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North Carolina-Duke has it all
– even Donald Trump
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DURHAM, N.C. – Watching a Duke-North Carolina game is an
emotional experience no matter which shade of blue you root for and
no matter how often you have done it before.
The best rivalry in college basketball – and quite
possibly in college sports – gave us another frenetic game
Saturday night at Cameron Indoor Stadium. No.3 Duke won, 70-65,
over No.14 North Carolina, entering the ACC tournament next weekend
with momentum and its traditional No.1 seed.
This one was played on the floor about half the time –
I’ve never seen the court-scrubbers so busy during timeouts.
Players got hurt and got up and kept going. The coaches screamed
and Crazy Towel Guy waved his towel and the difference was
ultimately Luol Deng, the Duke freshman who scored 25 points and
was the best player on the court Saturday night.
The emotion began early.
Duhon had tears streaming down his face before the game.
Introduced with the other seniors who were playing their final home
game in Cameron, he ran to midcourt and stripped off his warm-up
shirt to unveil a T-shirt that read “Our House.”
As always, the atmosphere at Cameron Indoor Stadium was frantic
and wonderful. Donald Trump even came this time to see it _ the
rumor was that he managed the very difficult trick of parking his
private airplane on his very own hair.
Reporters are fortunate enough to sit directly in front of the
Cameron Crazies at Duke games, and I got spit on for the first time
by the Crazies at this game. But it was accidental, and I
didn’t really even mind. The guy was just screaming at the
ref so hard that he started spraying.
There was a serious “Wizard of Oz” theme going on
with many of the students, owing to Roy Williams leaving Kansas for
North Carolina. Right behind me sat a group of eight students who
had every major character in “Oz” covered – from
the obvious ones like Dorothy (with sparkling Duke-blue slippers,
of course) to the Wicked Witch of the West and even her Flying
Monkey.
Many of those students had lived at part-time in
Kryzyzewskiville – the tent city that springs up at Duke
every winter – since Dec.26th, mostly so they could see this
game.
The game they saw was very sloppy at the start. Although each
team boasted five players in double figures, they could barely
score in the first 10 minutes. Duke missed at least four easy
layups early.
North Carolina led, and Duke pulled back ahead, and ultimately
North Carolina had the ball, down 68-65, in the final seconds.
McCants had it and was double-covered, but he had to get ready to
shoot a three and send it into overtime.
And McCants lost the ball.
J.J. Redick picked it up and immediately called timeout and the
place nearly exploded. There were 4.4 seconds left, Duke had the
ball and a three-point lead, and Redick quickly got to the
line.
Redick is a 97 percent free-throw shooter, so that was that.
Duke would win by five points, closing another chapter on a
fantastic rivalry.
Scott Fowler
Knight Ridder Newspapers
