So Close and Yet So Close

So little separates Duke and North Carolina.

Only an 11-mile stretch of Highway 15-501--and these days, the mere 41 points out of 1,734 by which No. 2 North Carolina trails No. 1 Duke in the Associated Press poll.

Close? The Nos. 1 and 2 men’s basketball teams in the nation even share an I-40 exit. Turn left to the Duke campus, right for Chapel Hill.

It’s a rivalry embedded so deeply that the unofficial final line of North Carolina’s fight song is “Go to hell, Duke!” and the Blue Devil chant for time immemorial has been “Go to hell, Carolina, go to hell!”

But a funny thing has happened on the way to tonight’s hate match. The Blue Devils and Tar Heels have come to like each other.

North Carolina might save its spite for Clemson’s hard-fouling Tigers, and nearby North Carolina State remains the butt of the typical agriculture school jokes.

Duke? It’s almost sacred.

“I mean, it’s different than our other rivalries,” said Antawn Jamison, who is North Carolina’s national player-of-the-year candidate and arrived at a news conference unashamed to be wearing a particularly Duke-ish shade of blue. “With our other rivals, it’s ‘Kill this’ and ‘Beat the heck out of this and that.’ This is one of those rivalries where as players you respect one another. The players have great friendships.

“After the season, we’ll go over and play ball and they’ll come over here. We get together as friends. Once you get on the court, you don’t hate them as you do other teams.”

That does not diminish the intensity, which this season is at an even higher pitch among the fans.

For all the storied clashes in Duke-Carolina history--a series in which at least one team has been ranked in every meeting for more than 40 years and both are in the top 10 almost half the time--they have met as No. 1 and No. 2 only once before tonight.

That was on Feb. 3, 1994, when No. 2 North Carolina beat a No. 1 Duke team led by Grant Hill, 89-78, in a battle of bluebloods at the Smith Center.

That game also marked the last time any No. 1 and No. 2 teams have met during the regular season. (The most recent such game was No. 2 Kentucky’s victory over No. 1 Massachusetts in the 1996 Final Four.)

But Duke and North Carolina have met nine times when Duke was ranked No. 1--seven times since Mike Krzyzewski became coach in 1980--with Duke winning five and losing four.

Since Krzyzewski arrived at Duke, he has faced a No. 1 Carolina team six times, knocking off the top-ranked Tar Heels once, in a 77-75 ACC tournament victory in 1984. For the players, it’s an important game. For the fans--even the schools’ most prominent NBA alumni such as Michael Jordan and Duke’s Hill--it is perhaps bigger.

“Bragging rights at work are huge to some people,” said Steve Wojciechowski, Duke’s tenacious senior guard. “But I don’t think there’s any hate between the players. I’ve never seen a case where guys hated each other to the point of wanting to fight. But it’s a high level of competition.

“When they come over here, they want to win whether it’s during the summer or during the season. I think that’s what makes the rivalry so special. The names and faces change. I’m not so sure the effort or intensity ever does.”

One very important face has changed this season. Dean Smith is no longer on North Carolina’s bench after retiring shortly before the season, handing the reins to his 30-year assistant, Bill Guthridge.

“I’m trying to talk him into coming down and sitting on the bench with me for this game. So far, I haven’t had any luck,” Guthridge deadpanned. “I’m kidding, I’m kidding. Although if he’d take me up. . . .”

Smith still sees the players almost daily, but he has attended only three exhibitions and three regular-season games, instead preferring to sweat games out in front of his TV.

This week, the Raleigh News & Observer devoted an entire column to whether Smith will be at the game--quoting insiders saying he won’t. Krzyzewski teases that Smith will be there in the stands “with a basketball on his head,” saying, “He’s going to be there. I know he is.”

It’s a measure of Smith’s achievement that the game is if anything bigger after his departure, with Guthridge sailing along with a 22-1 record, the only loss to Maryland.

“I don’t think Dean’s retirement changes it,” said Krzyzewski, whose team’s only loss was to Michigan. “It’s too big, bigger than any one player, team or coach. Just like when I eventually retire or leave Duke or whatever happens, it’s too big, it won’t change.

