DURHAM, N.C. — As the painful final minutes passed, all Hubert Davis could do was cross his arms and smack his gum.
No more sideline histrionics. No more animated instructions for his players.
Just a blank stare from atop a baby-blue sportcoat, one almost two hours deep into a living nightmare.
Davis, sadly, had seen this movie before, almost four years ago to the day, when he face-planted in his first UNC versus Duke game as a head coach. His Tar Heels lost by 20 that day, inspiring doubt — still only midway through Davis’ first season — about whether he was fit to be the Tar Heels’ coach. What came next, of course, seemed to answer that resoundingly: Davis’ team caught a comet, embarrassed Mike Krzyzewski in his pageant-like last home game, then rode that momentum to within 20 minutes of a national championship.
Doesn’t that feel like a million years ago?
If it didn’t before Saturday night, it definitely does now, after Davis and his team found themselves in a disastrous deja vu: on the wrong end of an 87-70 blowout to No. 2 Duke, a final score that in no way represents how lopsided this rivalry tilt really was. The Tar Heels kept things close for, oh, all of four minutes, before the Blue Devils ripped off a 16-0 run that gave them a 15-point lead and effectively ended the game. (Yes, really.) For the remaining 33 minutes and change, UNC never got any closer than that, never once truly cutting into the seismic lead that took Duke all of two minutes and 38 seconds to build.
“Unfortunately,” Davis said, “we were just behind too much.”
But if 23-6 felt bad, or like staring up at a vertical slope, then what about after that? What about when Cooper Flagg — who more than made his mark in his first UNC-Duke game, recording 21 points, eight rebounds, seven assists, three steals and two blocks — stepped to the free-throw line with 5:16 left in the first half and calmly made two free throws to make it 40-13?
no caption needed pic.twitter.com/rQQgCnjzTV
— Duke Men’s Basketball (@DukeMBB) February 2, 2025
Losing a rivalry game is one thing. Getting blown out is rarer, but it happens.
But getting tripled up, in the first half?
“They whupped us,” UNC guard Seth Trimble said, “straight and back, right from the jump.”
What Saturday laid bare, if it was not already evident, is the stark difference between these programs’ respective trajectories. The now-unavoidable reality is that these two Tobacco Road rivals are moving in opposite directions.
One of these things is simply not like the other.
Purely through circumstance, the comparisons are inevitable. The 8 miles between the schools. Their blue-blood status. Losing their totemic coaches a year apart. As Krzyzewski and Roy Williams used to say, for all the hate that both fan bases harbor, the inner workings of the two programs — the third and fourth winningest in the history of the sport — are remarkably similar.
Or, at least, they used to be.
On one hand, you have Duke, arguably the best team in college basketball this season. (Arguments will be heard for Auburn, too, the consensus No. 1 team in America, whose only loss this season remains to the Blue Devils, back in December.) The heartbeat of Jon Scheyer’s team are three members of the nation’s No. 1-ranked recruiting class — Scheyer’s second such haul in three offseasons — but most of all Flagg, simultaneously the best freshman in America and a Wooden Award front-runner. Scheyer also supplemented his roster with three upperclassmen transfers, all of whom were unheralded upon their signings in Durham but have proved pivotal in fortifying the nation’s third-best defense.
And beyond this season, from a structural level, Scheyer has gradually pushed his alma mater beyond the Duke bubble it almost solely operated within under Krzyzewski. Scheyer’s first two hires upon succeeding Krzyzewski? Jai Lucas, then a Kentucky assistant coach, and Rachel Baker, formerly of Nike and the WNBA. Neither had previous ties to the Blue Devils. All Lucas has done is orchestrate three top-16 defenses, and Baker has become an integral cog in Duke’s recruiting machinery. Then, last offseason, when former Duke assistant Amile Jefferson left for the Boston Celtics, Scheyer opted not to replace him with another former Blue Devil; he instead hired Oklahoma assistant Emanuel Dildy, meaning two of his three assistants never played for the Blue Devils.
