Austin Rivers' Three Pointer Adds to the Greatness of the Duke-Carolina Rivalry

When Austin Rivers nailed his three point jumper over the outstretched arms of Carolina big man Tyler Zeller, Rivers not only put his signature on the Duke-Carolina rivalry, but he also showed the doubters out there just what makes this rivalry so great.

In the days leading up to the game there were sportswriters and fans out there who had decided the rivalry just wasn't that big a deal anymore.

They said it lacked the excitement of years past, that there just wasn't the same sizzle and pop to the rivalry. They said that the games just didn't have as much on the line as in years past and that other basketball rivalries had passed this one by.

What were these people thinking?

Maybe I'm biased because, as a Carolina fan I have a dog in the fight. Maybe I'm biased because I have a brother who is a huge Duke fan. Maybe I'm biased because I live right here in the heart of Big Four country, minutes away from Winston-Salem and just about an hour to hour and a half minutes away from the Triangle, so I was raised as a sports fan on the importance of these rivalries.

I willingly admit to those biases, but those biases don't change the fact that Duke-Carolina is still a huge rivalry (arguably the biggest in all of college basketball).

To make the argument that the games have slipped in importance is to say by extension that the two schools have slipped in their performance.

But the last time I looked, just a couple of years ago Duke was beating Butler for a national championship. This after Carolina had won two titles in a five year span.

That is excellence, and that is what is on display every time these two teams get together.

You see, this isn't just a basketball rivalry between two great programs, it's a blood feud.

Carolina and Duke aren't just opponents, they're opposites in many ways. Duke is the private school aspiring to Ivy League status, while Carolina is the flagship of the state university system.

Duke is populated seemingly by mostly out-of-state kids who look down at the Carolina "yokels", while Carolina is the dream school for nearly every top-notch student in the state.

Duke is led by "Coach K", a man who has parlayed his excellent coaching skills into becoming a one man conglomerate, while Carolina is led by Roy Williams, who does the "Aw Shucks" thing better than Gomer Pyle.

Throw in the fact that Durham and Chapel Hill are well within a good 5K run of one another, with the players, coaches and fans never too far away from one another, and the intensity level goes through the roof.

For us in North Carolina this isn't a twice a year thing, it's a 365 day thing.

We eat, sleep, and drink it.

We live and breathe it.

And a game like Wednesday's validates or crushes us. It matters to us beyond just two basketball games a year.

Ask the baseball players, the soccer players or the football players if it's just about the basketball games.

As for the basketball, Austin Rivers broke my Carolina Blue heart when he dropped that jumper on Zeller.

But it also thrilled the basketball fan in me, because I knew two things had just happened: another chapter had been added to the legend of Duke-Carolina, and also that all the world (or at least the basketball viewing public) had the greatness of the rivalry re-impressed upon them.

I may have hated the game results, but I was happy that if the Heels had to lose to "Dook", then at least the game lived up to the historical consistency of its rivalry.

Long live the Duke-Carolina rivalry.

There's no other like it!