Saturday reinforced that it’s not UNC’s year, but could it perhaps be Duke’s after all?
When it’s not your year, it’s not your year. When it’s not your year, a famous player’s son starts channeling his father for the first time in his college career. When it’s not your year, your senior leader gets elbowed in the face and called for the foul.
When it’s not your year, and this was most decidedly not North Carolina’s year, this is where you end up: Last in the ACC and swept by your rival. The first game against Duke was decided by the finest of margins. This one was closer than the final score, 89-76, but every time North Carolina nibbled the lead down, Duke had an answer.
Sometimes, it was the inside power of Vernon Carey, who finished with 25 points. Sometimes, it was the versatility of Justin Robinson — the Admiral’s son, newly frocked as the Lieutenant Commander — who scored as many points this week against N.C. State (10) and North Carolina (13) as he had in Duke’s previous 56 games, banking in one key 3-pointer that left Tar Heels coach Roy Williams rocking back in his chair in disbelief and another that took a circus bounce off the back rim. And when it wasn’t, it was the polish and poise of Tre Jones at the end of his second and presumably final Duke season.
There’s a long list of Duke players an opposing coach might worry about being prepared to guard. Robinson has, to this point in his career, never even been close to one of them.
“We saw he hit a couple 3s against State,” Williams said. “I didn’t think he was working on his bank shot. It’s been that kind of year.”
Has it ever for the Tar Heels, and no one person represents that struggle more than Brandon Robinson, who was at one point officially ruled out for the rest of the game after getting his jaw in the way of a Duke player’s elbow, only to drag himself back out onto the court yet again. Robinson has taken an utter beating this season, on and off the court, sore and wounded from ankle to face and everywhere between.
The ACC tournament, where the 14th-seeded Tar Heels will open Tuesday night against Virginia Tech, is perhaps a fresh start for North Carolina, but is there really any reason to expect anything different at this point?
“It’s frustrating, but it’s what’s been most of this season,” Williams said.
If it’s been that kind of year for North Carolina, it’s probably fair to ask if it’s that kind of year for Duke in an entirely different way. Even if the Blue Devils head into Greensboro as the fourth seed, and would have win or lose on Saturday, they appear to have put their March doldrums behind them after two resounding wins in six days.
Not only have Carey and Jones hit their stride, but Duke is fully healthy and has unlocked a new level with the sudden and unexpected emergence of Robinson, who has managed to compress Brian Zoubek’s entire four-year career progression into about 10 days.
Robinson got the first real playing time of his career at Wake Forest last month, at the behest of Mike Krzyzewski’s assistant coaches, who insisted Robinson had earned a look. He played 15 minutes that night, returned to obscurity against Virginia, then hit a pair of 3-pointers in the rout of the Wolfpack and unveiled an entire array of shots against the Tar Heels.
At one point late in the first half, he went streaking down the baseline and achieved liftoff for a two-handed dunk he couldn’t quite finish; if he had, Cameron might finally have gotten the gut renovation Duke has decided against for decades, and not by choice.
“It’s better than ‘Rudy,’ ” Krzyzewski said. “It’s almost like a movie, for crying out loud. He’s been outstanding. He’s made us better, no question about it.”
This Duke team doesn’t quite have the numbers Zoubek’s 2010 team had, but it enters the postseason in a similar spot: With a couple potentially dominant players, with experience, with depth (when it wants to use it), and with an X-factor forward who came into his own as a senior — and in a year when, other than maybe Kansas, there isn’t a truly dominant team in college basketball.
It’s definitely not North Carolina’s year. That much was certain long ago, and only reinforced with more of the same Saturday.
Is it, perhaps, Duke’s year after all?
This story was originally published March 7, 2020 at 9:20 PM.
