Saturday night, Duke's men's basketball coach Mike Krzyzewski will take to Cameron Indoor Stadium for the final times as the team head basketball coach when they welcome the rival North Carolina Tar Heels. This is a game that many expect the Blue Devils to show out in with it being Krzyzewski's last game and with the way that this same team beat the Tar Heels earlier in the season in Chapel Hill.
It is no secret that it has been a down year in ACC basketball this season, but there have been some teams that have had nice seasons, outperforming their preseason expectations with the help of their head coaches. Mike Brey and Notre Dame were picked preseason eighth in the conference and currently sit at 19-8 (12-4) and might be the biggest threat to Duke right now in the conference's regular-season race. Jim Larranaga and the Miami Hurricanes were tabbed to finish 12th in the conference in the preseason and currently sit in third in the conference with a 20-8 (12-5 record and have a win on the road at Duke in their favor. However, the favorite of the group should be Wake Forest head coach Steve Forbes, whose team was picked to finish 13th in the preseason polls and is now staring down a tournament appearance sitting at 21-7 (11-6).
The Tar Heels entered Saturday's meeting with the Duke Blue Devils in Dean E. Smith Center coming off of a four-game winning streak, but in Coach K's final game in Chapel Hill, the team simply got embarrassed. The Tar Heels never led and were down as much as 28 points late in the second half and never got within single digits of the lead after the 16:20 mark of the first half.
Saturday night in the Dean E. Smith Center in Chapel Hill, one of the best rivalries in all of the sports will add a new chapter to it's story as the No. 9 Duke Blue Devils travel down US 15-501 to take on the North Carolina Tar Heels in a game that will determine who is in first place in the ACC as we head just past the midway point in conference play. The Blue Devils, on paper, are the better team heading into this matchup, but the Tar Heels have been a much different team in the Smith Center this season than they have been on the road, where a lot of their issues have popped up.
The 2021-22 college basketball season tipped off last night and was highlighted by the Duke-Kentucky matchup in Madison Square Garden, where the Blue Devils topped the Wildcats 79-71 in a highly contested battle between two blue bloods of the sport. Earlier today, DeShaun Tate, the host of Tate's Take podcast joined Wilson & Norfleet to tell you why the Blue Devils have the potential to be a national title contender, in what will be Coach K's final Duke squad. His reasoning for that is the play of freshmen Paolo Banchero and Trevor Keels saying: "It makes me feel like a national championship is on the way for Duke if I'm being. It just has that feel to it. It has that vibe. It has that energy"
On Monday's edition of the Clubhouse, and Stan recapped what was an unusual matchup between Duke and North Carolina over the weekend as both teams were not ranked for the first time in a matchup in almost 60 years, and it was with no fans inside Cameron Indoor Stadium.
