They’re Coming to Greensboro: Duke-North Carolina Recap

The ACC Tournament is coming to town and there is no way we can stop this crowd that will soon be taking over the Gate City. Why would we want to halt the group that will put us on the national map for the umpteenth time? If you can’t beat ’em, then join ’em, even if you can’t get a ticket you can lock it down and watch all the action on your local station or drive to Detroit and watch it on ESPN.

The out of towners are coming, the out of towners are coming, but not before the ACC crowns the regular season champion. I think we should give more props these days to the regular season champ than we give to the tournament winner. The tourney has been watered down like a bottle of Ralph Havis Beef Burger Secret Sauce. The league has added several new teams that don’t have a chance to win the Greensboro event but hopefully they will stay in the Gate City long enough to put away a couple of Biffs with extra sauce over at Ralph’s place on West Lee Street.

The Duke-North Carolina hookup on Tuesday night was another great one in the best rivalry in college basketball series. J.J. Redick once again put it all together but Duke was not a two-man team as Josh McRoberts stepped up and gave the Blue Devils an added push to go with Redick and Sheldon Williams. McRoberts had the two-hand reverse dunk that set the tone for the game in it’s early stages.

The Heels made a game of it and the final score(87-83) does not even begin to tell the whole story of what happened on that light blue basketball court in Chapel-Hill. Duke had the 17 point lead in the second half but the Heels led by their Blue Team came back and took the lead with 3:30 to play. Duke jumped back in front but when Sean Dockery missed a couple of free throws the Heels were right back in it again. The credit goes to the Blue Devils who pulled it all out on their hated rival’s home floor. When the series goes back to Durham it could get rugged. It will be Redick, Williams, Dockery, and Melchionni’s last home game and the last game for Coach K at Duke if decides to join the Lakers.

Art Chansky says Duke-North Carolina is the best rivalry in college basketball and he is absolutely correct. Duke-North Carolina might be #2 in all of sports. Top Rivalries in Sports: #1 New York Yankees-Boston Red Sox
#2 Duke-North Carolina
#3 Dallas Cowboys-Washington R.Skins
#4 Tennessee-Florida
#5 Texas-Oklahoma
#6 Michigan-Ohio State
#7 Clemson-South Carolina
#8 Auburn-Alabama
#9 Montreal-Toronto
#10 Kentucky-Louisville
*****Honorable Mention***** Guilford County Commissioners vs. Greensboro City Council

Fan Rivalry Duke-North Carolina:The Ones We Know Of – Blue Devils/Tar Heels…………………………………………………………………………………………..
TAR HEELS: Woody Durham, Jeff Summey, Steve Candler, Amy from HockeyCountry, Monty Smith, Cecil Carr, Steve Jones, Jim Gentry, Joel Fleisman, Don Moore, Paul Lambeth, John Hitchcock, Erskine Bowles…

BLUE DEVILS: Bob Harris, Ogi Overman, Dan Thomas, Gary Thomas, Bruce Mitchell, Gary Jenkins(Scotty’s brother), Greg Johnson, Ken Fulk, Craig Kabatchnik…

5 thoughts on “They’re Coming to Greensboro: Duke-North Carolina Recap

  1. Andy, checked out your new website, what a great thing for greensboro, I hope the word gets around because this very much needed in gboro, keep up the good work, Greg

  2. Andy,

    Tim Duhan should pay you commission! I love your writing style! Keep up the good work.

    Amy

  3. Andy, thanks for the mention with the other luminaries in that column. Excellent scuds you bantered about, especially the Beef Burger smack, very funny.

    As for what happened to my Heels, Carolina had its chances. J.J. Redick though proved again why he is Satan incarnate, or at least Christian Laettner. At least in terms of the agitation he gives to his opponents. If UNC figures out how not to turn it over twenty plus times a game they will be a hard out come March.

    Perhaps the best thing to come out of the game for Carolina was the performance of Q coming off the bench during and after the Blue teams insertion in the second half, which was the impetus for the Heels run. He is still real shaky, but if Ol Roy could get him to a serviceable level, along the lines of say, King Rice, then Frasor could spend more time at the two where he can be more of a scoring threat which could help loosen things up for others. Too many times when Q has been on the floor in his two years in Chapel Hill he has run around like a chicken with his head cut off. At other times he has shown flashes of real potential, I really think it is a matter of confidence. If Q can find his, it’s on. As for UNC winning the rematch in Durham, just not going to happen, not on the senior day from Hell.

