Tobacco Road-ish

Maybe it's because there was 20 inches of snow on the ground outside my house. Or, maybe I was just too tired after spending six hours at a Rutgers Athletic Center with 100 people inside of it (Blizzard 2010 smacked New Jersey).

But, watching Duke-UNC last night seemed different. For my entire life, this has been the second best rivalry in American sports-- right behind the Yankees and Red Sox. As a college hoops fan, you marked your calendar for the mid-February and early March tilts at the Dean Dome and Cameron Indoor.

Wednesday's leg one was a defensive basketball game-- Coach K's favorite kind of hoops. However, there were points when Roy Williams looked like he was trying too hard and when Ed Davis (4 points, 5 rebounds) looked more like a second-round pick than a sure-fire lottery selection.

Watching Jon Scheyer (pictured; 24 points on 5-of-9 from 3-point range) reminded me of J.J. Reddick at times and, in turn, some better moments in this rivalry.

Maybe the aura and mystique faded a bit because of this crazy little stat. The game put now No. 7 Duke (20-4, 8-2 in the ACC) against unranked and sliding North Carolina (13-11, 2-7).

Against a comparable schedule, UNC is one game better than Rutgers (12-12, 2-9 in the BIG EAST). The team in Chapel Hill is falling fast.

Roy Williams will get a ton of breathing room and rightfully so. If you win two national titles in five years, you can survive one NIT season. However, on Tobacco Road, you don't get much time to rebuild.

I'm sure Williams would have loved Tyler Hansbrough back on the court yesterday. None of his Tar Heels seemed to understand the importance of protecting the Dean Dome against Duke. And, that's a sad fact.

Let's hope it's a better game at Cameron Indoor next month.