53 hours...
- The first of many Harrison Barnes ankle updates came this morning during the ACC teleconference. Roy Williams noted Barnes experienced less pain and swelling after the Maryland game versus how things looked following the initial injury at Wake Forest. That is taking into account the fact Barnes sprained the ankle again on Saturday and Mike Patrick tried to give him a knee injury too. It was clear Barnes was not 100% which makes his 18 points and 8 rebounds a warrior’s effort. He also hit two huge shots when it counted. Roy indicated Barnes would be limited in practice to give the ankle a little more healing time. Next ankle update will be tonight at 7 PM on Roy Williams live.
- Given UNC’s forthcoming schedule after this week, the next two home games vs Duke and Virginia take on real importance. UNC will play four of the final six games on the road traveling to Miami, NC State, Virginia and Duke with home dates vs Clemson and Maryland sprinkled in. UNC really needs to be 9-1 heading into that stretch since the ACC is not as crippled as we were first led to believe. Miami won at Duke on Sunday and is not the team UNC ran over in Chapel Hill earlier in the season. There is a potential of a 5-6 team grouping of teams with 1-3 three losses each making for an interesting stretch run and ACC Tournament in Atlanta. For UNC, beating Duke could put the Blue Devils ACC regular season hopes on life support.
- Earlier this year there were members of the media touting Kentucky-Louisville as the “most intense” rivalry in college basketball. There was an attempt last year to say it was the best rivalry but people laughed so they came up with something more subjective but equally laughable. As for hard evidence of what the UNC-Duke rivalry is, I give you these two stats.1. In the past 75 meetings between UNC and Duke the score is Duke 5858 UNC 5857.
2. The record in the rivalry over those games is UNC 38 Duke 37.That is a true rivalry. There are period of back and forth and total dominance by one then the other. After 75 games which is a period of over 30 years, UNC and Duke the scoreboard says its basically a tie. That is what makes this rivalry the best there is because it swings back and forth. It is high level, unpredictable and never boring.
- One more thing: DUKE SUCKS.