“It’s so good for college basketball and our conference. I think it’s needed more and more because in college basketball today, we lose our stars earlier. Having games of this magnitude is terrific. It just so happens both teams are ranked in the top two in the country. It gives us a bigger spotlight.”

It will shine again too. This is only the first meeting of the season. The teams will play at Duke’s Cameron Indoor Stadium on Feb. 28, and could meet again in the ACC tournament and--perhaps--in the Final Four.

But even in years when the Duke-Carolina game has had no national implications, the game has mattered--a battle between a 6,700-student private school and the state university.

A Duke-Carolina football game is irrelevant, but the basketball rivalry has endured through stretches when North Carolina’s biggest rival was N.C. State because of David Thompson or Virginia because of Ralph Sampson.

Among the games of lore is a 1968 triple-overtime Duke victory.

Perhaps the most remembered game is a 1974 overtime victory for North Carolina in which the Tar Heels--using two stolen inbounds passes and Smith’s carefully hoarded timeouts--came from eight points down with 17 seconds remaining in regulation.

“And that was without the three-point shot,” said Laker General Manager Mitch Kupchak, who played for North Carolina in that game. “With only two-pointers--people can’t believe it. It doesn’t seem possible.”

It was Kupchak who inbounded the ball on the final play with four seconds left, throwing a baseball pass to Walter Davis, who hit a 30-footer as time ran out. North Carolina went on to win in overtime, 96-92.

“It’s as good a rivalry as exists in any sport, in any place,” Kupchak said. “It’s really special.”

It was special in 1995 too, even though Duke, with Krzyzewski out because of back trouble, was off to a 1-7 start in the ACC and had fallen out of the rankings only three seasons after its back-to-back NCAA championships.

North Carolina was on its way to the Final Four that season, but in a seesaw game, the Tar Heels squandered a 17-point first-half lead and fell behind by 12 points midway through the second. Duke forced the second overtime on Jeff Capel’s 30-foot buzzer-beater, but ended up losing, 102-100, in the highest-scoring game in the history of the rivalry.

It wasn’t No. 1 versus No. 2, but it meant no less to Wojciechowski, a freshman on that team.

“The biggest difference between that game and this game is that [the news media] is here. It feels the same otherwise.

“Any time we play Carolina, even if we’re in last place and they’re in first place, it’s still a huge game. . . . If it’s Duke and Carolina, it’s maximum intensity, maximum effort, maximum passion.”

As such, it requires no embellishment, and certainly no trash talk.

“It’s an unbelievable rivalry. It’s been that way for 50 years,” Wojciechowski said. “Nothing we could say would make them want to beat us more than they do, and nothing they could say could make us want to beat them more than we already do.”

The players in this game have come to it from different angles.

Duke’s Trajan Langdon, who is from Alaska, didn’t know where Duke was until he was a sophomore in high school. He watched his first Duke-Carolina game on TV when he was a junior.

“The first game I saw in Cameron, I knew it was the greatest rivalry in college basketball,” he said.

North Carolina’s Jamison came at it differently, from nearby Charlotte.

“Being from North Carolina, I remember in junior high and high school just dreaming about this type of situation. You feel a part of history a little bit,” Jamison said. “A game like this always matters, especially with both teams playing real well and atop the polls. Games like this are special.

“You’d have to be lying if you said it didn’t mean anything. You’d have to be lying to say you were not excited to face a team like them. Duke is a great team. It’s been on everybody’s mind. . . . You look at the schedule before you even start practice and know you just want to beat Duke.”

Players on both teams are talking about their next game, worried about the letdown even before the main event because of the flurry of attention.

“It’s not only the students,” North Carolina guard Shammond Williams said. “I went to class this morning and my teacher said, ‘We’re going to beat Duke, right?’ And I said, ‘That’s not anything to talk about in sociology class.’ ”

Guthridge laughed.

“To me, it’s finally, the game is here,” he said. “With all the great fans and students on campus, for several weeks the talk has been about Duke. We had to concentrate on keeping our focus on the games we had to play. All of us are glad and relieved this game is finally here. We’ll see what happens.”

