Like a lot of Duke fans, watching UNC blow a 19-point second-half lead was surreal and frankly, we enjoyed it. We’re sure many of our Duke Blue brethren and cistern (old Southern joke, relax) did as well. It’s always fun to watch your rival fail.
Until it isn’t.
Say what?
Well, this is what we’re getting at.
UNC is a huge part of ACC basketball. Other than early coaches Everett Case, Frank McGuire, and Vic Bubas, no one is more responsible for what the ACC ultimately meant to college basketball than what Dean
Smith built in Chapel Hill.
Until the mid 1980s, when Mike Krzyzewski’s program rose to challenge UNC, the only program more nationally important was UCLA under John Wooden.
And when Duke started to go toe-to-toe with the Tar Heels, and both programs were a consistent Final Four threat, that rivalry defined the ACC nationally.
Duke is still consistently relevant under Jon Scheyer, but since Ol’ Roy Williams retired, UNC has really lost ground, and it’s impossible to ignore it. You know something is fundamentally wrong when High Point goes further in the NCAA Tournament than does UNC.
For Carolina fans, it’s traumatic, obviously. For the rest of the ACC, though, it’s a real problem too.
It’s good for everyone when UNC is good. In a perfect world, we’d prefer they be a slight step behind Duke, but you can’t have everything.
However, having Duke and UNC as reliable Sweet 16 teams helps everyone. In a good year, you’ll get 4-5 ACC teams there, and without the consistency of Duke and UNC, it gets a lot less predictable.
So we say this with no malice towards Hubert Davis, who is a very likable man, and we completely understand that a lot of Duke fans will disagree with this for obvious reasons.
However, it’s time for him to go. While it’s fun to watch UNC become a mediocre program for a year or two, or have a bad year here or there, it’s no fun at all to watch them slide towards irrelevance.
And in the end, it’ll cost Duke, and the conference, plenty.
So please, Tar Heel brain trust: If Hubert doesn’t see the problem and won’t do the right thing, then it’s time to make a change. It’s time to make UNC Basketball great again. Because if you don’t, you’ll drag the rest of us down with you.
Go to the DBR Boards to find Blue Healer Auctions | Drop us a line
