Duke’s questions to answer against Tar Heels

Every Duke-North Carolina game dating back to the origins of the rivalry has had a heightened level of competitive flare. But this one is different.

It’s Duke’s first chance at redemption after the Tar Heels dealt two crushing blows last season, one in former head coach Mike Kryzyzewski’s last home game and one in the Final Four. It is Jon Scheyer’s first opportunity to gain the upper hand on his North Carolina counterpart, Hubert Davis. And, maybe most importantly, this year’s game sits within a crucial five-game stretch in the Blue Devils’ schedule in which they can prove whether they have the answer to some season-long questions plaguing this team.

For starters, can Duke stop the one-stepforward, one-step-backward dance that it did almost all of January? Alternating wins and losses is a recipe for early ACC and NCAA tournament exits, but that has been the harsh reality of much of conference play for the Blue Devils.

Fortunately for Duke, it gets a crack Saturday at North Carolina, and that matchup is the perfect opportunity to rid itself of the consistently inconsistent label. Almost every season has a moment that, when all the dust settles, can be looked at as the turning point. This game is going to be looked back on as that moment, for better or worse, for the Blue Devils.

Several times over the last month, it looked like Duke had its moment. The Blue Devils had a gritty 11-point comeback win against Pittsburgh Jan. 11, but then lost to Clemson three days later. They followed that loss up with a marquee win against then-No. 17 Miami, but couldn’t keep the momentum rolling in Blacksburg, Va., and fell to Virginia Tech.

Now, Duke is riding high off back-to-back wins against Georgia Tech and Wake Forest and has a legitimate opportunity for a staple win Saturday to mark its turning point.

The calendar is getting closer to March, so if the Tobacco Road rivalry isn’t enough to motivate Duke to get a statement win and go on a run, then what will be?

On a more micro level, Duke has another important question to answer: Who is going to be the go-to No. 2 option on offense behind Kyle Filipowski?

Filipowski has been nothing short of phenomenal this year. His scoring and rebounding have largely been the reason the Blue Devils have snuck away with some of the nail-biting wins they have. But if anything has become clear in recent weeks, it is that Filipowski alone is not enough. Even with his efficient 9-of-17 clip from the field for 29 points against Virginia Tech, the Hokies still managed to come out on top.

A number of different players have made their case to fill that role, but no one has done so on a consistent enough basis. Jeremy Roach is averaging 11.6 points per game, but his toe injury forced him to miss crucial ACC matchups so I am not ready to crown him the second option, despite his 21-point clinic against Wake Forest. Freshman Dariq Whitehead has come on strong in ACC play and was on his way to his best offensive game against Virginia Tech, but his leg sprain will sideline him for an unclear amount of time.

Dereck Lively II and Mark Mitchell have both shown potential too, but the former still has some development to undergo on the offensive side and the latter has only had four double-digit scoring performances in Duke’s last 10 games.

That leaves us with Tyrese Proctor, who I think is Duke’s best option as the No. 2 scorer. He is playing his best basketball of the season right now, and while his efficiency does need to improve, Proctor has been there late in games for the Blue Devils when they were in need of points.

On a positional basis, the Tar Heels present a great, but incredibly difficult, opportunity to prove how the Blue Devils are going to handle dominant bigs. Scheyer has had a juggling act all year of trading off between Lively and graduate transfer Ryan Young at center, and North Carolina’s Armando Bacot will force him to continue doing that.

The issue so far has been that having Lively on the floor means giving up something on offense, and having Young on the floor means giving up something on defense. North Carolina has been sitting at or close to the top of the ACC in points per game for the whole year, so Duke is going to need offense. The flip side of that, though, is that Bacot is the Tar Heels’ leading scorer, so the Blue Devils will need someone to stop him from having a massive night.

If Young and Lively can figure out the right combination of production and minutes to both stifle Bacot’s scoring and give Duke offense from the center position, the ceiling of this team changes dramatically.

A loss against North Carolina doesn’t mean the season is over. But it would once again be another failed opportunity at turning a corner and more likely than not, would mean that the same questions that lie unanswered now will remain that way when the clock expires in Duke’s final game of the season, whenever that may be.