Compare that to North Carolina, where Hubert Davis has maintained that only former North Carolina players are fit to serve on his staff. Davis believes that only one-time UNC players can fully understand what it takes to be successful at UNC, that someone must have walked in those exact shoes to take flight in Chapel Hill. Never mind that Dean Smith, Roy Williams, Frank McGuire and Bill Guthridge never suited up for the Tar Heels, and they all seemed to work out OK.
“Obviously, we’re not where we wanted to be,” Hubert Davis said after UNC’s loss to Duke, its fourth in five games. (Zachary Taft / Imagn Images)
As for Davis’ team, he importantly retained All-American guard RJ Davis, but the roster construction thereafter was suspect, to be generous. His prized transfer portal pickup, former Belmont shooter Cade Tyson, has been borderline unplayable all season, relegated to 10 minutes Saturday — the most he’s seen since 15 against Louisville on Jan. 1 — and one corner 3-pointer that careened off the side of the backboard. But furthermore, knowing he was set to lose the school’s leading career rebounder, Armando Bacot, after last season, Davis signed exactly one big man via the high school recruiting ranks: James Brown, a sub-100 center who entered Saturday having played 32 minutes all season. He tried bolstering UNC’s frontcourt via the transfer portal but failed despite offseason meetings with Adou Thiero (now at Arkansas) and Cliff Omoruyi (now at Alabama). Without diving too deep into murky monetary discussions, Davis has maintained — and reiterated this preseason — that during his tenure, North Carolina will never be a “transactional” program.
Meanwhile, asked about the Blue Devils’ recruiting success this week, Scheyer said plainly: “For anybody, obviously, going forward to act like NIL isn’t a part of the equation, (it) would be foolish to say that.”
One of these things simply is not like the other.
That was never more clear than on Saturday, when the Tar Heels’ ill-fitting roster was as exposed against Duke as it has been all season. UNC’s one-time 32-point deficit was its largest this season, which is saying something considering this team had trailed by double digits in nine previous games. Duke’s length — the Blue Devils are the longest team in the country, per KenPom, with no rotation players under 6 feet 5 — regularly closed off passing and driving lanes for the Tar Heels’ diminutive guards, whose quickness did not compensate for their stature.
After the loss — UNC’s fourth in five games — Davis’ team sits at 13-10, below the NCAA Tournament cutline, and in serious jeopardy of missing the Big Dance for the second time in three seasons.
“Obviously, we’re not where we wanted to be,” Davis said. “The one encouraging thing for me is that I don’t think we’ve reached our full potential, and that’s out there.”
But is it attainable? North Carolina still has some quality games left on its schedule despite a lackluster ACC — versus Pitt next Saturday, at Clemson thereafter, and the regular-season finale versus Duke in Chapel Hill — but what has it done lately to inspire any confidence that it can win those games?
Then there’s Duke, winners of 15 straight, its longest such stretch in over a decade.
“The nature of this game, it’s exciting, right? There’s anticipation. You know there’s going to be a great crowd,” Scheyer said. “So you can feel happy — but really, the team that has an edge has won this game. And that’s something we just kept talking about: our edge, our focus.”
Compare that to what North Carolina big Ven-Allen Lubin said when asked about Duke’s 16-0 run and what went wrong for the Tar Heels during that stretch: “We just lost focus.”
These teams, like every club in college basketball, have fluctuated over the years. Some good, few bad, some truly spectacular. Duke looks like it might have one of the latter this season, a squad surely capable of making the Final Four and cutting down the nets in San Antonio. UNC does not, which in and of itself is not a fatal flaw. Only one team can win it all, right?
But that the Tar Heels seem so far behind — and sinking further with each passing loss — is more concerning. And that’s not just about one blowout result, one lopsided loss.
One of these things simply is not like the other.
(Top photo of UNC’s Seth Trimble and Duke’s Cooper Flagg: Jared C. Tilton / Getty Images)
