Duke vs. UNC rivalry: The records and numbers
Duke and North Carolina have met 257 times in one of college basketball’s grandest rivalries, a century of hard-fought clashes that were contested during the regular season, the ACC tournament and once, 51 years ago, in the semifinals of the NIT.
But never have these blue-blooded programs met in the NCAA tournament as they will Saturday night in a national semifinal in New Orleans. They came close in 1991, when both teams made the Final Four, but they were on opposite sides of the bracket, and North Carolina fell to Kansas in a national semifinal.
North Carolina leads the series 142-115. The Tar Heels won the first game between the rivals in 1920, a 36-25 victory when Duke was still known as Trinity College, and the most recent contest, a convincing 94-81 victory at Cameron Indoor Stadium on the night Mike Krzyzewski coached his final home game for the Blue Devils. Neither team has played any other opponent more often.
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(Two of Duke’s losses came during the 1994-95 season, when Krzyzewski was not coaching because of back surgery.)
The Tar Heels have more Final Four appearances — a record 21 to Duke’s 17 — and have won more ACC regular season championships (32 to 20), but Duke has more ACC tournament titles (21 to 18). Together, they have won 39 of the 68 ACC tournament titles.
North Carolina has the edge in national championships with six to Duke’s five, but the schools are tied with five apiece since Krzyzewski took over in 1980. In the 41 Final Fours since 1981, including this year’s, at least one of the teams has been represented 25 times.
The longest winning streak between the schools belongs to the Tar Heels in the 1920s (16 games), twice that of Duke’s most dominant stretch. North Carolina also has the largest margin of victory, beating Duke by 37 points in 1921. The Blue Devils’ 104-69 victory over the Tar Heels in 1964 was their largest margin of victory. North Carolina has scored more points in the rivalry, 16,759 to 16,466. Over the past 100 head-to-head games, the schools’ scoring totals are almost identical: Duke has 7,859 points, and North Carolina has 7,824.
Both programs have the edge at home. Duke is 55-51 in Durham — including 46-39 at Cameron Indoor Stadium — while the Tar Heels are 64-38 in Chapel Hill (and 20-17 in Smith Center). They have had plenty of meetings on neutral courts, resulting in 27 wins for North Carolina and 22 for Duke.
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A third of all games between the programs have been decided by five points or fewer. More than half have ended with a final margin of 10 points or less. The overall scoring margin between the schools is just 1.1 points per game in North Carolina’s favor. Fourteen games have required overtime; Duke is 10-4 in those games.
Duke has consistently fielded stronger teams than North Carolina over the past 26 seasons, according to analyst Ken Pomeroy’s ratings, which calculate how many net points per 100 possessions a team would score against an average squad. Duke’s Pomeroy ratings have ranged from No. 1 to No. 36 with a top-10 spot in 22 of the past 26 seasons. North Carolina has ranged from No. 1 to No. 137 with 14 appearances in the top 10.
The modern rivalry has been filled with stellar performances from star players — think of Michael Jordan’s 32 points for UNC in 1983, Hubert Davis’s 35 points for UNC in 1992, Jason Williams’s 37 points for Duke in 2002 and JJ Redick’s 35 points for Duke in 2006 — but some of the all-time scoring leaders may be less familiar to younger fans. Dick Groat had the highest scoring game for Duke in the rivalry, a 48-point performance in 1952 during a 94-64 home victory. Groat has the highest scoring average (27.3) of any Duke player against North Carolina, followed by RJ Barrett (24.7) and Jabari Parker (23.5).
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Sports Reference’s college basketball player database goes back to only the 2010-11 season, and during that span Grayson Allen has scored the most points for Duke against North Carolina (158), followed by Seth Curry (111) and Quinn Cook (106). North Carolina’s leading scorers against Duke in that span are Joel Berry (116), Luke Maye (112) and Garrison Brooks (110).
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