Struggle for supremacy continues Sunday
Mar 7, 2009
The upcoming ACC football season will not end with a matchup between Duke and North Carolina, as have most seasons since World War II. The traditional rivalry has become a competitive afterthought, at least for now, and the schedule reflects it.
But even in this post-expansion era, it’s difficult to imagine similarly downplaying the Duke-UNC basketball finale, a headline event throughout much of the league’s history. When the Tar Heels and Blue Devils meet on Sunday at the Smith Center before the usual national TV audience, a share of first place will be on the line for the third time since 2001. Both teams rank in the top 10, the 16th time that’s happened as they wrap up the regular season.
The ACC powerhouses, two of the most successful programs in the history of men’s college basketball, have split their 14 previous finales with a share of first at stake. The Heels evened the ledger with a 76-68 victory at Cameron Indoor Stadium exactly a year ago Sunday to finish atop the standings.
A Duke win at Chapel Hill would do more than force the 11th tie at the top in the ACC’s 56 seasons. (Remarkably, every previous tie for first included North Carolina.) More significant, a road victory by the Blue Devils would mark a step, albeit a small one, in challenging the Tar Heels’ growing contemporary supremacy.
Duke emerged as the leader shortly after the ACC began recognizing a so-called regular season championship in 1990, making a first-place finish a definable prize. Mike Krzyzewski’s teams topped the conference standings 10 times in the 16 years between 1991 through 2006, and won eight ACC Tournaments in that span, including a record five straight from 1999 through 2003. Krzyzewski’s program also won its three NCAA titles during that era of prosperity (1991, 1992, 2001).
Since Roy Williams settled at Chapel Hill, however, North Carolina has clearly gained the upper hand. Now it is the Tar Heels who command the best recruiting classes, who start seasons atop the national polls. UNC has earned at least a share of first in three of the past four seasons, won two straight ACC Tournaments, and twice reached the Final Four since 2005. That ’05 squad won the national championship, the last captured by an ACC club.
Exacerbating the sense of shifting balance, Duke fizzled the past two seasons as UNC advanced deep in the NCAAs and topped the ACC. The Devils stumbled down the stretch both times, winning a single NCAA contest in 2007 and 2008 combined.
This year they again got off to a good start, then sputtered. The nadir came at Clemson in a flaccid 27-point defeat on Feb. 4; no ACC team has ever incurred so decisive a loss and recovered to reach the Final Four.
But, as he had with a stunning home defeat by Wagner in 1983, when he was building his program, Krzyzewski used the debacle at Clemson to establish a benchmark for his squad. The coach called timeout with 30 seconds remaining in that 74-47 loss, and directed his players’ attention to the Littlejohn Coliseum scoreboard.
“None of us wanted that feeling again,” recalled Nolan Smith, the sophomore guard presently sidelined with a concussion. “A lot of us probably wanted to cry right then. We were embarrassed sort of how we played that whole game.”
Yet, for all the talk of pride and determination, the Blue Devils didn't regain traction until Krzyzewski made a personnel adjustment, pulling Smith and senior Greg Paulus from on-ball defensive responsibilities in favor of freshman Elliot Williams. Neither of the veterans proved much impediment to the dribble penetration of quick guards, most notably UNC’s Ty Lawson, who dissected Duke in the second half of their Feb. 11 meeting at Cameron.
The Devils lately regained their toughness, winning five in a row with the 6-4 Williams manning the point defensively while steady, heady Jon Scheyer handled the position’s playmaking responsibilities. The Devils forced nearly twice as many turnovers as they committed during those five victories. The same period also saw Scheyers’s classmate, Gerald Henderson, firmly established among the ACC’s most explosive and polished offensive performers, as well as a defensive force.
“They’re more athletic,” Maryland coach Gary Williams said of Duke, which beat the Terrapins at College Park late last month. “They’re bigger. Williams plays like a forward.”
Duke’s win at the Comcast Center followed by four days the Terps topping the Tar Heels in overtime in the same arena. In that game UNC registered just five assists on 29 field goals and had 15 turnovers, symptomatic of an effort that left Roy Williams mightily frustrated.
“In 21 years as a head coach, I’ve never coached a game where I felt that we did as many things to help the other team beat us as we did in that game,” Williams said days after his team’s sixth loss in two seasons. (UNC was 36-3 in 2008). “The fact of the matter is, for us to take 16 shots with zero or one pass, is stupid, and I don’t like to coach stupid basketball teams.”
Since then North Carolina handled the Techs, Georgia and Virginia. The Heels again stalk the top spot in the national polls, which they held through their first 15 games, and remain in the front rank of NCAA title contenders.
This UNC squad is first and foremost an offensive juggernaut, its 91.7-point average over 29 games the fifth-best scoring average in ACC history, second-best since 1975. The ignitor is Lawson, a remarkably strong, fleet junior. On Sunday he, along with seniors Mike Copeland, Bobby Frasor, Danny Green, Tyler Hansbrough, and walk-ons J.B. Tanner, Jack Wooten and Patrick Moody, will doubtless play his final home game as a Tar Heel.
Lawson likely will be voted the 2009 ACC player of the year. He leads the conference in assists (6.4 per game), steals (2.0), and ratio of assists to turnovers (3.4). He is a deadeye 3-point shooter, his 47.2 percent accuracy best on the team and better than anyone with enough attempts to officially qualify for league leadership. And he can seem a rare, instoppable force, particularly in open-court situations.
Most of the time, outscoring the opponent suffices for Carolina. “They’re really good offensively,” said the head coach of a team that recently lost to UNC. “But they don’t guard a soul.”
That is not a championship formulation, or hasn’t been. The team lacks a reliable perimeter stopper because Marcus Ginyard is sidelined for the year with a broken foot and no one else has stepped forward to fill his role. “He’s our best defender,” junior Wayne Ellington said of Ginyard. “He’s one of our leaders. We’re definitely missing a lot when it comes to Marcus.”
Lawson, in part because his steals take him out of position, is anything but a lock-down defender at point. He also is prone to inconsistent concentration. That’s why Hansbrough, much-improved on defense and the steadiest player the league has seen in quite awhile, deserves to repeat as the ACC’s player of the year.
The high-low duo of Lawson and Hansbrough must play well for UNC to gain its 63rd win in two years and seventh over Duke in the teams’ last nine meetings. What’s more, a victory would give the Heels sole possession of first for the 17th time in ACC history, one more than the Blue Devils, and further ratify their recent edge in the great, enduring rivalry that defines the ACC.
