North Carolina Tar Heels: Duke Game #1 Preview

Number 5 North Carolina Tar Heels face Number 20 Duke Blue Devils in the renewal of the big basketball rivalry.

North Carolina Tar Heels. Duke Blue Devils. At this point we could let the clichés take over. It’s a game where you can throw out the records.

In 1995-6, the Tar Heels had a team destined for the Final Four with noted sophomores Jerry Stackhouse and Rasheed Wallace. Duke that same year was missing Coach K for health reason and started 0-7 in conference play. Didn’t matter, the game still went to double overtime before the Tar Heels pulled it out. Jeff Capel, who extended the game once at regulation, is now behind the Duke bench, a living memory of that game.

The power has swung back and forth between the two schools for about thirty years dating back to Coach K’s first run to the Final Four in 1986-7. The teams have mostly been good throughout that time with hiccups every now and then. Sometimes you would get a 1995 Duke team or particularly a 2001 Carolina team, but those were the exceptions and not the rule.

This year we get to do it all again, twice for sure and maybe three times if we’re lucky. This Duke team is a short rotation team built on the raw talent of its core of freshmen. This Carolina team is a deep team built around players who have all bled blue together. Coach K missed the Georgia Tech game due to illness, Roy Williams missed the end of the Boston College game to vertigo. The Tar Heels are top 5, the Blue Devils just got back to the top twenty.

So it goes. Tonight will hopefully see a great basketball game between teams with something to prove.

Duke Starting Five (Projected)

G Derryk Thornton – Fr
G Grayson Allen – So
G/F Matt Jones – Jr
F Brandon Ingram – Fr
C Marshall Plumlee – Sr
Key Reserve: Luke Kennard – Fr

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Expect Duke to spread the court to space out the defense while using Plumlee for screens. Duke seems to have embraced its lack of size by employing this more small ball lineup, and Ingram is quite happy to hang around the three point line. Thornton is the point guard, but don’t be surprised if the ball goes through Allen.

Against the Heels the key player has to be Ingram. He will be a frustrating matchup for the second big if the Tar Heels decide to leave two posts on the court. Notre Dame and Boston College both tried to isolate Carolina bigs in the man-to-man, and neither of them had a player like Ingram to do it with. Ingram was highly recruited by Carolina before choosing Duke and going against his Kinston predecessor Stackhouse.

Carolina Starting Five (Projected)

G Joel Berry II – So
G Marcus Paige – Sr
F Justin Jackson – So
F Brice Johnson – Sr
C Kennedy Meeks – Jr
Key Reserve: G/F Theo Pinson – So