When a rival’s name pops up on the schedule, a certain feeling of hatred begins to surge.
Make it the Tobacco Road rivalry between North Carolina and Duke, and hatred often does not capture the intensity on the line, especially when one team feels disrespected by the other—and the Tar Heels may have provided that spark by rescheduling a dual with Navy right before facing the Blue Devils.
“When you have a rivalry match, people say throw records, throw rankings, throw all that stuff out the window because it’s a rivalry,” Duke head coach Glen Lanham said. “[North Carolina is] wrestling Navy before us. To me, I take that in a bad way. For me, you’re bringing another team…. They’re thinking they can get two in one day, so it’s not a rivalry to them, so we’ve got to make it that way. The only way to do that is to win.”
After No. 14 North Carolina competes in a rescheduled dual against the Midshipmen at 5 p.m. Wednesday, Duke will face off against its rival at Carmichael Arena in Chapel Hill at 7 p.m. Although the Blue Devils gave the Tar Heels a scare last year in a 16-15 thriller in Durham, North Carolina will look to wrap up two wins against a struggling and short-handed Duke squad for its second straight conference victory.
“We’ve got a couple, maybe three, four matches I would look at on paper that we’re favored in, but where they’re favored in matches, they’re favored heavy,” Lanham said. “We’ve got our hands full…. Right now we’re not the same team [as last year]. We’re struggling a little bit with our identity. Anytime you go into matches [and] you’re giving up six points here and there, it’s tough.”
The Blue Devils (4-7, 0-3 in the ACC) will once again give up points in the early portion of the lineup. Freshman Brandon Leynaud missed his matchup at 133 pounds in the previous dual against Virginia—costing Duke six points—after breaking his hand against Gardner-Webb last Wednesday. Lanham said the team believes the injury occurred in the second period and appears to be a spiral fracture, which will leave the team short-handed again.
For six straight duals, the Blue Devils have forfeited in at least one weight class—mainly due to sophomore Thayer Atkins’ concussion at 125 pounds—but with athletes quitting the team and grapplers moving throughout the lineup, it seems they will have to cope with a lack of depth moving forward.
“I wish we had [a guy to fill the spot],” Lanham said. “Obviously, we had a guy in there who decided that he wanted to go up and be a third-string [141]-pounder…. He could have definitely been a starter for us at [133] pounds, but obviously it is what it is, so we’re going to look at that weight. We’ve just got to get depth.”
With few options at the start of the lineup, Duke will rely more heavily on its grapplers at 141 and 149 pounds to get things started against the heavily-favored Tar Heels (10-3, 1-2). Twin brothers Zach Finesilver and No. 10 Mitch Finesilver will hit the mats at the two weights for the Blue Devils, looking to continue their current string of success in the midweek matchup.
Zach Finesilver enters the dual on a five-match winning streak that has bolstered his 20-9 overall and 8-3 dual ledgers. The Greenwood Village, Colo., native will face off against North Carolina’s Joey Ward, which could pose a problem for Duke. Despite his success, the redshirt freshman is 0-3 against ranked opponents—all in dual competition—and Ward enters the matchup at No. 11 in the recent rankings.
In the next weight, Mitch Finesilver sports an 11-match winning streak that has propelled him to a 22-5 overall record, including an 11-0 dual ledger and a 3-0 mark against ranked foes. Like his brother, the sophomore will have his hands full against the Tar Heels with No. 5 Evan Henderson projected to start.
“You look at Ward against the Virginia kid, it was a tech 16 points in, I want to say, 2:35. He jumped all over him,” Lanham said. “You can’t have a slow start. Both of [the Finesilvers] have to start fast, but honestly, if they went out there and won, I wouldn’t say that I’d be surprised…. Both [Ward and Henderson] are highly ranked and both of them will be tough, but I feel like we’re capable of beating both of those guys.”
The rest of the Blue Devils will have to wrestle just as hard if they plan on upending North Carolina to reignite the rivalry. Aside from Ward and Henderson, the Tar Heels enter three more ranked wrestlers—No. 9 John Michael Staudenmayer at 165 pounds, No. 2 Ethan Ramos at 174 pounds and No. 19 Alex Utley at 184 pounds—as well as Chip Ness at 197 pounds, who upset the Cavaliers’ then-No. 10 Zach Nye in a 27-20 team victory Saturday.
Led by senior leaders such as No. 5 Conner Hartmann, Duke will have to climb out of recent pitfalls and battle back to send its senior class off with one final win against its rivals, something that has not occurred since the Blue Devils' 2004 victory in Chapel Hill.
“[The seniors] know how important it is to beat Carolina for the recruiting and all that other stuff, but for them, they’ve been in an atmosphere for four years where we say, ‘Where we want to be at the end of the season is important to us,’” Lanham said. “You want to win, but if you lose, it’s not devastating because it’s going to be another dual, another this, another that. It’s all about trying to get better.”
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