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Duke Street Pediatric Dentistry

Duke Street Pediatric Dentistry

Duke Street Pediatric Dentistry

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Martha Ann Keels, DDS PhD

Martha Ann Keels, DDS PhD

919.220.1416

Fellow: American Academy of Pediatric Dentistry

919.220.1416

Fellow: American Academy of Pediatric Dentistry

Erica A. Brecher, DMD MS

Erica A. Brecher, DMD MS

Martha Ann Keels, DDS PhD

Erica A. Brecher, DMD MS

Erica A. Brecher, DMD MS

M.Gentry Byrd, DDS, MPH

M.Gentry Byrd, DDS, MPH

M.Gentry Byrd, DDS, MPH

M.Gentry Byrd, DDS, MPH

919.220.1416 www.DukeStreetSmiles.com

919.220.1416 www.DukeStreetSmiles.com

2711 N. Duke Street Durham, North Carolina 27704

Fellow: American Academy of Pediatric Dentistry

2711 N. Duke Street Durham, North Carolina 27704

2711 N. Duke Street Durham, North Carolina 27704

2711 N. Duke Street Durham, North Carolina 27704

Fellow: American Academy of Pediatric Dentistry

Certified: American Board of Pediatric Dentistry

Certified: American Board of Pediatric Dentistry

American Board Pediatric Dentistry

Certified: American Board Pediatric Dentistry have been so many kind of NBA lottery picks that have gone to Duke that sometimes people forget a guy like Scheyer, not forget, but they don’t give the same kind of credit to a guy like Scheyer, who was a fabulous player in every regard.

Spatola: Winning over there was as good as it gets, winning over there had its own little special feeling, and I’m sure they feel the same way. Winning in Chapel Hill was different than winning anywhere else.

February 11, 2009: No. 3 North Carolina 101, No. 5 Duke 87: Simply put, these Tar Heels were loaded, and cruised to a national championship by virtue of six double-digit wins in the NCAA tournament, including an emphatic win on Championship Monday against Michigan State.

In North Carolina’s fourth-straight win in Cameron Indoor, Hansbrough, the defending consensus national player of the year, had a modest evening (by his lofty standards) with 17 points and six rebounds. But Lawson, with 25 points on 8-of-11 from the field, lifted the Tar Heels over the top. Despite a 50-45 lead at intermission, Duke could not keep pace down the stretch, and Lawson was why.

Bilas: Ty Lawson was as fast with the ball as any point guard I can remember in my time in the game.

Davis: I’m sitting on press row. Ty Lawson had an unbelievable game, totally won the game for the Tar Heels. As the buzzer sounded, I’m sitting on press row, he’s five feet from me, he turns to the crowd to like nod at the crowd, and they were like, booing him or whatever. And he goes, “Yeah, f--- you.”

Paulus: Whenever you play North Carolina, one of the first things that you think about is how quickly they push the ball up the court, and Ty was a dynamic point guard that really put a lot of pressure on defenses.

Bilas: They were an offensive juggernaut, and they scored 90 points falling out of bed every morning, with Hansbrough being the best player, but they also had Wayne Ellington and Ty Lawson, Danny Green. They had a bunch of pros on that team, but they played at a pace which was really intimidating.

Paulus: Whether it’s a nonconference or an ACC game, we knew we were gonna get the other team’s best shot.

Spatola: So it was Hansbrough, what are you going to do with him inside? How are you going to scheme to get him off the glass? And then how are we going to deal with Ty Lawson in transition, and the finishers that they have?

Bilas: They had so many weapons, there was not going to be an off night, because they could, absent foul trouble or an injury, they had so many players that could score. And they had no real weak area that you could attack.

March 6, 2010: No. 4 Duke 82, North Carolina

50: The script had flipped. Hansbrough, Lawson, Green and Ellington were off to the NBA, and Scheyer, Singler, Smith and company were ready to take advantage.

Against a rebuilding Tar Heel group that sat at 16-14 going into the contest, the Blue Devils dominated from start to finish, clinching a share of the ACC regular season title. In his final game in Cameron, Scheyer racked up 20 points, seven assists and five rebounds, while Zoubek (also playing in his final home contest) reeled in 13 boards, including five on the offensive glass. The Philadelphia native’s emergence was a major reason for Duke’s eventual run to the Final Four, and subsequent national title victory against Gordon Hayward and Butler.

Spatola: There were two games that year where I said to myself, “Man, we’re gonna have a really good shot at doing well in the tournament.” I never honestly thought we would win a national title that year, but I was like, “Man, we have a really good chance of advancing.” The first was the [Mar. 3] loss at Maryland towards the end of that season, and then the Senior Night game against Carolina.

Davis: It was very unusual for all three of those guys (Scheyer, Singler and Smith) to have a really good game in the same game. It was usually like, two of them would play really well, and one of them wouldn’t give you much, or maybe one of them will play great. I feel like the only game where all three of them were just lights out was the West Virginia game, [in]the semifinals at the Final Four.

Paulus: There were some unbelievable minds [at Duke] with Johnny Dawkins, Steve Wojciechowski, Chris Collins, Nate James, Chris Spatola, Mike Schrage, those were the coaches that I had an opportunity to learn from and still have relationships with today.

