Duke Basketball -- The Ongoing War With North Carolina

The Battle of 15-501 continues apace.  No winner is declared. No declaration is anticipated.

As a Duke grad, I have to give North Carolina its due--5 national championships, a record 18 Final Fours, 17 ACC Championships, 27 regular season conference titles. The Tar Heels cannot be denied. They are a lion among programs.

Sadly for North Carolina, a second lion shares the shade of the only tree on the veld.

My Duke Blue Devils basketball team plays in a crackerbox gym located a scant 8.83 miles from the cavernous Dean Smith Center. While at Duke, a small private school of 6,400 undergraduates, I sometimes ran between the campuses along the bucholic, pine tree-lined highway known simply as 15-501. 

Amazingly, my Blue Devils are managing to match the mighty Tar Heels in nearly every category of hoops success.

Since Mike Krzyzewski took over in 1980, his record against Carolina is 34-35. Not impressive, you say? Consider that seven-time national champion Kentucky is 5-9 against Carolina in that time and two-time national champion N. C. State only 19-51. My money says that Coach K will make up that 1 game deficit next year.

Sure, Carolina leads the all-time series with Duke, 130-99, but no other team in history has come close to beating North Carolina 99 times.  Despite the deficit, Duke won its 18th ACC Championship trophy this year.  Only 17 such trophies grace the shelves of the Smith Center. Duke has more ACC Tournament wins, too--87 compared to the Carolina's 84.  And Duke has won 9 of the last 12 ACC Tournaments.

Our little school in the pines has 4 national titles, one shy of the Heels, but we almost certainly will be pre-season number 1 next year. Joe Lunardi is casting Carolina as a 12 seed in next year's NCAA, but I think we all know Carolina won't go that low. I guess Lunardi thinks Carolina has a long walk back from the wilderness, but we at Duke know better. We know that Carolina returns with--how did Drax put it in Moonraker?--the tedious inevitability of an unloved season.

Carolina leads Duke in all-time NCAA tournament wins, 102-96, but Coach K has won 77 NCAA tournament games, more than any men's Division 1 coach in history.  Roy Williams is an impressive second among active coaches, and third all-time, with 55.  

Carolina leads Duke 18-15 in Final Fours (both staggering totals), but Duke has 16 Final Four victories to Carolina's 15.

Carolina is the second winningest team of all time (by a single game over Kansas) and Duke is fourth, but Duke has more 30-win seasons than Carolina, 12-11.

Coach K has matched Dean Smith in Final Four berths at 11 apiece and trails John Wooden by just one. We can fix that next year.  

Carolina has a 13-12 edge over Duke in NCAA number 1 seeds. We can fix that next year too. 

With just 11 more victories, Coach K will pass Dean Smith in all-time wins. And if Duke bags another 35-win season, Coach K will pass Bobby Knight's record of 902 men's Division 1 wins. 

I will take no particular pleasure in seeing Bobby Knight's records fall. I give him all due credit for his basketball genius, his training of Coach K, his unapologetic approach to Patton-style leadership, and his magic act in 1980. I mean, how could ANYONE convince the AD of a basketball program with four Final Four banners and two runner-up trophies to hire a 31-year-old coach with an unspellable name and a losing record at Army? (Besides, Coach Knight stuffed an LSU fan in a hotel waste basket at the 1981 Final Four. Somehow, that works for me.)

Of course, the more I look at this extensive data, it occurs to me that Duke and Carolina are, indeed, like two lions fighting over the shade of that one tree ... while smaller mammals scurry for cover. 

The ACC has appeared in an astonishing 24 of the last 30 Final Fours, with a total of 29 appearances in those years. Duke and Carolina are responsible for 22 of those 29 trips.

In its 57 year history, the ACC has made the Big Dance 63% of the time. By comparison, the Big Ten has appeared in 51% of all Final Fours and the Big East has made 37% of the Final Fours since conference formation in 1979.  Heck, it's not even close.

The bottom line is simply this. Nine national championship trophies reside in gyms separated by a 30-minute bike ride. The intensity of the Battle of 15-501 makes all other battles pale in comparion, and therein lies the secret of the two lions' wider success. In that sense, I suppose, both lions should be thankful for each other.

For Duke and North Carolina, you see, it isn't a matter of beating the nation or even the conference.

It's a matter of keeping up with the neighbors.