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, mainly inside strolling distance from each Cameron Indoor Stadium and Carmichael Area.
She didn’t get a alternative 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 season 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 in opposition to the Blue Devils in an time beyond regulation victory at dwelling 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 one in all a number of gives 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 instructed SB Nation. “Like, wow, we get to be part of that. It’s simply superb. I can’t wait. I want we might play at present.”
Like their males’s basketball groups did on the Ultimate 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 after 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 yr, 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 accountable for it on this second,” Banghart says. “There’s been a number 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 group.”
In girls’s basketball, UNC’s rivalry with N.C. State started within the mid-Seventies. When the Wolfpack made Kay Yow its full-time girls’s basketball coach — as an alternative of saddling her with further tasks like educating or teaching one other group — they noticed her win large nearly instantly. N.C. State turned regulars within the AIAW Match, after which began going to Candy 16s within the Eighties when the NCAA launched its personal girls’s basketball match. UNC couldn’t be outdone by its rival in Raleigh, in order 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 good 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 continues 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 bought critical about girls’s basketball within the Nineteen Nineties and employed Goestenkors to take its program to the subsequent stage. She did simply that. Below her 15-season watch, the Blue Devils received 5 ACC Tournaments and went to 4 Ultimate 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 nicely underneath 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 Match 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 frolicked 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 Ultimate 4.
To get there, Duke and North Carolina should undergo one another in a sport shaping as much as be a low-scoring one. Each the Blue Devils and Tar Heels rank within the high 10 nationally in defensive score. In every of the final seven conferences, the profitable group 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 stated. “Clearly, it’s all the time a gritty sport. So it’s one thing that’s going to be fairly cool to indicate the remainder of the nation.”
Across the Tar Heels on Thursday, the hype for Friday’s sport was palpable.
For the Blue Devils, it was not.
Till a reporter instructed her, Lawson claimed she didn’t understand it was the primary assembly within the NCAA Match between Duke and UNC.
“I’m not likely, like, moved both means by it. It’s not simply one other sport,” Lawson stated with out a trace of sarcasm. “It’s an essential sport. It’s a sport to get a step past the place we had been capable of attain a yr in the past, and it’s a sport to place your self in place to play for a spot within the Ultimate 4.”
It’s the 111th time Duke and UNC will play in opposition to one another, with the Tar Heels holding a slender 56-54 benefit. In head-to-head conferences on this period of the rivalry, Banghart holds a 6-3 benefit in opposition to Lawson.
Even when Lawson isn’t all that amped about renewing the rivalry within the Candy 16, her gamers are. Not less than a 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,” stated Duke freshman Toby Fournier, the ACC Rookie of the 12 months. “They’re an awesome group, tremendous aggressive, offensively, defensively. I really feel prefer it’s an awesome matchup for us. I feel we’re each tremendous ready, and I feel it’s going to be an awesome sport.”
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 group to 4 state championships – every of them on the identical ground that she’ll lead her Tar Heels onto in opposition to Duke on Friday.
Kelly is 4-1 in Legacy Area. In entrance of family and friends, she needs 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 ambiance is all the time good right here,” Kelly stated. “The primary focus is to win. Clearly, this can be a large rival, and I feel the followers are going to find it irresistible.”