UNC Basketball: Tar Heels down Duke on Senior Night

The Tar Heels take down Duke in Chapel Hill. What did Carolina do to get the big home win against their rival Blue Devils?

The Tar Heels beat the Blue Devils 90-83 on Senior Night. The win helped the Tar Heels finish undefeated at home this season and boost their No. 1 seed resume.

As always on Senior Night, Roy Williams started five seniors.

Kanler Coker, Stilman White, and Nate Britt might start at other schools, but at UNC this is a rarity.

It is also why nobody does it better than Carolina on Senior Night.

So what happened in the game?

First Half

The first half was a defense-optional type half. It was 48-46 at the break with both teams shooting better than 50 percent from the floor. The 48 points is five more than the Tar Heels had in the entire game Monday at Virginia.

The half was also a whistlefest for the refs, who apparently wanted to be the stars of the best rivalry in college basketball.

By the end of the half, 18 fouls had been called and 26 free throws had been shot. Duke outscored the Tar Heels by nine from the line. Seven of those were shot by Grayson Allen who was 7-for-7 from the line.

Speaking of Allen, he was involved in several questionable calls. This is included a flop on what became a four point play, where he wasn’t even touched, and a elbow to the head against Brandon Robinson, when Allen’s elbow went higher than the ball did.

The first half was also marked by the play of Joel Berry II. Berry led all scorers with 19 points, including going 5-for-5 from behind the arc. The five threes was one more than the entire Duke team had in the first half, a huge turnaround from the game in Durham.

Mar 4, 2017; Chapel Hill, NC, USA; North Carolina Tar Heels forward Theo Pinson (1) and Duke Blue Devils guard Grayson Allen (3) fight for the ball in the first half at Dean E. Smith Center. Mandatory Credit: Bob Donnan-USA TODAY Sports /

Second Half

The second half was similar to the first: Duke got a lot of free throws and Joel Berry came to play.

Duke finished the game with 35 free throw attempts, 14 more than the Tar Heels.

However, unlike the first half where they shot 16-of-17, the Blue Devils were only 12-of-18 in the second half, including 2-of-5 in the last two minutes.

Overall, there were two big sequences for the Tar Heels to put the game away.

The first came with the score tied at 71 with just under six to go. Justin Jackson hit a three and then assisted on two straight shots and about a minute later UNC led 79-73.

The other came from Berry, who was the hero of the game for the Tar Heels. The junior point guard outscored Duke 8-2 in about two and half minutes to help put the game out of reach for Duke. Berry finished the game with 28 points “off the bench,” while Isaiah Hicks chipped in 21 in his final contest at the Dean Dome.

UNC wins their second consecutive ACC title this season by two whole games over the best conference in the nation. They enter the ACC tournament as the top seed, with a one seed in the NCAA tournament almost a lock.

Meanwhile Duke finishes fifth in the ACC failing to get a double bye in the tournament for a second consecutive season.

Last year they had a chance to face UNC a third time in the ACC semis but came up a game short. Will history repeat itself?

If it doesn’t America gets Duke/UNC III. I’m not sure EPSN would be able to handle that.

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