Bilas: It wasn’t the most physically gifted team that Coach K’s had, but it played, they had so many good players with Singler and Smith and Scheyer and Zoubek and Thomas, those guys. It was a team that played extraordinarily well together and they could really offensive rebound, and they had great versatility.

Davis: Brian Zoubek was the guy who for most of his career at Duke was kind of the butt of a lot of jokes, because he was this big, gangly player who was supposed to be really good and didn’t seem to be able to contribute much of anything. And his dramatic improvement, really, I think it was just over the second half of the season, gave that team a dimension that not many teams had.

Spatola: We were so battle hardened. I mean, that group had been through so much, and that was kind of what typified that final season, that it wasn’t even so much about Carolina in that final game, although you wanted to obviously beat them and you wanted that senior class to go out with a bang. But it was more about “we are built for this game,” it was more about us in that final game that year.

Paulus: To see those guys with the hard work and the commitment and to see how they did it too, it’s incredible.

Bilas: When Scheyer took over at the point, it sort of jump started the ending where they ultimately won a championship. It was really kind of a remarkable team in that regard.

Paulus: What a terrific career [Scheyer] had. Not just with his scoring, but his play making, being one of the leaders [when Duke won] the national championship.

Davis: Those guys kind of fed off each other and maybe deferred to each other almost too much, where if one of them got going, and the other two would, instead of saying, “Well, I’m gonna go get mine,” they would really help him get going. So, [there was] something pretty special about that team, the way those three guys worked together.

Bilas: Nolan [Smith] was a two-way player, so he could handle it like a point guard, but he was also a scoring guard, and defended at a high level. He’s such a competitor, and obviously comes from great genes, his dad Derek Smith won a national championship at Louisville and played in the NBA for a long time.

I was a huge admirer of Derek Smith…. Nolan’s one of the best people you’ve ever met. He’s evidence that you can be incredibly nice and incredibly competitive and tough at the same time. Those two things aren’t mutually exclusive.

Spatola: I think we were undefeated at home, and so that was the other element of going into that game. Obviously it was Carolina, but it was, “let’s go undefeated at home,” and Coach K had made a big deal about that, about protecting Cameron and for those seniors to not lose a game their final year in Cameron.

Epilogue

Of the six national titles won from 2005 until 2010, three were won by Duke and North Carolina. Clearly, the two were the premier programs in the country, ratcheting the rivalry up even further. Of the nine games contested between Senior Night in 2006 and Senior Night in 2010, both teams were ranked seven times, and both teams were ranked in the top 10 four times.

After the battles in the 1980s and 1990s between the Blue Devils and Tar Heels under Krzyzewski and Dean Smith, the mid-to-late 2000s represented a second Golden Age for the rivalry.

Can Scheyer and Hubert Davis usher in another memorable era?

Bilas: They were typical of the rivalry, that there may be a period of time where one team is objectively better than the other, but the competition was ridiculous. And that’s always been true of that rivalry. I just remember going into those games going, “Either team can win this, it just depends on who plays better this night.”

Paulus: Being a part of the rivalry, to me it’s the best rivalry in college basketball. The moments you watch on TV as a kid, and you see the Jeff Capel buzzer beater…

Davis: The reason why Duke and Carolina is such a great rivalry, there’s a lot of reasons, but the biggest reason is that they’re always really good. So they’re always ranked, and oftentimes top 10 and many times top five. So that always adds to it. There are a lot of rivalries. Arizona-Arizona State’s a big rivalry, New Mexico-New Mexico State’s a big rivalry, Oklahoma-Oklahoma State. Even last night, Kansas-Kansas State was a huge game, because Kansas State was finally good.

Bilas: It was a wonderful period of time for the rivalry because there’s just two amazing teams that let it rip. And thankfully, in those games, they weren’t into these 52-50 rock fights that you tend to see because of the physicality of the game now, but they were beautiful to watch.

Paulus: You knew that there was gonna be even more attention from the national media, [and] you knew you were part of something that was bigger than yourself.

Davis: Ultimately, it’s going to depend on whether or not Hubert Davis and Jon Scheyer can sustain what’s gone on before. Hubert had a rough time last year, now it finished amazing, obviously, but, what made Coach K, Coach K was the fact that he didn’t just have one run in him. He did it over a very long period of time, everybody will tell you sustained excellence is the hardest thing. So, the jury’s out on Hubert about whether he can produce that, and it’s been a rough start for Jon, he knows that better than anybody. I have full confidence in him, I think he was the absolute right choice, but at the end of the day, the quality of this rivalry is going to depend on the quality of the teams.

Paulus: You dream of having an opportunity to be a part of the best rivalry in college basketball.