Former Duke basketball great Jay Bilas was on the call on ESPN for the rivalry matchup between the Duke Blue Devils (19-2, 11-0 ACC) and North Carolina Tar Heels (13-10, 6-5 ACC) at Cameron Indoor Stadium. The Blue Devils had no issues and the game was practically over after the first five minutes, resulting in an 87-70 win for Duke, earning their 15th straight victory.
After the game, Bilas went to Instagram to give his postgame reaction to Duke's victory, and doesn't think there's a team in the nation that Duke can't beat.
"The Duke/North Carolina game is usually a barn-burner every time," Bilas said. "This one was decided early, and it was decided by Duke's defense. This is an excellent defensive team that has positional size, they can switch 1 through 5, and Duke was able to take North Carolina out of anything they wanted to do."
Duke's consistently been one of, if not the best defensive team in the nation all season. Bilas highlighted the suffocating mix of size and athleticism Duke has along with the team's ability to switch everything, and it's a luxury not many programs get to use to their advantage.
Not only do the Blue Devils have talented perimeter defenders at the guard spots like Tyrese Proctor, Kon Knueppel, and Sion James, but bigs like Maliq Brown and Khaman Maluach have the ability to guard on the perimeter and get back in transition at the same speed as everyone else on the court.
Rounding out the defense with one of the most naturally gifted defensive freshmen college basketball has seen in a long time in Cooper Flagg, and the unit is just hard to deal with.
Duke held Carolina to 29.6% shooting from the field and 27.2% from three point range in the first half, as the Blue Devils sat with a 47-25 lead at the break.
Carolina improved a bit offensively in the second half, but the damage was already too much to come back from.
"When you have a 17-2 run like Carolina did in the second half and still can't make it a game, you know it was a blowout," Bilas said.
Bilas had high praise for the Duke program, as he like most people around the sport of college basketball see Duke as a perennial national championship contender.
"Duke is legit. Defensively, they've established themselves as one of the top five defensive teams in the country and what's impressive to me is their offense continues to improve, and has a really high ceiling."
Flagg and Knueppel have been Duke's two most consistent offensive pieces, and what could make Duke unstoppable is getting consistent production on the offensive side of the ball from the veteran guards like Proctor and James.
Proctor had struggled over his last five games leading into the UNC game, tallying single-digit scoring outings in four of them while shooting a combined 11-of-40 (27.5%) from the field and 5-of-23 (21.7%) from three point range over that span. But Proctor found his groove again against the Heels, finishing the game with 17 points on 5-of-10 shooting.
James doesn't look for his own offense much, but has tallied 13 points in each of the last two games for Duke after scoring 18 points combined in his previous four games. At 6' 6" and 220 pounds with great north-to-south quickness, he's lethal at getting to the rim and finishing, and James attacking the paint more could free up drive-and-kicks for open threes at a premium.
The Blue Devils are looking for their 16th straight win on February 6th (7:00pm ET, ESPN2) as the team hits the road to take on the Syracuse Orange (10-12, 4-7 ACC).