Duke vs. UNC Predictions: Home Cooking Will Be the Difference for Tar Heels

We just got to watch the Super Bowl on Sunday, but the Duke-North Carolina rivalry is bigger than the Super Bowl in some circles. It will renew itself for the first time this season on Wednesday.

Games between the Blue Devils and the Tar Heels are always huge "show me" games for both teams. But between the two of them, there's more pressure on Duke to show the country that it should be counted among the elite teams in the nation this season.

Duke is coming into this game on a sour note, having just lost at home to Miami (Fla.). That makes it two losses in the team's last five games, and that's not necessarily a coincidence. The ACC is very strong this year, and the Blue Devils don't seem to belong in the upper crust.

On Wednesday, North Carolina will prove they do not.

The point has been made over and over again, and I'll make it again here: This Tar Heels team has more talent than any team in the country.

Their frontcourt of Harrison Barnes, John Henson and Tyler Zeller is as good as it gets. Kendall Marshall is the best distributor in the country, and Reggie Bullock and P.J. Hairston have been surprisingly good in place of the injured Dexter Strickland.

It's true that the Tar Heels can look a little indifferent at times on defense, but nobody scores like they do. It's even scarier that they don't have to rely on just one, two or even three guys to score points. At any given moment, they have five guys on the floor who can't put the ball in the basket.

The Blue Devils will do their very best to limit the damage, but this game will invariably force them to take advantage of North Carolina's sometimes-shaky defense.

The Blue Devils are going to need some big games from some key players.

Because Duke is going to be at a disadvantage against North Carolina inside, the team's guards are basically going to have to play the games of their lives.

Austin Rivers has been great in some games, not so great in others. The Blue Devils are going to need him to be at his very best in this game. Since driving through the lane is not such a great idea, this essentially means Duke will need Rivers to shoot it better than he has all season.

The Blue Devils know Seth Curry can shoot. He has, though, been inconsistent from three-point range. That could change if he gets regular looks from beyond the arc, which is a near-certainty in this matchup. If Curry can knock them down from long distance, North Carolina is not going to pull away in this game.

The biggest difficulty facing Duke is not the mismatches on the court, however.

The simple truth is that the road has not been kind to Duke this season, a reality that you have to chalk up to the team's relative lack of veteran leadership. To boot, it does not need to be argued that Chapel Hill is a pretty tough place to play.

For all of North Carolina's advantages on the matchup front, the energy the Tar Heels are going to get from the home crowd is going to be the difference in this one. They'll hang tough, but it's just a matter of time before the Blue Devils are overrun. 

Prediction: North Carolina by 10