Carolina–Duke rivalry


The Carolina-Duke rivalry, referred to as The 'Battle of the Blues' by some fans and sports commentators,refers to the sports rivalry between the Duke University Blue Devils and the University of North Carolina Tar Heels, particularly in the sport of basketball. It is considered one of the most intense rivalries in all of US-sports; a poll conducted by ESPN in 2000 ranked the basketball rivalry as the third greatest North American sports rivalry, and Sports Illustrated on Campus named it the #1 "Hottest Rivalry" in college basketball and the #2 rivalry overall in its November 18, 2003 issue. The intensity of the rivalry is augmented for many reasons. One reason is the proximity of the two universities—they are located only ten miles apart along U.S. Highway 15–501 or eight miles apart in straight-line distance. In addition, Duke is a private university whereas Carolina is a public school; the vastly different funding structures and cultures between the two further contribute to the intensity of the rivalry. One of the biggest reasons for this rivalry lies in the success of their respective basketball programs; almost every year, at least one of the schools is a contender to win the national championship.
North Carolina leads the rivalry 145–120.

Men's basketball

Duke and Carolina played their first basketball game on January 24, 1920. The two teams have met at least twice a year since then. The games frequently determine the Atlantic Coast Conference champion; since the ACC's founding in 1953, Duke and Carolina have combined to win or share 49 ACC regular season titles and 38 tournament titles, including 15 of 16 from 1996 to 2011. The final game of the regular season for both schools alternates between Chapel Hill and Durham and has been played in Cameron Indoor Stadium since 1940 and the Dean E. Smith Center since 1986.
The Carolina–Duke rivalry is all the more intense because the two schools have consistently been among the nation's elite men's basketball teams for most of the last 40 years. Both schools are also two of the most victorious programs in NCAA men's basketball history; Carolina is third on the list of all-time winningest programs in Division I history, while Duke is fourth. Carolina has won six NCAA championships and appeared in a record 21 Final Fours,while Duke has won five NCAA championships and has appeared in sixteen Final Fours.
Additionally, Carolina was also retroactively awarded a national championship by the Helms Athletic Foundation in 1942 for their undefeated 1924 season.
Combining for eleven national championships over the last 36 years, Duke and Carolina have captured 28% of the national championships, or greater than one every four years. Over the past 18 years, one of the two teams has been the AP pre-season #1 ranked team in the country 8 times. Since 1977–78, Duke or Carolina has been in the pre-season top three 28 times. Over the entirety of the AP poll, the teams have been in the pre-season top four 69% of the time. Over this same period, one has been pre-season #1 18 times, making it an almost 3 in 10 chance that Duke or North Carolina starts the year at #1 in the last 50+ years. One of the two teams has peaked at AP #1 in 32 separate seasons since 1977, a 7 in 10 chance that Duke or Carolina peaked as the top-ranked team in the country at some point in the season since 1977.

