CHAPEL HILL, N.C. — Architecturally, and philosophically, it’s a dilemma.
How do you contain all this — the celebration of suffocating your rival, of punking them in their place — to such a small, sweaty visitors locker room?
Answer: You don’t. You can’t, really. Might as well just let it spill everywhere, like Duke did Saturday night after its 62-57 win over North Carolina. So the mocking waves to a defeated crowd departing? The cathartic cries, echoing down the cinder block-lined back hallways? That muddled N-I-T chant making its way through the walls?
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Well, if this building’s regular occupants don’t like it, they should have done something to prevent it.
Narrator: They did not.
Instead, on Saturday, same as a month ago in Durham when these squads first met, Duke proved decidedly which Tobacco Road team is tougher. It’s indisputable at this point. Just consider how similar the two game scripts were if you think any part of these wins is fluky:
• First Duke-UNC game: UNC makes one of its final nine shots — and none in the final four minutes — while Duke rattles off a game-winning 6-0 run.
• Saturday: UNC makes one of its final nine shots — and none in the final four minutes — while … Duke rattles off another game-winning 6-0 run.
“It was everything I’ve expected,” Tyrese Proctor said, “and honestly, coming out with a win is something I expected, as well.”
On the surface, even considering how the first meeting went, that’s sort of shocking to hear. Say what you want about North Carolina this season — plenty has been, and more will be — but this is still one of the most experienced UNC teams in program history, one which returned four starters from last season’s national championship game. That’s before factoring in any splash of desperation, either, given the Tar Heels’ paper-thin NCAA Tournament resume, or that this game was in Chapel Hill, in front of some 21,000 Carolina blue-clad supporters.
Not exactly the easiest regular-season send-off, right?
And yet, a team with 11 new players — seven of them freshmen, and four of them starters — never seemed panicked, or puzzled. Perfect? Absolutely not. This was a rock fight, with both sides knee-deep in mud. Duke shot just 38.2 percent overall (which, compared to UNC’s 30.4 percent, doesn’t seem so bad) and 30.8 percent from 3. The Blue Devils had one assist in the first half, and only four for the whole game, on 22 made baskets. To say the offense was offensive, no disrespect intended, was right on the money.
Guess what else, though? It didn’t matter.
“We understand what we’re good at,” Proctor continued. “We’re obviously good at playing defense, and we get a lot of our offense from our defense, so we’re sticking to it.”
As the Blue Devils should. Since last summer, coach Jon Scheyer has preached that this team’s potential was predicated on defense. And considering Duke’s 22-4 record thus far this season when holding opponents below their normal scoring average — doing so to 26 of the 30 teams you played is also no small feat — you can understand why. That trend has been especially prominent of late: Per BartTorvik, since Feb. 1, Duke is top-20 nationally in terms of adjusted defensive efficiency. “I’m OK not grinding it out, too, if we’re hitting jumpers better and scoring easier,” Scheyer joked, “but that’s not always gonna happen.”
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Like Saturday, for instance. It was clear early on this wouldn’t be a game of offensive fireworks, but North Carolina threatened to change that narrative with a 13-2 run midway through the second half, in which it amassed a four-point lead and all the momentum. A Mark Mitchell layup stopped the bleeding, at least, bringing Duke back within two — and more importantly, allowing Scheyer to call timeout and rally his guys.
His message, in the huddle?
“Where else would you rather be?” Scheyer said. “It’s a one-possession game, we’re in a great position to win this — but it was their ball. We had to start with a stop.”
Here, Scheyer also made a critical decision: Reinserting center Dereck Lively, who had eight blocks in the first UNC game, with four personal fouls.
So, the very next play? A Leaky Black 3-pointer — one of his team-high seven 3-point tries, for someone who shoots 32.1 percent for the year — that was rebounded by none other than Lively. And just to make matters even sweeter, the tying basket on Duke’s next offensive possession also came from Lively, courtesy of an alley-oop dunk.
“My coaches, they trust me,” Lively said. “Put me in the game with four fouls, and they knew I was gonna make the right decision.”
In total, Duke held UNC to eight points over the final 8:32. Like a boa constrictor, the Blue Devils simply smothered the Tar Heels at every turn, be it Armando Bacot down low — who Scheyer even doubled at times, to throw the All-ACC big off his rhythm — or Caleb Love, who finished 3-of-12 with no made 3s, on the outside.
And then, of course, with the game on the line, Duke’s best players took over. First, that was junior captain Jeremy Roach, who drove past Love and around Bacot and Black for an up-and-under layup that put Duke up three with 47.4 seconds left. Then it was Lively defensively, again, stonewalling R.J. Davis on his subsequent drive, and erasing UNC’s last real scoring opportunity. And then Kyle Filipowski got the finishing honors, scoring the last of his game-high 22 on a full-court outlet pass with 2.2 seconds left, which cemented the final margin.
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Boom. Buzzer. Let it all spill out, everywhere.
Back to that celebration, then. Some of it is normal rival-romping glee. Some of it comes with a tinge of revenge, too, for the events of last season. (“I’m not gonna get into any of the personal stuff like that,” Roach said, “but it just means a lot to get this win.”) But some of it is pure pride — the acknowledgment that, if North Carolina’s season was hanging by a thread, Duke just pulled out a giant pair of proverbial scissors and snipped that string.
Oh, and one more thing.
It’s validation: that what Scheyer pitched this summer — the importance of fight, of toughness, of what glory could come from leaning into the less-glorified half of basketball — was right. This whole season has been proof of that, but Saturday, Duke’s sixth win in a row, was the punctuation mark. How far Duke can ride its defense in March, we’ll soon find out.
But we already know one thing, now as clearly as ever: “Just keep fighting,” Filipowski said, “because that’s all you can ask for.”
(Top photo of Duke’s Jeremy Roach heading upcourt after stealing the ball from North Carolina’s Puff Johnson during the second half Saturday: Scott Kinser / Cal Sport Media via Associated Press)