CHARLOTTE — Faithful observers of the Tobacco Road rivalry will say that an unranked North Carolina team could always upset a top-ranked Duke team, and vice-versa. They will say that a blue-on-blue game like this is unpredictable.
They will say that Duke could effectively blow a 21-point lead, because it’s a rivalry game, and they would be right.
The Blue Devils ended the Tar Heels’ conference title bid and further jeopardized their March Madness hopes with a heart-pounding 74-71 win that proved everything people say about this rivalry true.
With 3:41 on the clock, the Spectrum Center was shaking. Sound felt palpable, not just audible, as argyle-clad fans screamed “TAR” and “HEELS” back and forth across the court. North Carolina had cut a 21-point deficit to just six, and there was plenty of time to change the story Duke had been writing as its third decisive rivalry win.
"Especially now, mindset's the biggest thing," head coach Jon Scheyer said after his team escaped with the victory. "I want our guys to have that mindset of going for it. Just go for it ... I remind them all the time, 'You're right where you want to be. This is what you signed up for, and you signed up for these hard moments.'"
Five made free throws and one Elliot Cadeau layup later, there were 32 seconds left and Duke led by one point. Tyrese Proctor was at the line for a one-and-one. He missed it.
So Ven-Allen Lubin took the ball and shot a game-changing layup on Duke’s basket, missing but drawing a foul from Khaman Malauch. He lined up at the stripe with four seconds remaining — still just a point behind Duke — and missed his first. Lubin made his second as overtime looked all but certain.
Except it was a lane violation. Jae’Lyn Withers had jumped into the paint too early.
Two solid Kon Knueppel charity shots and a missed trey by Lubin at the buzzer sealed the Duke victory that had become its most stressful win of the season.
"When Lubin was shooting the free throws, I was nervous, but not when I was shooting them," Knueppel said. "I knew I was gonna make them."
When Knueppel made the first trey of the contest over RJ Davis’ head at 9:48 in the first half, Duke, scrappy without its star, made its intentions well known. Caleb Foster stole the ball from a Tar Heel on the next play and speedily made a layup, Sion James launched a three that bounced up and down but ultimately fell through the hoop, and Maluach caught a missed three from Mason Gillis. He made good on the second-chance points. Knueppel swished another layup and then made another to cement a double-digit Blue Devil lead.
Duke is not a one-man team; all season, it has not been. But the stakes have never been as high as this: No Cooper Flagg, Duke’s biggest rival and an ACC final appearance on the line. The Blue Devils dealt with it all by dominating the glass and playing like a team to a point worthy of cliché. For example: Gillis took a three, but missed. Maluach caught the rebound and passed it up to Proctor, who passed it to Foster, who gave it back to Maluach. The South Sudan native made a layup and drew an and-one. On the next play, Proctor missed a three; Maluach caught it and slammed a two to put Duke up 37-24.
"We all believe in each other and trust each other," Proctor said. "And I think that's when we play our best basketball, when we play together."
When Knueppel pulled Proctor up from the floor after falling down and drawing a foul, the Aussie junior was smiling. By then, Duke had a 19-point lead. By the end of the half, it was a 21-point difference. Isaiah Evans, in the last few seconds of the period, could be seen screaming in triumph at the North Carolina manager mopping sweat from the court.
Knueppel had 12 points at the end of the first half, went 3-for-3 from downtown and collected four boards in the process. He made it 17 by the end of the game when his free throws forced Lubin into that three and sealed it for Duke.
As rapidly as the end unfolded, the first five minutes of the game passed like the making of a stop-motion film. Offense, on both ends, was stilted, as North Carolina shot 33.3% from the field and Duke put up 25%, both doing nothing from the arc. Davis took an arching three to start the game and missed; in the same possession, Cadeau missed a shorter range jumper, too.
Even as the teams finally began to warm up, nobody took a dominant position. When Proctor found a layup that put Duke up by one, Jalen Washington answered to take a slim advantage for the Tar Heels. Because of a complete lack of successful 3-point shooting from both teams, they traded only meager one-point leads.
When its ferocity in the second half made it clear that North Carolina was thirsting for a comeback, Maluach stepped up, making up for his early moments of slippery fingers. As the Tar Heels closed the gap to 13, Maluach caught an expert setup from Knueppel and slammed a dunk over their heads.
North Carolina found its stride, and it looked like the hare trying to catch up with the tortoise. The light-blue contingent would go on a short run, and Duke would ensure that it was only a sprint — nothing to take down the marathon play the Blue Devils had started running five minutes into the game. When Davis made a driving layup to close the gap to 14, the Blue Devils answered him with a mirror move by Proctor and then an alley-oop dunk by Patrick Ngongba II. James had the ball at the arc and unexpectedly fired it at the freshman center, who was hanging on the rim before anyone on the other team knew what was happening. Evans did the same for Ngongba after the next timeout; then the Manassas, Va., native put up a layup on his own account.
"Pat and Khaman are two freshmen big guys that combined for 25 and 12 ... I thought they were monsters," Scheyer said. "I thought they did a great job. We could have kept Khaman out of foul trouble a little bit better. But besides that, I thought they stepped up in a big way."
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And in the end, the tortoise lands its free throws and catches its breath. The hare, sensational as his run might be, cannot take down the creature that has done better than him the whole race.
After a third victory over the Tar Heels — a feat they have not pulled since the 2001-2 season — the Blue Devils will now await the winner of No. 2-seed Louisville and No. 3-seed Clemson in the ACC championship Saturday at 8:30 p.m.
Sophie Levenson is a Trinity junior and a sports managing editor of The Chronicle's 120th volume.