many coaches and games that he could not have possibly settled on his own game plan from any one of them. When he became Williams’ assistant for nine years, he loved his job at his beloved alma mater – the sharing of his own story with recruits and helping the in-command head coach wherever he could.
While he has since said he always wanted to be a head coach at Carolina, the job offer was still somewhat surprising to him. Over eight years, plus four playing for Krzyzewski that included the 2010 national championship as their All-ACC point guard, Scheyer moved up in the Duke coaching hierarchy as assistants left and he got more public responsibility as Coach K began to age out. Scheyer clearly was critiquing his boss for what he would do or wouldn’t do if he ever got a head job, there or elsewhere.
Whether he is “the smartest guy in coaching” remains to be seen, Scheyer has jumped ahead of Davis in perception, at least. With Duke having won only a single national championship in its 12 years of one-and-dones, and another loaded 5-star class coming next year, we will see if his first NCAA tournament resume stacks up to Hubert’s and watch how his own sophomore season plays out.
Featured photo via AP Photo/Jacob Kupferman.
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No mention of one of the most important aspects of coaching: RECRUITING. And no mention of the seasons two contests between the schools has me thinking that Art has: already “aged out”. Reading his column to find out what’s going on in RTP sports is similar to watching Fox “News” to learn what’s happening in the country. Art can’t handle the truth
Thanks, Kevin, the column was about the coaches of the rivalry and how local fans take it the hardest because we live with it every day. And at the end of the season, who wakes up with a worse hangover. Duke had the best recruits, Carolina the returning experience. What truth can I supposedly not handle?