Duke-UNC rivalry has something it has been missing, and it’s not a pair of top-25 rankings

For the first time in a long while, the faces are familiar. To us. To them. To each other.

Duke and North Carolina were long ago swept up in today’s freshman-and-transfer driven world of college basketball — the revolving door spins as much here as it does as anywhere else — but Saturday’s meeting is a bit of a throwback to times past.

There will be the usual crop of first-timers feeling their way through the experience, freshmen at Duke, transfers and one key freshman at UNC, but with there are also nine players who will see the floor in Chapel Hill who played in the season-closer there last season.

There are even three left from Mike Krzyzewski’s final game in Durham and the end-of-the-world cataclysm in New Orleans, nigh-unthinkable in today’s college-basketball environment, the extremely seasoned trio of North Carolina’s Armando Bacot and RJ Davis and Duke’s Jeremy Roach, all of whom even predate that season. (Duke’s Jaylen Blakes does as well, but has played a total of five minutes against UNC in his career.)

Under normal circumstances all of those players would have been long gone, but they bring something to the court that has largely been lacking from this rivalry: Old wounds, unhealed.

“That’s two guys, in Davis and Bacot, who have been through a lot of wars,” Duke coach Jon Scheyer said. “A lot of wars together.”

Scheyer and Hubert Davis bring something different as well, both having played and had their own memorable moments in this rivalry, something none of their predecessors could say, and with both teams ranked in the top 25, for the first time as coaches playing for the kind of stakes they remember as players. Scheyer played in eight and Davis played in 11 of these games. Eleven!

It’s easy to forget sometimes, that’s what made this rivalry, way back when. Repetition. Familiarity truly breeding contempt. These games were not made-for-television one-offs; they were chapters in a much longer saga, that started when players arrived on these campuses and outlived their tenures.

Go through this over and over again, eight or nine or 10 or 11 times in four years, and every game takes on its own and distinct flavor, seasoned by its predecessors, changed over time, like bourbon in a barrel. This crucible is too hot not to emerge unaltered.

But the old days are the old days. In recent years, too many great players have come and gone playing in only two or maybe three of these games, a sign of the times. The 2019 classic in Charlotte, when Duke beat North Carolina in the ACC semifinals, was the third and final game in the rivalry for some big names: Coby White, R.J. Barrett, Cam Reddish, Nassir Little — and first full game for the biggest name, Zion Williamson.

None of them ever really had the chance to put a true stamp on the rivalry — Williamson put his stomp on the rivalry, at least, when “his shoe broke,” as Barack Obama pointed out — but Roach and Bacot and Davis have all had that opportunity, thanks to their longevity, and will have it again Saturday, when they appear in their combined 23rd meeting.

“I’ve known those guys,” Roach said, “forever.”

Or maybe it just feels that way, for the first time in forever.

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