Blue Blood: Duke-Carolina: Inside the Most Storied Rivalry in College Hoops - Hardcover

9780312327873: Blue Blood: Duke-Carolina: Inside the Most Storied Rivalry in College Hoops
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"To Hell with Carolina,"                       
--From the Duke Fight Song
 
"Go to Hell, Duke!"                              
--Last line, Tar Heel Fight Song
 
For fifty years the rivalry between Duke and Carolina has featured famous brawls, endless controversy, long-nurtured hatred--and some of the best basketball ever played in the history of the sport.  For Duke and UNC players and fans, the competition is not about winning a prize, trophy or title.  The reason students at both schools camp out for days to get tickets--is about bragging rights and raw pride.
 
Fueled by a proximity of eight miles along Tobacco Road, these two highly respected academic institutions have a rivalry of contrasts: powder blue vs. royal blue; public vs. private; Southerners versus Northern transplants; Michael Jordan and Vince Carter vs. Grant Hill and Christian Laettner.  And now, with former Tar Heel assistant Roy Williams the new head coach of UNC, and Mike Krzyzewski still going strong at Duke--the rivalry only continues.
 
Blue Blood is a thrilling chronicle of the Duke-Carolina rivalry as it has evolved over the last fifty years.  With unparalleled insider access, veteran journalist and author Art Chansky details the colorful, revered, and respected rivalry--for the first time ever.  Chansky has seen every Duke-Carolina game since 1968 and now gives readers the never-before-told details, the story behind the story of this rivalry that has polarized the nation.
 
The Duke-Carolina rivalry has fostered more than thirty former players from the two schools playing or coaching in the NBA; it has cultivated a maniacal subculture of fans who camp out for weeks just to get tickets to the seasonal match-ups; it has enchanted a nation of spectators to watch games between the archrivals--garnering some of the highest regular-season TV ratings in history.  Blue Blood celebrates the history of this rivalry, the traditions, the heritage, and, most importantly--spectacular basketball. "I'm biased, but I think this is the greatest rivalry, not just in college basketball, but in all of sports. .. You believe this is just another game? Are you serious? Are you serious? There's no way you can tell these kids it's just another game."
--Dick Vitale, ESPN
 
"Having been loved and loathed by fans of both schools, glad-handed and banned on both campuses, I know the passion that fuels the Duke-Carolina rivalry. Art Chansky has more than learned what Duke-Carolina is all about; he's lived it for more than thirty years. His columns, commentaries, and characterizations have long been on the money, and Blue Blood puts them all together in an anticipated and entertaining work that reads more like a novel. But truth is stranger than fiction, and Chansky tells it just like it is."
--Curry Kirkpatrick, who has covered Duke-Carolina for Sports Illustrated, ESPN, and ESPN the Magazine
 
"Across the rolling Piedmont and through the pines of the Old North State, there's a whisper of anticipation. The 'Blues' are about to run again. Powder and royal.  Eight miles...two schools...two programs...one driving passion to excel. In the mecca of this great game, it is THE rivalry.  This is no mere game, no mere rivalry. This is a phenomenon . . .this is Duke-Carolina."
--From ESPN Opening,  February 5, 2004
 
 "It's not about me vs. Dean, or me against Roy or Dean against Vic Bubas. Duke and Carolina will be here forever."
--Mike Krzyzewski
 
"I was hit three times and spit at during the whole game before I started to fight."   --Art Heyman
 
"Eight miles away sat a legend, perhaps the greatest coach of all time. I was inundated with thoughts of beating Dean Smith. If we couldn't beat him, we could never get to where we were thinking about."
--Tom Butters, former Duke Athletics Director
 

"synopsis" may belong to another edition of this title.

About the Author:
ART CHANSKY is an author and sportswriter who has covered basketball on Tobacco Road for more than 30 years. By day, he is a sports marketing executive who developed an all-sports competition between Duke and Carolina called the Carlyle Cup. After graduating from UNC, he wrote for the Atlanta Constitution and was Sports Editor of the Durham Morning Herald for seven years. He has written The Dean's List and Dean's Domain on North Carolina basketball and Dean Smith. He lives with his family on the "Duke side" of Chapel Hill.
Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.:
Chapter One
Tides of March

The Dean Smith Center was empty, except for the cleanup crew. The words "ACC Champions" were still illuminated on the new electronic boards on the fascia of the upper deck. Carolina had just beaten Florida State, surviving a 60 percent shooting half by the Seminoles, to clinch at least a tie for first place in the 2005 Atlantic Coast Conference standings.

