It may seem peculiar that Saturday’s Final Four matchup between Duke and North Carolina is the first-ever tilt between the archrivals in the men’s NCAA Tournament. After all, the rivalry is often billed as the greatest in college sports: The two programs, separated by less than 10 miles, have combined for 11 national championships, 38 […]
The biannual regular-season showdown between Duke and North Carolina is typically appointment television for men’s college basketball fans. Not so much this year, with the bitter rivals meeting unranked for the first time since 1960. The Feb. 6 matchup posted the lowest TV rating and audience for the series in at least 14 years. Unexpected […]
When the NCAA men’s basketball tournament was officially canceled on March 12 because of the coronavirus pandemic, it marked the end of one of the most unpredictable — and wide-open — seasons in recent memory. We saw a record number of teams grab the top spot in the Associated Press rankings in the first few […]
The North Carolina Tar Heels walked onto their home court as 8.5-point favorites against the Georgia Tech Yellow Jackets for their first game of the 2020 calendar year. With a victory, daggum coaching legend Roy Williams could have passed his former mentor — and the namesake of North Carolina’s home court — on the all-time […]
Last November, soon after North Carolina brought Mack Brown back to Chapel Hill to be its head football coach again after 21 years away, Brown’s first order of business was an in-state recruiting blitz. For the next month, that meant a last-minute pitch to one of the country’s top quarterback prospects, Sam Howell, who reopened […]