Duke Basketball: Sky will fall if Blue Devils fall again to Tar Heels

A third loss to UNC would leave Duke basketball players and their supporters feeling like their world is crashing down.

As a superstitious Duke basketball fan, I always break out a rain dance — dark clouds are the ultimate goal — on days of Duke-UNC games. Because wherever I’ve ever been on days like today, I only feel comfortable about the impending outcome when the sky above my head appears anything but Carolina blue.

While I have no official stats to back up the correlation between the Blue Devils’ success rate against the Tar Heels and the weather in my location on days of college basketball’s granddaddy of rivalries, I feel like gloomy conditions have spelled gloom for the evil side more times than not.

Today, I’m starting early with the dances in hopes of severe thunderstorms. Today, I face a scenario that I’m too young (my fandom officially began as a six-year-old in 1987) to have ever faced:

Not since the 1983-84 season has Duke played UNC a third time after losing the first two rounds of the season. Like this season, the third clash that season took place in the semifinals of the ACC Tournament.

My desperate plea is that, also like the ’83-84 season, Blue Devil fans will avoid suffering the torment that would accompany a 3-0 sweep at the hands of the Tar Heels.

Frankly, I don’t know how I would cope with such pain.

It’s a pain that coach Mike Krzyzewski has spared Duke fans from feeling since his arrival in Durham; meanwhile, he has thrice directed a team to a sweet 3-0 sweep of UNC — ’87-88, ’98-99, and ’01-02 — but that shouldn’t have to translate into the Tar Heels being due to punch back with a 3-0 sweep of their own.

Krzyzewski’s first season at the helm (’80-81) contained the only occurrence other than the one from the ’83-84 season — and the one about to happen — where his Blue Devils played the Tar Heels a third time after losing the first two meetings. His first season at Duke was the last of 11 seasons for the Big Four Tournament, which regularly pitted the two rivals against one another prior to the start of official ACC play; therefore, Duke’s third-round win in the rivalry that season coincided with the regular-season finale.

The last time the Blue Devils dropped all three games to the Tar Heels was the ’75-76 season. The nightmare sweep became a reality three times altogether in the 70s (’72-73 and ’73-74 being the other two). In addition, Duke lost three of four to UNC during the ’70-71 season.

But enough of the dark history lessons and on to the potential dark days ahead if Duke doesn’t take care of a revenge opportunity in the present.

All Blue Devil fans should be in agreement that this season is one in which the embarrassment would be through the roof from losing to the Tar Heels in all three meetings (potentially four, but more on that at this article’s conclusion). Not only that, but the third loss would be the fourth in a row overall to the Tar Heels and push the series record since Coach K’s arrival to 47-46 in favor of the enemy.

While UNC started the season No. 8 in the AP Poll, it was Duke (No. 4 out the gates) who entered with all the hype. That hype came as a result of the Blue Devils having the services of the first freshmen class in college basketball history to include the top three recruits on the ESPN100 — R.J. Barrett, Zion Williamson, and Cam Reddish, respectively — as well as Tre Jones, No. 17 on the ESPN100 and the younger brother of the last point guard to lead the program to a national title (Tyus in 2015).

No. 5 Duke, now 27-5 following an 84-72 win Thursday night over Syracuse in the quarterfinals of the ACC Tournament in Charlotte, will take the court against No. 3 UNC following the semifinal matchup between No. 2 Virginia and No. 12 Florida St., which starts at 7 p.m.

The Tar Heels, also 27-5, are sporting an eight-game win streak (15 of their last 16). That streak includes two wins over the Blue Devils, who were without Williamson except for the first 30 seconds of the first meeting (Feb. 20) when the now-ACC Player of the Year busted through his shoe and suffered a right knee sprain that kept him out of action until Thursday night.

In the words of UNC senior forward Luke Maye following his squad’s 83-70 win Thursday over Louisville, the Tar Heels are currently “firing on all cylinders.” They have an ideal mix of veterans and underclassmen, who play in sync with one another. They regularly pull away from opponents with their crisp ball movement, wise shot selection, and disciplined determination to force fast breaks of their own while almost always getting back in order to prevent opponents’ transition opportunities.

However, working in the Blue Devils’ favor is the stellar return to action on Thursday from Williamson, who offered further evidence he is not from this planet.

Against the Orange, the 6-foot-7, 280-pound superhero out of a comic book, who watched his teammates go 3-3 in his absence, became the No. 1 trending topic on Twitter by scoring 29 points to go along with 14 rebounds and five steals across 36 minutes of action. He set the program’s game record by hitting all 13 of his shot attempts and is now one make shy of tying former Blue Devil Alaa Abdelnaby’s ACC record for most consecutive makes overall (Williamson has hit 19 in a row dating back to a 94-78 home win over N.C. State on Feb. 16).

To summarize the previous few paragraphs, this third meeting between Duke and UNC is sure to be a doozy.

Though if the Blue Devils lose, not only will they likely lose out on a No. 1 seed in the Big Dance while the Tar Heels will likely wrap up their own, but they will also render null and void the claim that they would have won the first two meetings with a healthy Williamson.

With a third win over Duke in the same season, I’m not sure how UNC fans would react because it’s a scenario I’ve been fortunate enough to never experience. Thinking about it just now, though, caused me to throw up in my mouth.

More from Ball Durham

And with a third loss to the Tar Heels, I’m not sure how the Blue Devils could bounce back in time for the NCAA Tournament.

Even if they could — especially if UNC went on to extend its win streak by winning the ACC Tournament on Saturday — they would likely live with the fear that the only way to win the program’s sixth national title on April 8 would be to prevent their puke-inducing rival from winning its seventh title (as sickening as it is to admit, as it looks right now, no other team may have a chance to knock off the Tar Heels).

The mere thought of that potential fourth meeting of the season has my insides churning. A fourth meeting in a season between the two programs hasn’t happened since the ’70-71 season; also, the rivals have never met in the NCAA Tournament, much less in the Final Four.

As I see it, the only way to prevent such a game — a dream for ratings but an eternal nightmare for the losing fanbase — is for the Blue Devils to humiliate the Tar Heels tonight. In doing so, they would force them to come to terms with the fact that their record would certainly contain at least two more losses if Williamson had not fallen to injury, thereby sufficiently dinging their confidence enough to prevent them from making a run to the Final Four in Minneapolis.

Hence, it’s time to start my rain dance.

Good news: Just as I’m about to publish this article, I’m looking out the window to raindrops and a sky of gray clouds. And the app on my phone is calling for thunderstorms in my location all day leading up to the game.

Hardly a speck of Carolina blue in the sky in any direction I look.

Yippee!

Next. Zion could start a shoe company. dark

That indicates Williamson must be ready to unleash his fury tonight via dunks over Maye’s eyebrows; as the superhero for his teammates and all Duke basketball fans, Zion must be planning to use his superhuman strengths to prevent the sky from falling.

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