One regular-season game remained, the biggest. It was more than sixth-ranked Duke coming in on Sunday afternoon. More than national TV with broadcasters Jim Nantz and Billy Packer sitting courtside. More than the latest renewal of the greatest rivalry in college basketball or perhaps any sport on any level.

The Tar Heels had to win this game for the preservation of their own collective sanity. Duke had won 15 of the last 17 meetings dating back to 1999, its most dominant stretch in the ninety-year history of the series. That statistic more than anything else had made the rivalry a moot point with many Blue Devil fans.

Duke coach Mike Krzyzewski was the new king of college basketball, a twenty-first century sideline CEO with power and prestige that pushed the legend of UNC coach Dean Smith further into the past. Roy Williams's arrival from Kansas as Carolina's new coach was supposed to erase the memory of a disastrous transition from the Smith era and begin evening the score with Duke.

Yet Williams had lost two heartbreakers during his first year in Chapel Hill when the Blue Devils returned to another Final Four. This season, 2005, Carolina finally had the better team in terms of depth and talent. However, the Tar Heels had failed to prove it the previous February 9 at Duke, where they had lost again.

Thus, Carolina owned an ironic form of pressure. Looking up from the top.

A win would give the Tar Heels the ACC regular-season title outright for the first time since 1993 and only three years after three seniors on the team and their fans had suffered through an 8--20 debacle. A loss to Duke would still leave them in first place but with a hollow title after having been swept by the Blue Devils a second straight season.

If Williams didn't beat Krzyzewski soon, the comparison he had tried so hard to avoid would stick like Velcro. His second Tar Heel team was ranked higher than Duke with fewer losses in both the ACC and overall. The Blue Devils were down to six healthy dependable players; despite not having ill Rashad McCants for the fourth consecutive game, Carolina was still deeper.

There was also the emotion of playing at home in front of a sold-out crowd of nearly twenty-two thousand fans on Senior Day for Jackie Manuel, Melvin Scott, and Jawad Williams, the trio that had somehow survived two years and 36 defeats under coach Matt Doherty. UNC had everything in its favor. The Tar Heels had to win.

Roy Williams knew that. On Sunday morning, he told Smith Center Director Angie Bitting to have two tall ladders in the tunnel after the game.

Two hours before the 4:00 p.m. tip-off, thousands of fans had descended upon the Dean Dome, hanging around in sunny, (60-degree weather. Thirsting to beat the Blue Devils, they had the hottest and most valuable tickets of any Duke-Carolina game in memory. A seller's market if there were any sellers.

A Chapel Hill man was there with his two grade-school daughters. He was offered $5,000 for his three tickets. "I have a choice for you," he said to his girls, "I can sell these tickets and we can all go to Disney World next week. Or we can go to the game." They tugged at his hand and kept walking.

Duke's team bus pulled into the tunnel beneath the arena at 2:30 p.m. Krzyzewski was greeted by John Dubis, UNC class of 1990 and the operative assigned to guide and guard all opposing coaches. Dubis led the Duke party to its two locker rooms, one for the Blue Devils and one for the coaches, primarily Krzyzewski, who once inside took off his expensive suit jacket, hung it in a locker and spread the game plan out on one bench.

Krzyzewski didn't like the characterization that this was one of his better coaching jobs. With his ill or injured players missing a total of twenty-nine games, he had used ten different starting lineups. After losing at Maryland and Virginia Tech, he started walk-ons Patrick Davidson and Patrick Johnson against Wake Forest to send a message to his team because "these were the only two guys who believe in me." Krzyzewski was crazed that night, screaming at the officials from first minute of the game when Davidson committed a blatant foul on Wake's Chris Paul. Duke won the war 102--92 to snap the rare two-game losing streak.

Once considered a defensive coach whose teams were vulnerable when playing five-on-five half-court basketball, Krzyzewski had conceived an offense that got the ball inside easily to center Shelden Williams while relying on J. J. Redick's radar from the perimeter. Using the double-teaming attention paid to Redick, Duke still liked to run but also worked patiently to create open shots for Daniel Ewing and lefty Lee Melchionni as their third and fourth scoring options.

They had won their first 15 games, during which Krzyzewski reached 700 career victories, but 4 midseason losses, including 2 to Maryland, had locked the Blue Devils out of first place and rendered the finale with Carolina to rivalry-game status. It was a rivalry he had owned since a year after Smith retired in 1997.