    While I must applaud the manner in which your column was written. I must disagree that the ACC tournament is watered down. Sure it’s not the death trap it was, but then again if not for that pressure cooker back when only one team from each conference qualified for the dance the NCAA would not have made that initial foray into expanding the field which lead to what we have today in March Madness.

    If anything it will now be better, especially for the locals and the fans of the teams who advance. With twelve schools spread over four days there will be ample opportunity to obtain tickets at relatively reasonable prices. Everyone has a good time in the ‘Boro when John Swoffords Flying Circus comes to town but the out of towners always scuttle in a hurry once the sand runs out of their tournament hourglass. For the smart shopper bargains abound. It’s better than Trade-io! (yes Andy, I would like to trade a car that don’t run, two hunting dogs and a can of Burma Shave for a tin of snuff)

    Also I disagree that move love should be shown to regular season champ. Using your logic the Colts should be declared NFL champion, hey they did have the best regular season mark!

    Basketball, in the words of the immortal Everett Case, is a tournament sport. It is appropriate that the ACC should crown it’s champion in such a manner. The only change I would consider is only letting the top 8 teams in the show, but the league is not about to take two sessions worth of ticket sales and TV revenue out of their coffers. It would be like asking J.J. Redick not to flop like he’s been shot every time a defender breathes on him when he takes a jumper. Or asking Roy Williams to not make seventy substitutions a game, it just ain’t gonna happen. I am almost shocked that the Big East is limiting their tournament. Then again the logistics of sixteen teams is a lot different then twelve.

    Oh and in regards to your list of rivalries. I must again respectfully disagree slightly.

    My personal Top Five.

    I. UNC-DOOK: Eight miles, two hundred and twenty games and nearly two centuries of excellence between them. Plus the level of hatred in this game has become stifling in the past couple of decades. But also it is perhaps the most gentlemanly rivalry in all of major sports because of the immense respect deep down that these two institutions have for each other. The urge to strangle each other non-withstanding.
    II. Manchester United-Manchester City: English Football at its finest and most intense. If there is another rivalry that compares in intensity because of the proximity this is it.
    III. Auburn-Alabama: Terry Bowden will tell you point blank that someone in a trailer park gets killed each year because of this game.
    IV. Red Sox-Yankees: The only rivalry in sport bigger than the game itself. If both of those franchises dropped of the face of the planet MLB would go belly up.
    V. Skins-Cowboys: Perhaps the greatest NFL rivalry since the merger. But also the most contrived as George Allen personally planted the seed of hatred. This fixture only took root though because the Allen era Redskins truly were the only team who were able to compete with Dallas in the NFC east of that era. Plus it made good marketing and if the NFL knows anything, it’s marketing. Hey how do you think they got the second largest audience in the history of television to watch two middling market teams play what turned out to be kind of a snoozefest.

    Keep up the great work.-PL

  4. Dear Andy,

    Well, here we are again….and what a great game it was. I witnessed the game on ESPN, until they realized they had forgotten to black it out in my area…had to turn on the News 2 local channel (which mean listening to Billy Packer…grrrrr). I think that game said a lot about both teams. I think for Duke it said that you can play a tight game and win. For Carolina, that if you fight back hard, you can be in the right place at the right time. It was, as always between these two rivals, a classic, great game. I have had many friends who, unfortunately, are Dook fans…and they told me that Carolina was gonna get blown out of the water. I told them then….national rankings and all don’t matter when these two teams meet. It all goes out the window, and all you’re left with is a great game. These two teams will always give their best effort when playing one another. As much as I love my Tar Heels, I’ll be the first to say, they SHOULD be outgunned when going into Durham next month….but then again, it is the rivalry game of the year. I expect a close game…much like this one, decided by less than 5 points. Count on it!
    As for the ACC tournament…I see your point, but I must disagree. I think the tournament is probably in a better position now than before. For one, now you’ll have 4 different games to go to on Thursday, instead of the 1 game that never really mattered to anyone before. The Thursday night play-in game was the one that all the local people here went to, because no one else would show up till Friday for the main event. Now, Thursday will become part of the main event. I think that Miami and VT will make a bigger impact on the tournament than most people expect. Look for them to advance…they’ve proven all year long that they can compete, and are worthy of a trip to the NCAA’s. BC, while expected to dominate just under Duke (Dook?) this year, hasn’t live up to the expectations. But then again, they’re probably just not used to playing this style of basketball. You know, where every shot is contested, where it takes a lot of teamwork to make a basket…oh, and where the refs look Coach K’s way all the time…

    Jamie Sealey

  5. andy , great job with the web site. keep up the good work. i miss your live radio program those were the good old days. i guess i will here you with the grasshoppers soon i cant wait. see you soon

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