Both UNC and Duke with Plenty to Prove as NCAA Basketball's Best Rivalry Returns

Throw out the record books when the North Carolina Tar Heels visit the Duke Blue Devils on Wednesday night.

It's an overused expression that doesn't actually apply to most rivalries, but take a look through the recent history of this one, and it really seems to be a flip of a coin when the Tobacco Road titans get together.

Duke and North Carolina have met 31 times during the regular season since February of 1999. The road team absurdly went 16-15 in those games.

In the 23 regular-season games since March of 2003, Duke has 12 wins to North Carolina's 11. In seven of those 23 games—and in four of the past seven—the team with the better AP Top 25 ranking suffered the loss.

You can also completely disregard any notion of one team coming into the game red hot or ice cold.

The last time these two played, North Carolina was riding a 12-game winning streak and Duke was coming off a 10-point loss to a Wake Forest team that finished the year with a 17-16 record. The Blue Devils hadn't scored more than 72 points in any of their previous six games.

Naturally, Duke won by a score of 93-81 in the most recent entry on a list of at least a dozen such unpredictable instances over the past decade.

In other words, if you think you know who's going to win this game, you're only fooling yourself.

What we do know, though, is that they both desperately need the win—Duke needs it to solidify its case for a No. 1 seed in the NCAA tournament, and North Carolina has to prove that it even deserves consideration for the Sweet 16.

Devils Are Rolling

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Since suffering those back-to-back unsightly losses to North Carolina State and Miami in mid-January, Duke has won eight of nine, including marquee road games against Louisville and Virginia and a 30-point home win over Notre Dame.

When they want to, the Blue Devils look like the best team in the country. As they were taking the screws to the Fighting Irish, it was a not-so-subtle reminder that many felt Jahlil Okafor and company were the team best suited to knock off Kentucky—and that was back when the Wildcats looked completely invincible before the start of SEC play.

So what was up with Duke's close wins over Florida State, Georgia Tech and Syracuse—three teams with no chance of making the tournament? Why did the Blue Devils fall so far behind both St. John's and Virginia before rallying for wins? And where has Amile Jefferson been?

They're minor quibbles. Wins are wins and they're still getting them despite a starting power forward who's averaging 3.8 points and 4.2 rebounds over his last six games. But aren't those the questions that need to be asked of a potential No. 1 seed that has a pair of less-than-stellar losses on its resume?

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Because, let's not forget, Duke has some stiff competition for a spot on the top seed line.

Kentucky hasn't lost a game. Virginia's only loss was to Duke. Gonzaga is undefeated outside of an overtime game at Arizona. Wisconsin hasn't lost at full strength. Kansas has the No. 1 RPI and a two-game cushion atop the best conference in the country. Villanova has five RPI Top 25 wins and only two losses.

A home loss to North Carolina wouldn't be a bad one by any means, but it would give Duke four conference losses and arguably the seventh-best overall resume in the country.

And lest you think there isn't much difference between a No. 1 and No. 2 seed, take note that over the past two decades Duke has a tournament record of 34-8 as a No. 1 seed and a 7-5 record as a No. 2 seed.

Heels Are Reeling

Though we noted already that recent wins and losses have virtually no bearing on the outcome when the Blue Devils and Tar Heels square off, there's no denying that North Carolina is stumbling into this one.

Not only have the Tar Heels lost three of their last four games, but they had a world of trouble trying to slow down the primary scorers for Florida State, Syracuse and Boston College in their last three wins.

Xavier Rathan-Mayes scored 35 for the Seminoles who darn near messed around and won a game at the Dean Dome. Trevor Cooney had 28 and Rakeem Christmas had 22 as the Orange simply ran out of gas in scoring 83 in Chapel Hill. And Olivier Hanlan had 30 points as the Eagles put up more of a fight at home than many of us expected.

Frankly, it's getting hard to remember the last time the Tar Heels looked like one of the 16 best teams in the country.

They played extremely well in the first half at Louisville before giving away an 18-point lead. On the flip side of that coin, they were down 13 late into the second half at home against the Cardinals before storming back for what was undeniably their biggest resume-boosting win of the season.

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We probably have to go back to the beating they delivered to Clemson on Jan. 3 to find their last "We're an elite team" type of statement game—and that was 12 games ago.

Much of that is due to a lack of health.

With Marcus Paige's plantar fasciitis and sprained ankle, Kennedy Meeks' seemingly constant battle with one strain of the flu or another, Brice Johnson's back spasms, Joel Berry's groin injury and the broken bone in Theo Pinson's foot, just about every noteworthy Tar Heel has either missed conference games or played a number of them at less than 100 percent.

When all is said and done, though, injuries happen. Very few teams are anywhere near 100 percent at this point in the year, and while the Tar Heels are dealing with the injury bug more than most, that excuse can only go so far.

And it wasn't injuries that allowed Pittsburgh to score 89 points in 62 possessions on Saturday afternoon.

As Paul Zeise of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette wrote after the game, "The Panthers were superb passing, taking care of and shooting the ball, and they did so pretty much at will while the Tar Heels seemed powerless to stop them."

And as Rob Dauster of NBCSports.com noted on Twitter at halftime, it would have been a much uglier blowout if North Carolina hadn't been having one of its better offensive outputs of the season:

Put forth a defensive effort like that against Duke, and the Tar Heels will suffer a second straight blowout loss, dropping to 18-8 with losses in four out of five and leading to way too many articles asking whether off-the-court distractions—the Wainstein Report, Dean Smith's death, etc.—simply became too much for this team to handle.

Pick up a road win against Duke, however, and suddenly, North Carolina's trajectory goes in the complete opposite direction. Then, the Tar Heels would be 19-7 with five RPI Top 50 wins and five remaining regular-season games that are all winnable—at Miami and Georgia Tech; vs. Georgia Tech, NC State and Duke.

It's just one game, but it drastically impacts how the Tar Heels are viewed from that point forward.

Who Wins?

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Everything points to a Duke win, but there is one thing that could really tip the scales in North Carolina's favor.

For all the great things that Okafor does on offense, he isn't much of an interior defender. He has also had some difficulty staying out of foul trouble lately, averaging 3.5 personal fouls over his last four games.

The Tar Heels rank fourth in the nation in percentage of points scored from two-point range (61.7 percent) while Duke gives up the fourth-highest percentage of points inside the arc (60.9 percent), according to KenPom.com.

In theory, Meeks, Johnson and Isaiah Hicks could absolutely victimize the Blue Devils in the paint. But don't be surprised if Mike Krzyzewski unleashes his newfound zone defense against the poor perimeter-shooting Tar Heels to mitigate their ability to dominate the offensive lane.

As is frequently becoming the case for Duke, Justise Winslow should be the X-factor in this one.

He has averaged 14.2 points and 8.8 rebounds over his last five games. Outside of Okafor, he has been the team's most important player, providing valuable defense and the ability to stretch the floor on offense. If Winslow can slow down Johnson when he's at the 4 in Duke's three-guard lineup, the Blue Devils should win easily.

Of course, what should happen in this rivalry rarely does.

Kerry Miller covers college basketball for Bleacher Report. You can follow him on Twitter @kerrancejames.