His players went out to warm up with the assistant coaches while he remained in seclusion. They returned just before game time, and, after meeting with them briefly, Krzyzewski put his jacket back on and gathered his papers. He waited until they took the court before walking down the corridor by himself, trailing Dubis by a few feet. It was exactly the same routine he used every year Duke played in Chapel Hill. His pregame ritual was military to the minute.

Something else happened again, as it had without fail when the Duke coach entered the playing court and faced what Dubis called a "wave of hate, a blast of white noise that is really loud."

As Krzyzewski passed through the tunnel, a plastic baggie of cheese dangled on a string from above the railing. The coach Tar Heel fans called "Rat Face" for his pointy nose and narrow jaw was in the house.

He did not see the cheese, or anything else specifically, looking stone-faced and straight ahead as he strode purposefully along the baseline behind Dubis. His expression broke when he reached Williams. They chatted cheek-to-cheek; several photographers closed in to capture the moment. After the national anthem and lineup introductions, the starters shook hands around the center circle, the din rose again and the ball was in the air. The game college basketball fans, near and far, saw as the unofficial start of post-season was under way. Duke-Carolina on the last weekend.

Duke scored first against UNC's Senior Day lineup that started two walk-ons. Redick's first three-pointer gave the Blue Devils a 5--0 lead, his step-back jumper made it 16--9 and his second "three" from way out on the left opened Duke's biggest lead at 19--11. Nervous noise rose whenever he touched the ball.

Playing without injured point guard Sean Dockery, Duke was using Redick and Ewing to handle the ball and get into its motion offense. The Blue Devils had the ability to look chaotic and organized in the same possession, but once Redick or Williams had the ball within range, it was going up.

Carolina's 8--0 run, ending with Manuel's breakaway flying dunk over two Dukies, evened the game after nine minutes. Freshman Marvin Williams's only basket of the half gave the Heels a five-point lead, but Redick's fourth three-ball from the right wing triggered a spurt that put his team back ahead at the last media timeout before halftime.

During the break, CBS aired a new American Express commercial featuring Krzyzewski.

I don't look at myself as a basketball coach....I look at myself as a leader who happens to coach basketball.

When play resumed, those sitting along the scorer's table saw another side of him. After freshman DeMarcus Nelson couldn't get in the game, Krzyzewski glared at official scorer Mark Isley and screamed "Bullshit!" at the explanation that Nelson had arrived too late. Krzyzewski clapped mockingly at Isley after Ewing, the man Nelson was to replace, picked up a foul in the midst of a late 11--4 scoring run by the Tar Heels.

"Good job! Good job!" he yelled over sarcastically. "That one's on you!"

"Bullshit!" he yelled again at Isley while stalking off the court at the half, Duke down 47--41, to the jeers and catcalls of Carolina fans sitting near the tunnel.

Official Larry Rose stopped at the scorer's table to see what had happened. Rose was a veteran referee who over the years seemed to work a lot of Duke games and had the unflattering nickname around the ACC of "Duke's Sixth Man." Scott Williams, the twenty-eight-year-old son of Carolina's head coach, stood in his second-row seat and stared at Rose. "Larry Rose, be a man. Be a man, Coach K owns you!" Williams shouted.

Rose heard the taunt, looked up and told a UNC security guard to remove his heckler. The younger Williams went to the private box behind Section 127 where the rest of his family usually watched home games. His father was furious when he found out what happened before the second half began.

Carolina went ahead 49--41 and it looked for a moment like the team that had to win would win. Then Melchionni, who had missed all three of his attempts in the first half, hit two three-pointers. Manuel, having his most aggressive offensive game of the season, became Carolina's unlikely scoring star.

The Tar Heels had forgotten about center Sean May, who had already scored 23 points with jump hooks and offensive rebounds. They shot too quickly from the outside and made poor decisions with the ball during the most important part of the game. The anxious crowd groaned as one of UNC's worst stretches of the season unfolded painfully.

After Duke rallied to lead 64--62 on Melchionni's fourth three-pointer, a ball that hit the rim and backboard before falling through, Manuel scored his fifth field goal to forge a 64--64 tie on a fast break lob from Raymond Felton. Having been hammered on the glass and in the paint all afternoon, the Blue Devils gained strength from Carolina's confusion and inability to get the ball to May, who was easily bettering his career averages of 17 points and 18 rebounds in 3 full games against them.

