UNC running out of chances to turn season around, but none bigger than Saturday at Duke
Maybe it’s a good time for the biggest game of North Carolina’s season so far. The Tar Heels are hanging by a very thin thread, dangerously close to missing the NCAA Tournament for the second time in three years.
That hasn’t happened in Chapel Hill since 2002 and 2003, the bottoming out of the program under Matt Doherty, consecutive years of shame obviously being far worse than two of three, but still a historical aberration amid the proud tradition of North Carolina basketball. And neither of Doherty’s last two teams started the season ranked in the top 10, unlike these Tar Heels in the autumns of 2022 and 2024.
When those dark days regain contemporary relevance, that’s a bad sign for the state of UNC basketball, but if there’s good news for the Tar Heels it’s that they still have more than enough time to banish it back to the archives.
Saturday’s visit to Duke, which looked glaringly vulnerable in narrow wins over Wake Forest and N.C. State, comes amid a four-game stretch that offers every opportunity for North Carolina to bolster its tournament profile. One of those opportunities, at Pittsburgh on Tuesday, already went awry when the Tar Heels scored two points in the final six minutes.
But there’s still Duke, and then Pittsburgh again, at home this time, and then at Clemson. North Carolina’s season may very well come down to these games, and there’s already one strike against the Tar Heels.
How they got here is well documented at this point: a flawed roster with too many guards and not enough useful forwards that struggles to rebound and defend. This season was set on this path over the summer. It hasn’t helped that portal pickup Cade Tyson hasn’t contributed, or that Jalen Washington hasn’t developed as North Carolina once expected, but neither of those is a determining factor.
Hubert Davis and his staff built a broken lineup, and as time passes, the collection of last-second wins over Notre Dame, N.C. State and Boston College look less like a team figuring out how to win and more like a team that barely escaped games it probably should have lost.
All that said, any lineup with R.J. Davis and Ian Jackson in it has the potential to explode at any given time, a get-out-of-jail-free card most teams lack. The Tar Heels’ situation may be dire at the moment, but it’s far from unsalvageable. A win at Duke on Saturday would go a long way toward atonement.
That presumes Duke plays along. For all their talent, the Blue Devils have left the door open lately, trailing the Demon Deacons by six in the second half, the Wolfpack by 13 early. In each game, they mustered a decisive defensive tsunami, going zone against Wake to spark a 14-2 run, smothering State during a 23-2 run.
If the Blue Devils give North Carolina that opening Saturday, can the Tar Heels finish the job the way Wake and State could not?
As good as Duke is on defense, and as good Cooper Flagg and Kon Knueppel are on offense, the Blue Devils can sputter at times when it comes to putting the ball in the basket. Duke’s loss to Kentucky was in its fastest-paced game of the season. North Carolina certainly has the horses to push the tempo.
But there’s a reason why the Tar Heels are likely to end up a double-digit underdog: They’re erratic. They’ve underachieved. They continue to slide toward the wrong side of the bubble. And Duke is off to its best start in ACC play since J.J. Redick was still in school.
Whatever North Carolina wants, or wanted, its season to be, it hasn’t foreclosed on that yet. But it’s running out of chances to change that direction. Saturday is the biggest of them.
Never miss a Luke DeCock column. Sign up at www.newsobserver.com/newsletters to have them delivered directly to your email inbox as soon as they post.
Luke DeCock’s Latest: Never miss a column on the Canes, ACC or other Triangle sports
This story was originally published January 31, 2025 at 6:00 AM with the headline "UNC running out of chances to turn season around, but none bigger than Saturday at Duke."
