The 2019-20 Duke Basketball team accomplished something that no Duke Basketball team has accomplished since 1944 — end the season with a win over UNC. That’s the only previous time it’s happened in all the years of Duke Basketball. Ending the season with a win over UNC isn’t likely to happen again unless it’s for a national championship but that championship game would be a singularity that could rip a tear in the space-time continuum so we can’t have it.
By the way, 1944 was the year of the now famous secret game with what was then North Carolina College but the Duke team that lost that game was from the Med School rather than the official Duke basketball team.
Duke finished its season with a 13 point win over Carolina, and they finished theirs with a 28-point beat down against Syracuse. Nothing could be finer.
And speaking of the secret game, every Duke basketball fan should read Scott Ellsworth's book, even though it was the wartime Duke medical school team rather than the varsity:
https://www.amazon.com/Secret-Game-W...6644098&sr=8-1
And speaking some more about the secret game, in 1965 St. Augustine High and Jesuit High played their own version, which helped desegregate high school basketball in New Orleans.
https://www.nola.com/300/article_9a2...915a46685.html
In 1971 Carolina finished its season with a victory over GTech in the finals of the NIT - Bill Chamberlain was the star of that game, I believe. And Rich Yunkas was Tech's big scorer that season. Two nights earlier the Heels had beaten Duke in the semifinals. We then lost the consolation game to St. Bonaventure. At least that's my best recollection.
Duke and Carolina have met for a NCAA title in a team sport exactly once, in women’s soccer.
They had Mia Hamm and Kristine Lilly. We had a bunch of good players who overachieved to reach the championship game.
You can imagine how it went.