Last 4 groups: Duke vs. UNC in Coach Ok’s final Last 4 feels too good to be true

There’s all the time some Duke-North Carolina proven fact that’s so outrageous it makes you suppose there’s no method it might presumably be true.

Like how at the least one in every of them has been a No. 1 or a No. 2 seed in each NCAA event however one since 2004.

Or how absurdly even the collection has been over the past half-century:

Or how absurdly shut issues have been since Coach Ok was employed.

Or how each Last 4 performed from 1989 to 2001 besides one featured both the Blue Devils or the Tar Heels.

Or how, earlier than the COVID-eclipsed season of 2020-21, both UNC or Duke had been nationally ranked within the AP high 25 ballot for every one in every of their conferences relationship all the best way again to Feb. 27, 1960 … and even then, North Carolina was No. 12 within the coaches ballot.

In abstract, there’s a cause ESPN usually rolls out the primary of the 2 assured conferences between the Devils and the Heels on the week after the Tremendous Bowl. There’s no higher method to kick off school basketball’s unofficial second season than with the game’s most well-known and widely known rivalry.

Regardless of all that historical past and regardless of all these information, there’s all the time been one chapter of the Duke-Carolina rivalry the sports activities world has been ready longer than George R.R. Martin fans to learn.

Subsequent Saturday night time in New Orleans, it’ll be written. Duke and North Carolina will meet within the NCAA Males’s Basketball Event for the primary time in historical past.

The script isn’t one hundred pc Hollywood excellent, nevertheless it’s rattling shut.

Sure, North Carolina is an 8-seed that was overwhelmed by 17 factors or extra 4 occasions throughout the common season. Sure, the most important storyline surrounding this Duke crew coming into the event (outdoors of, you recognize, the factor) was that the Blue Devils have been nearly definitely not deserving of being a 2-seed. However each different storyline inside arm’s attain of the shortest sportswriter greater than makes up for the truth that these won’t be two of the best groups ever fielded by these perennial nationwide powerhouses, even when one has a few extra wins left in them.

For starters, the primary NCAA event assembly between Duke and North Carolina occurring on Last 4 Saturday in Mike Krzyzewski’s last season is bonkers sufficient to make just about anybody at the least Google simulation principle.

Not sufficient? Sprinkle in a little bit little bit of this:

Three weeks in the past it appeared like North Carolina had given Coach Ok the last word retirement reward: A 94-81 ass-kicking in Krzyzewski’s last sport at Cameron Indoor Stadium. A clearly perturbed Ok having to talk to a big group of followers, household and former gamers in a pre-scheduled postgame ceremony was so candy it nearly felt extreme.

After which a little bit little bit of this:

Following UNC’s upset win in Durham, members of the Duke teaching workers both refused to shake first-year Tar Heel head coach Hubert Davis’ hand or refused to look him within the eyes after they did.

“I don’t know what that’s about,” Davis stated after the sport. “I didn’t play in opposition to him. I don’t know him personally.”

Chris Carrawell, the Blue Satan assistant who refused to shake Davis’ hand, stated afterward that it was retaliation for Davis not being on the courtroom for the standard pregame handshakes with members of the Duke workers.

Nonetheless not shopping for into the hype?

What if I advised you that after upon a time, the foremost factor the basketball world knew about Coach Ok was that he couldn’t appear to ever win the large one? What if I added that every one of that narrative was obliterated in 1991 when Duke toppled Kansas to win its first nationwide title? And what if I completed by telling you that the Jayhawks are within the Last 4 on the opposite facet of the bracket, organising the likelihood for Krzyzewski to exit with a nationwide championship sport win over the crew that he additionally beat to achieve the mountain high for the primary time? Jim Nantz is already salivating.

In one other odd piece of symmetry, the final time the Last 4 was performed in New Orleans, one other pair of hated rivals — Kentucky and Louisville — battled for the correct to (probably) face Kansas two days later. The closely favored rival that 12 months (Kentucky) went on to win its semifinal sport and topple the Jayhawks to say the nationwide crown.

On the lookout for a Carolina angle? How concerning the alternative to create an much more imperfect curtail name in your final foil?

Closing the door on Ok’s historical past within the rivalry with type was unimaginable. The one factor that would presumably be higher could be closing the door on Ok’s historical past, interval, with type. Having a first-year head coach on the sidelines — one who some had stated appeared in over his head simply a few months in the past — to totally set the tone for the rivalry’s subsequent period would solely add to the expertise.

For the primary time in its prolonged and well-known historical past, the Tobacco Street Rivalry hitting the most important of faculty basketball phases. That reality goes to be hitting you within the face from each path between now and round 9 p.m. on April 2 when the 2 blue-bloods tip issues off contained in the Superdome.

Perhaps you’ll get irritated with all of this speak, perhaps you already are, or perhaps you’re able to ingest each little bit of the hype over the course of the 5 days forward. Regardless, you’re desperate to see how this factor performs out, and also you’re going to be watching when it does.

How might you not?

Two of the most important applications within the sport on the game’s greatest stage in what may very well be the most important identify within the sport’s last sport. It’s nearly extra ludicrous than a 15-seed with a Peacock mascot crashing the social gathering would have been.