North Carolina and Duke make NCAA Tournament history
The Duke Blue Devils — with Coach K facing the rival North Carolina Tar Heels for the final time for sure this time with — have managed to find themselves competing in the Final Four, making unprecedented history along the way.
It truly feels like it was written out of a Hollywood Script, but the college basketball gods — and two blue blood squads that are just nine miles apart in the state — are facing off in the Final Four after each team took care of business in their Elite Eight matchups.
In a series that was first played in 1920, North Carolina and Duke have met an astonishing 256 times and the Tar Heels own a 144-114 edge in one of the greatest sports rivalries of all time.
Now, in 2022, the longtime ACC powerhouses — who had much different paths to New Orleans — will do something that’s never been done in the history of the rivalry by competing in the Final Four of the NCAA Championship.
Duke and North Carolina played their first basketball game on January 24, 1920. The two teams have met at least twice a year since then. The games frequently determine the Atlantic Coast Conference (ACC) champion; since the ACC’s founding in 1953, Duke and Carolina have combined to win or share 49 ACC regular season titles (77.7% of the total) and 38 tournament titles (59.4% of the total), including 14 of 15 from 1996 to 2011. The final game of the regular season for both schools alternates between Chapel Hill and Durham and has been played in Cameron Indoor Stadium since 1940 and the Dean E. Smith Center since 1986.
Combining for eleven national championships over the last 36 years, Duke and Carolina have captured 28% of the national championships, or greater than one every four years. Over the past 18 years, one of the two teams has been the AP pre-season #1 ranked team in the country 8 times (44% of the time). Since 1977–78, Duke or Carolina has been in the pre-season top three 28 times (70%). Over the entirety of the AP poll (the past 69 years), the teams have been in the pre-season top four 69% of the time. Over this same period, one has been pre-season #1 18 times, making it an almost 3 in 10 chance that Duke or North Carolina starts the year at #1 in the last 50+ years. One of the two teams has peaked at AP #1 in 32 separate seasons since 1977, a 7 in 10 chance that Duke or Carolina peaked as the top-ranked team in the country at some point in the season since 1977.