Saturday was an emotional night for the No. 4 Duke Blue Devils and their fans, with head coach Mike Krzyzewski coaching his final game at Cameron Indoor Stadium. Unfortunately for them, the North Carolina Tar Heels crashed the party and walked away with a x-x upset victory.
Duke (26-5, 16-4 ACC) started to ratchet things up late in the first half, breaking off a 9-0 run to go up by nine and send the standing room only crowd into a frenzy. North Carolina (23-8, 15-5 ACC), however, wasn’t going to wilt away like it did in the previous matchup between these two rivals a month ago. The Tar Heels put on a mini-comeback and pulled to within two by the half.
The two teams were neck-and-neck coming out of the break before the Tar Heels gained the upperhand through the shooting of Armando Bacot, Brady Manek, and R.J. Davis. A Bacot alley-oop from Caleb Love put them up by double digits with less than a minute left and permanently quieted the crowd in Durham, NC.
Duke has long wrapped up the ACC regular season title and will head into the conference tournament next week as the No. 1 seed. On the other side, UNC ends the regular season with a five-game winning streak and it has taken itself off the bubble with an emphatic win over the Blue Devils.