So...How’s Saturday Looking In The Triangle?

Things are going to be crazy in the Dean Dome

Everyone is talking about how the ACC is down, other than Duke, Clemson and Louisville. Virginia’s post-Bennett hangover is part of that because Tony Bennett made Virginia a perennial power until, basically, Covid, NIL and the new transfer rules.

UNC is part of it too.

We’ll do more on what’s happened in Chapel Hill this season over the next few days, but let’s touch on a few things now.

The ACC runs on a hyper-competitiveness fueled by the schools being close to each other. Well, historically, anyway if not so much anymore. It’s in our DNA. And nowhere is that more intense than in the Triangle. Duke and UNC are within biking distance of each other and NC State is just about 30 miles away.

When Everett Case was dominating the ACC, UNC spent the money and brought in Frank McGuire. Duke got lucky with an NC State assistant, Vic Bubas, and when UNC forced McGuire out, got even luckier with his former assistant, Dean Smith.

Norm Sloan came back to Raleigh and drove things to new heights, which inspired Smith’s intense competitive drive. Duke hired Mike Krzyzewski in 1980, UNC ultimately got Roy Williams to come home and now Duke has Jon Scheyer.

NC State sort of fell out of things but before they did, Jim Valvano won a national title.

The schools push each other is what we’re getting at.

This has been a tough season for Hubert Davis, who took a lot of abuse from Tar Heel fans. We’re not quite sure what inspired him to change his starting lineup and we haven’t watched them closely enough to understand why Ven-Allen Lubin ultimately supplanted Jalen Washington and became vastly more effective. We also don’t understand why Jae’Lyn Withers went from an afterthought to very effective, but our guess is that the guards, in rotation, give the bigs relief. It doesn't explain the improved rebounding entirely, but holistically, that makes sense.

Arguably it took too long, but Davis made some intriguing moves there and now he’s bringing Seth Trimble and Ian Jackson off the bench and those two guys, as reserves, have proved to be a real handful.

At one point, Red Auerbach had Bob Cousy, Bill Sharman, Sam Jones and KC Jones and the two Joneses were the reserves for a while.

UNC’s situation is somewhat like that. Bringing those guys off the bench is a huge luxury because they’re both easily starter-quality players. It’s just that starting your four best players, in UNC’s situation, is a liability. Bringing Tremble and Jackson off the bench?

That’s an amazing asset.

In case anyone is unclear about it, this is not the same UNC team we saw in Cameron, where Duke had ludicrous leads of 40-15 and 74-44 before it got closer late. This team now has an identity and some significant success. You know what it doesn’t have?

A Quad One win. It’s kind of bizarre to see that from UNC, isn’t it?

Well, they have one last chance to get one before the ACC Tournament. Duke is already the hated rival of course and there’s plenty of fuel for this rematch, not least of all the Cameron Beatdown from a few weeks ago.

However, as of now, the Blue Devils are UNC’s Golden Ticket. If they win this game, everything changes. Plus it’s Senior Day and all the rest. So if you’re feeling cocky and think, well, Duke is just better and they’re going to smoke the Heels, you’d better check that. This one is likely to be extremely intense and, emotionally anyway, the Tar Heels should probably be favored.