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX / INFOGRAPHIC)

No. 1 vs. No. 2

Meetings between No. 1 and No. 2 college basketball teams since 1949 (No. 1 is 19-12):

* No. 1 Kentucky 46, No. 2 Oklahoma A&M; 36, NCAA Championship at Seattle, March 26, 1949.

* No. 1 Kentucky 81, No. 2 St. John’s 40, at Lexington, Ky., Dec. 17, 1951.

* No. 1 Kentucky 70, No. 2 Utah 65, at Lexington, Dec. 21, 1954.

* No. 1 North Carolina 54, No. 2 Kansas 53, NCAA Championship at Kansas City, Mo., March 23, 1957.

* No. 2 California 77, No. 1 Cincinnati 69, NCAA Final Four semifinals at San Francisco, March 18, 1960.

* No. 2 California 70, No. 1 Ohio State 65, OT, NCAA Championship at Kansas City, March 25, 1961.

* No. 2 Michigan 87, No. 1 Wichita State 85, at Detroit, Dec. 14, 1964.

* No. 2 UCLA 91, No. 1 Michigan 80, NCAA Championship at Portland, Ore., March 20, 1965.

* No. 1 Kentucky 83, No. 2 Duke 79, NCAA Final Four semifinals at College Park, Md., March 18, 1966.

* No. 2 Houston 71, No. 1 UCLA 69, at Houston, Jan. 20, 1968.

* No. 2 UCLA 101, No. 1 Houston 69, NCAA Final Four semifinals at Los Angeles, March 22, 1968.

* No. 1 UCLA 84, No. 2. N.C. State 66, at St. Louis, Dec. 15, 1973.

* No. 2 Notre Dame 71, No. 1 UCLA 70, at South Bend, Ind., Jan. 19, 1974.

* No. 2 UCLA 94, No. 1 Notre Dame, at Los Angeles, Jan. 26, 1974.

* No. 1 N.C. State 80, No. 2 UCLA 77, 2OT, NCAA Final Four semifinals at Greensboro, N.C., March 25, 1974.

* No. 1 UCLA 92, No. 2 Kentucky 85, NCAA Championship at San Diego March 31, 1975.

* No. 1 Indiana 84, No. 2 UCLA 64, at St. Louis, Nov. 29, 1975.

* No. 1 Indiana 65, No. 2 Marquette 56, NCAA Mideast Regional final at Baton Rouge, La., March 22, 1976.

* No. 1 North Carolina 82, No. 2 Kentucky 69, at East Rutherford, N.J., Dec. 26, 1981.

* No. 1 North Carolina 65, No. 2 Virginia 60, at Chapel Hill, N.C., Jan. 9, 1982.

* No. 1 Houston 94, No. 2 Louisville 81, NCAA Final Four semifinals at Albuquerque, April 2, 1983.

* No. 1 Georgetown 77, No. 2 DePaul 57, at Landover, Md., Dec. 15, 1984.

* No. 2 Georgetown 85, No. 1 St. John’s 69, at New York, Feb. 27, 1985.

* No. 1 Georgetown 92, No. 2 St. John’s 80, Big East tournament finals at New York, March 9, 1985.

* No. 1 North Carolina 78, No. 2 Georgia Tech 77, OT, at Atlanta, Feb. 4, 1986.

* No. 1 Duke 71, No. 2 Kansas 67, NCAA Final Four semifinals at Dallas, March 29, 1986.

* No. 2 Missouri 77, No. 1 Kansas 71, at Lawrence, Kan., Feb. 13, 1990.

* No. 1 Oklahoma 95, No. 2 Kansas 77, Big Eight tournament semifinals at Kansas City, March 10, 1990.

* No. 1 UNLV 112, No. 2 Arkansas 105, at Fayetteville, Ark., Feb. 10, 1991.

* No. 2 North Carolina 89, No. 1 Duke 78, at Chapel Hill, N.C., Feb. 3, 1994.

* No. 2 Kentucky 81, No. 1 Massachusetts 74, NCAA Final Four semifinals, at East Rutherford, March 30, 1996.

* No. 1 Duke vs. No. 2 North Carolina, at Chapel Hill, Tonight