Three straight inside baskets by Shelden Williams built Duke's lead to six points with under four minutes to play. The Tar Heels came out of the timeout determined to go back inside, but Duke knew what they'd do and double-downed on May, slapping the ball off his knee out of bounds. Ewing began a drive from the left front court, circled along the right baseline toward the basket and whipped a pass to Melchionni in the left corner. As his fifth three-pointer rattled in, the bench area behind him erupted.

The Blue Devils led 73--64 with three minutes left. Their phalanx of assistant coaches and managers, all dressed in dark suits, were acting out like smug adolescents.

"SUB! SUB!" they yelled when one of their players reported to the scorer's table, then stood and clapped at Isley when the horn buzzed him in.

How unbelievable was Duke's run? The last of Redick's 17 points had come with three minutes left in the first half, and the ACC's leading scorer missed all six of his second-half shots. Carolina had also kept the most feared free-throw shooter in the country off the foul line. Forward Shavlik Randolph played only fifteen minutes with foul trouble, meaning his team had just about beaten Carolina with five players.

Jawad Williams tapped in a May miss to cut Duke's lead to 73--66 with 2:40 left in the game. The Tar Heels called a timeout as their fans sat stunned. In the huddle, Roy Williams promised if they played "every possession from here on" as hard as possible, they would have a chance at the end. Several empty faces stared back at him.

The Amex commercial ran again.

When they get into the workplace, they're armed not just with a jump shot or a dribble. I want you armed for life.

Along the media table between the benches, the Tar Heel Sports Network radio announcers were quiet, contemplating what was ahead. Color analyst Mick Mixon wondered how he could ever find the words to explain yet another loss to Duke. "The specter of defeat has entered the building," he mumbled to himself.

Mixon could have said re-entered the building. Over the prior six years, the Tar Heels had lost 24 games at home compared to 18 during their first 12 seasons in the Smith Center, which opened with a victory over Duke in January of 1986. Five of those two dozen defeats were to the Blue Devils.

The first year of Roy versus K restored competitive drama to the rivalry, and both coaches spent most of the season mad---but not at reach other.

Despite his first Tar Heel team's 8--1 start that included a triple-overtime loss at home to Wake Forest, Williams's return to Carolina was not exactly triumphant. He looked more like he was homesick for Kansas than happier to be home. He was so mad after a half-hearted loss at Kentucky that he joked about jumping out of the plane on the way home and used the slang word "frickin"' so much that friends and UNC officials suggested he clean up his vocabulary.

Before they faced top-ranked Duke on February 5, 2004, the Tar Heels had fallen to 13--5, 3--4 in the ACC, and found themselves on the NCAA Tournament bubble. "We've got to play," he told the national media, which had requested a record three hundred credentials for the game. "If we don't really play, Duke is going to kick our rear ends so far back up state, we're going to think Chapel Hill is on the other side of Murphy."

The Tar Heels had one of their best stretches of the season, leading Duke by seven late in the second half before the Blue Devils ran off a 12--2 spurt to climb on top in the closing seconds. Jawad Williams's awkward three-pointer sent the game into overtime, and McCants seemingly forced a second overtime with a long "three" from the right wing. But Krzyzewski's philosophy of moving on to "the next play" caught Carolina celebrating. Chris Duhon took off down the court, and Williams explained later that his team "failed to build a wall" to stop Duhon's coast-to-coast drive for reverse layup and an 83--81 victory.

As his teammates swarmed Duhon on the floor, the rivalry appeared rejoined. Although the TV ratings were typically high, the results were all too familiar to the Tar Heel faithful. Williams had his next shot at Duke a month later after Krzyzewski had stolen the headlines.

The Blue Devils' 41-game winning streak at Cameron Indoor Stadium had been snapped by Georgia Tech, and Krzyzewski got nailed with a technical foul in the first half. Courtside observers said he should have been thrown out for his verbal and vulgar assault on officials Karl Hess and Ray Natili.

"His manners were deplorable, his language galling," wrote Ed Hardin of the Greensboro News & Record after covering the game from courtside. "If Krzyzewski didn't get thrown out against Georgia Tech, then what does it take to get thrown out of a game in this league?"

Twenty years had passed since Krzyzewski leveled his famous double-standard accusation about Smith, whom he had replaced as the preeminent college coach and the ACC's alleged privileged character. He claimed Smith, and consequently his teams, received preferential treatment from both the officia...

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  • PublisherThomas Dunne Books
  • Publication date2005
  • ISBN 10 0312327870
  • ISBN 13 9780312327873
  • BindingHardcover
  • Edition number1
  • Number of pages373
  • Rating

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