BIRMINGHAM, Ala. — A product of Durham’s Jordan Excessive College, Sydney Barker grew up proper between Duke and the College of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, principally inside strolling distance from each Cameron Indoor Stadium and Carmichael Area.
She didn’t get a selection in who she was going to root for rising up. Each of her mother and father had been UNC graduates and toted a younger Sydney to numerous video games in Carmichael. Barker went to former UNC coach Sylvia Hatchell’s summer time basketball camps. She’s seen Duke and UNC play – in particular person and on TV, in lots of sports activities – numerous occasions. Her most vivid reminiscence of the rivalry in girls’s basketball is of watching Paris Kea rating 36 factors towards the Blue Devils in an additional time victory at house for the Tar Heels in 2018.
Barker has even performed within the rivalry too. A freshman walk-on final season — she joined her beloved Tar Heels as an alternative of taking certainly one of a number of affords from mid-major applications — Barker swished an important 3-pointer in a 63-59 win for UNC within the common season finale in Chapel Hill.
However being part of this chapter of the rivalry on this stage is one thing that Barker might have by no means imagined.
“It feels so particular,” Barker advised SB Nation. “Like, wow, we get to be part of that. It’s simply wonderful. I can’t wait. I want we might play at this time.”
Like their males’s basketball groups did on the Closing 4 in 2022, the Tar Heels and Blue Devils will collectively write a brand new chapter of their storied rivalry in girls’s basketball on Friday afternoon in Birmingham’s Legacy Area once they face off within the Candy 16. The winner will advance to the Elite Eight for the primary time in additional than a decade. UNC hasn’t been since 2014 and Duke not since 2013.
For both UNC’s Courtney Banghart or Duke’s Kara Lawson, it’s one other alternative for them to seize milestone victories. For the previous half-decade, the coaches have been rebuilding two of the ACC’s signature applications simply miles other than one another on Tobacco Highway, each chasing the success that Wes Moore has achieved at N.C. State. This 12 months, for the primary time since 2007, all three applications nestled in North Carolina’s Analysis Triangle are within the Candy 16.
“These historically have been two of the heavyweights within the convention, proper? That wasn’t Kara or I’s doing — we’re simply in command of it on this second,” Banghart says. “There’s been plenty of coaches — or in our case one — who’ve come earlier than us which have created the truth that these video games matter as a result of each groups are all the time good. That’s what makes these rivalries so particular. I feel the Duke-Carolina rivalry is a lot greater than me or this staff.”
In girls’s basketball, UNC’s rivalry with N.C. State started within the mid-Nineteen Seventies. When the Wolfpack made Kay Yow its full-time girls’s basketball coach — as an alternative of saddling her with further duties like educating or teaching one other staff — they noticed her win large virtually instantly. N.C. State turned regulars within the AIAW Event, after which began going to Candy 16s within the Nineteen Eighties when the NCAA launched its personal girls’s basketball match. UNC couldn’t be outdone by its rival in Raleigh, so that they made its coach for the game right into a full-time place too, hiring Jennifer Alley away from Excessive Level. She made the Tar Heels into a decent program, taking them to 4 straight NCAA Tournaments earlier than resigning in 1986.
If Alley constructed the automotive, then Hatchell dropped the engine into it. She coached a UNC-squad powered by Charlotte Smith and Marion Jones to a nationwide championship in 1994, a run capped off by an iconic shot. She remains to be the one girls’s basketball coach within the Triangle to win a nationwide title.
However Gail Goestenkors got here fairly shut, a number of occasions. Duke lastly obtained critical about girls’s basketball within the Nineties and employed Goestenkors to take its program to the following stage. She did simply that. Beneath her 15-season watch, the Blue Devils gained 5 ACC Tournaments and went to 4 Closing Fours whereas producing all-time nice gamers like Alana Beard.
After which, all three applications skilled a downswing within the 2010s.
At UNC, Hatchell by no means advanced as a coach and resigned amid a scandal. At Duke, issues began properly below Joanne P. McCallie with 4 consecutive journeys to the Elite Eight, however her tenure fizzled out with too many misses in recruiting and expertise analysis. After Yow died in 2009, N.C. State changed her with Kellie Harper — then an up-and-coming head coach out of Western Carolina. She was fired after lacking the NCAA Event for 3 consecutive seasons and a former Yow assistant, Moore, was employed to rebuild this system.
Now, lastly, all three applications are again within the elite tier of the game. Every of them hung out ranked inside the highest 10 of the AP High 25 Ballot this season. And now, every are simply two wins away from going to the Closing 4.
To get there, Duke and North Carolina should undergo one another in a recreation shaping as much as be a low-scoring one. Each the Blue Devils and Tar Heels rank within the prime 10 nationally in defensive score. In every of the final seven conferences, the profitable staff hasn’t scored greater than 68 factors.
“I feel it’s going to be cool to showcase on even a much bigger stage what the Carolina-Duke rivalry is,” UNC fifth-year ahead Alyssa Ustby mentioned. “Clearly, it’s all the time a gritty recreation. So it’s one thing that’s going to be fairly cool to point out the remainder of the nation.”
Across the Tar Heels on Thursday, the hype for Friday’s recreation was palpable.
For the Blue Devils, it was not.
Till a reporter advised her, Lawson claimed she didn’t understand it was the primary assembly within the NCAA Event between Duke and UNC.
“I’m not likely, like, moved both manner by it. It’s not simply one other recreation,” Lawson mentioned with no trace of sarcasm. “It’s an necessary recreation. It’s a recreation to get a step past the place we had been capable of attain a 12 months in the past, and it’s a recreation to place your self in place to play for a spot within the Closing 4.”
It’s the 111th time Duke and UNC will play towards one another, with the Tar Heels holding a slim 56-54 benefit. In head-to-head conferences on this period of the rivalry, Banghart holds a 6-3 benefit towards Lawson.
Even when Lawson isn’t all that amped about renewing the rivalry within the Candy 16, her gamers are. No less than a little bit bit.
“I feel I communicate for all of us once I say this, however we’re all tremendous excited to play them once more,” mentioned Duke freshman Toby Fournier, the ACC Rookie of the 12 months. “They’re an amazing staff, tremendous aggressive, offensively, defensively. I really feel prefer it’s an amazing matchup for us. I feel we’re each tremendous ready, and I feel it’s going to be an amazing recreation.”
The sport goals to be an extremely particular one for UNC level guard Reniya Kelly. She grew up lower than 20 miles from right here in Hoover, Alabama, the place she scored a school-record 2,272 factors. Her retired No. 10 jersey hangs in Hoover Excessive College now after she guided the staff to 4 state championships – every of them on the identical ground that she’ll lead her Tar Heels onto towards Duke on Friday.
Kelly is 4-1 in Legacy Area. In entrance of family and friends, she desires to place one other tally within the win column.
“I simply love this place a lot as a result of I’ve a lot expertise, and the environment is all the time good right here,” Kelly mentioned. “The principle focus is to win. Clearly, it is a large rival, and I feel the followers are going to like it.”
