UNC’s historic blowout of Duke puts a strange bow on a strange season

This season where the unusual lurked around every corner had one last surprise in store.

It had been almost a decade since there was a blowout like this between Duke and North Carolina, for either side. Most of UNC’s team wasn’t even born the last time the Tar Heels put a whuppin’ on Duke like this.

This one went into the history books, all right, but not for the reasons anyone expected.

The collision of North Carolina at its best and Duke at its worst produced a different kind of history, a 91-73 UNC win that represented the biggest margin of victory for either team since 2012 and the biggest for the home team at the Smith Center since 1998, when the teams were ranked 1-2 instead of unranked as they were again Saturday.

What a strange game it was, what a fitting conclusion to an odd season.

North Carolina has played at this level this season with reasonable frequency and lamentable consistency. The Tar Heels are capable of this on occasion; they’re apparently incapable of doing it on command. But when it all clicks, it clicks. And did it ever click.

“When we all play Carolina basketball, we can be a great team,” North Carolina forward Armando Bacot said. “It’s just, when is it going to happen? And can we keep it going?”

This certainly wasn’t Duke basketball, by any standard. Even when the shots aren’t going down, even when Duke is equal parts indifferent and insecure on defense -- to the point where the Blue Devils have in recent seasons even deigned to play zone -- they typically have a sense of purpose. Or verve, to use one of Duke coach Mike Krzyzewski’s favorite words. Saturday, Duke looked confused. Worse, Duke looked lost.

Even in the depths of Duke’s worst moments this season, that hasn’t been an issue. While struggling to a 9-9 ACC record -- Duke’s first .500 ACC record since 2007 -- the Blue Devils have been uniformly competitive, almost sneakily so. Until Saturday they were all close games: Seven points at the most, the past two in overtime.

“I didn’t have my team prepared the way they did,” Krzyzewski said. “Coming off these two tough losses, the things we did in practice were really good, but they didn’t come into fruition. They didn’t work out. That’s on me. Because they really knocked us back.”

The Blue Devils weren’t in this from the start and as nervous as the Smith Center may have been with a 15-point lead early in the second half, Duke never really presented a legitimate threat. For a team with an increasingly fragile NCAA tournament resume, Duke looked curiously discombobulated.

North Carolina had everything to do with that. As was the case against Louisville, the Tar Heels gave a struggling opponent no oxygen. There’s an art to that, and not one UNC has always grasped this season. The Tar Heels reaped the rewards for their effort, savoring a final minute that included an alley-oop from Andrew Platek to the long-suffering Sterling Manley, making his first appearance in two years as a tearful Garrison Brooks celebrated.

“The enthusiasm of senior day, the enthusiasm of the crowd at the Smith Center, the enthusiasm of what you’re playing for this time of year, that led to us playing pretty well,” North Carolina coach Roy Williams said.

North Carolina will roar into Greensboro riding high on a season sweep of the Blue Devils; Duke will stagger in early, relegated to Tuesday like UNC a year ago, hoping to find what it lacked Saturday before it’s too late, if it isn’t already.

Williams kissed the Smith Center floor on his way out in honor, he said, of a home-court advantage that had just the one blemish against Marquette. It was an unexpected coda to a game that was also not quite what anyone expected, but that’s been the story of this season.

It ended like it began, unpredictable and unusual, but we made it to the finish, some more smoothly than others.