History

Though the two schools have always had the great emotion born of familiarity and proximity, some of the earliest roots of the modern basketball rivalry occurred in the early 1960s when Art Heyman withdrew from his commitment to play for North Carolina in order to commit to playing for Duke. After a brawl between the two universities' freshman teams during the 1959–60 season involving Heyman and North Carolina's Dieter Krause, tensions heightened further during a February 4, 1961, varsity game when a brawl occurred initiated by Heyman and North Carolina's Larry Brown, which resulted in suspensions for both players. The rivalry reached unprecedented heights in the mid-1980s under head coaches Dean Smith of North Carolina and Mike Krzyzewski of Duke, thanks to the emergence of cable channels such as ESPN and the increasing coverage of the ACC in national broadcasts by the three major networks, giving a vast national audience more opportunities to witness the two teams and their coaches. Indeed, the two teams have been fixtures on national television since the early 1980s, and their final regular season clash has been nationally televised for most of that time.
When Smith retired after the 1997 season, he held what was at the time the record for most wins by an NCAA Division I men's head coach, with 879 wins. On December 29, 2010, against the University of North Carolina at Greensboro, Duke head coach Mike Krzyzewski passed coach Smith with his 880th win to become the 2nd all-time winningest coach in Division I men's basketball,. In 1982, with players Michael Jordan, Sam Perkins and James Worthy, coach Smith won his first national championship and second overall for UNC that year. In 1991 Duke won its first national championship and then with most of their team returning, won another national championship in 1992.
North Carolina then won the championship the next year in 1993. Since then, Duke won the national championship in 2001, 2010 and 2015 while North Carolina won national championships in 2005, 2009, and 2017. In 2011, Krzyzewski became the new holder of the record for most career wins by a D-I men's coach, surpassing his mentor Bob Knight. On January 25, 2015, Krzyzewski also became the first NCAA Men's Division 1 Basketball head coach to reach 1,000 career wins after Duke defeated St Johns in Madison Square Garden 77–68. On February 16, 2019, Krzyzewski won his 1,123rd game to become the all-time winningest coach in college basketball history at any level, passing Harry Statham of Division II McKendree University.
After Smith's retirement in 1997, North Carolina suffered through three coaching changes between 1997 and 2003. The six seasons between Bill Guthridge and Matt Doherty from 1997 to 2003 Duke won 13 of 17 games against North Carolina and some said that the rivalry was on the decline. However, with the arrival of North Carolina's alumnus Roy Williams as head coach in 2003, North Carolina won six regular season titles in eight years, won the ACC tournament in back to back years in 2007 and 2008 and won its fourth, fifth, and sixth NCAA championships in 2005, 2009, and 2017 respectively. North Carolina also won 6 of 8 games against Duke from 2005 to 2009. Erik Spanberg of The Christian Science Monitor even argued in 2008 that the rivalry had tilted towards North Carolina in recent years.
However, between 2009 and 2017 Duke won 13 of 18 games against North Carolina including 3 season sweeps over North Carolina in 2010, 2013 and 2015. During the 2009–2010 season, Duke won the regular season finale by 32 points, which was the second largest Duke win in series history. Following that game, Duke went on to win a fourth National title in 2010 and a fifth title in 2015.
In 2017, UNC won its 6th national title. Since that win, UNC's record vs Duke is 11-12, with Duke coach Jon Scheyer holding a 5-2 record against UNC as Duke's recently hired coach. UNC also won 2 out of 3 matchups against Duke in 2018, 2019, and 2022, sweeping Duke in 2021. In 2022, UNC defeated Duke in Coach K's final home game in Cameron, returning the favor after Duke defeated UNC in Coach K's last game at the Dean E. Smith Center a month earlier. In their highly anticipated third matchup, UNC defeated Duke in Coach K's final game ever in the 2022 Final Four. Coach K retired with a winning record against UNC, owning a 50-48 mark.
Former Esquire editor and author Will Blythe argues that the rivalry's passion can be attributed greatly to class and culture in the South.
The rivalry has been the subject of various books and articles, including To Hate Like This Is to Be Happy Forever by Blythe and Blue Blood by Art Chansky.
Further illustrating the intensity of the rivalry, U.S. Representative Brad Miller, a die-hard Carolina fan, told an Associated Press writer in 2012, "I have said very publicly that if Duke was playing against the Taliban, then I'd have to pull for the Taliban."

NCAA tournament/postseason NIT

Prior to their meeting in the 2022 NCAA Final Four, North Carolina and Duke's only other postseason meeting was at the 1971 National Invitation Tournament, with North Carolina winning 73–67 in the semifinals at Madison Square Garden. Under current bracket rules, if both teams qualify for the NCAA tournament, the earliest both teams would be able to meet in the NCAA tournament is the regional semifinals due to facing each other at least twice per season. If both teams meet three or more times, then the earliest both teams can meet in the NCAA tournament is the Regional Finals.
In 1991, the teams came within one game of playing each other for the national championship, as both advanced to that year's Final Four at the Hoosier Dome in Indianapolis. Chansky writes in Blue Blood that as Carolina and Duke students lined up for tickets, the Carolina students chanted "0-for-4!" at their Duke counterparts while Duke responded with "Long time, no see!". In the first semifinal, North Carolina was upset 79–73 by a Kansas team coached by Roy Williams, who would later return to Chapel Hill to take the head coaching job. Some Duke fans had already arrived for their team's game by the time Dean Smith was ejected for arguing with the officials, and Chansky writes that they were ecstatic at the ejection, waving their hands and yelling, "See ya!" as they normally did at Cameron for a player or coach who was ejected or in foul trouble.
Below, in the Duke locker room, the Blue Devils were preparing for a rematch of the 1990 title game with UNLV in their semifinal. UNLV had won that game by 30 points and had come in undefeated in 1991, with many wondering if they were the best college basketball team ever. When the Carolina-Kansas result news got through, Mike Krzyzewski asked the team if they felt it was okay to lose since that meant they would do no worse than the Tar Heels, and some nodded. Krzyzewski understood but then added, "Flush it. Let's go kick their ass." Duke then stunned the sports world by defeating UNLV 79–77 and then went one better by beating Kansas 72–65 in the championship game to win its first national title. Chansky writes that one UNC athletic department staffer in Indianapolis was so distraught that he did not leave his hotel room the day after the national championship game, while when Duke arrived back in Durham, Krzyzewski is said to have asked the team at a turnoff to Chapel Hill if the team wanted to cruise down Franklin Street. In the wake of the Final Four, when talking about how close the two rivals came to meeting for the national championship, Krzyzewski said that he never wanted to see it happen because regardless of who won, the pain of losing that game would be unbearable for the defeated school and its fans.