NEW ORLEANS — There was never anything inevitable about the collision course that Duke and North Carolina find themselves on, not this season at least. Historically, certainly the odds were that two programs of such longstanding and explosive success would cross paths at some point. If not now, someday.
The postseason meeting in the 1971 NIT was like a fossil in the geological record, a reminder from the past that everything old will become new again, that the right circumstances occurred once, and could again. And they have.
But those circumstances didn’t exist in November or December or January or February. Neither team was in a position to get this far. They developed on not-quite parallel tracks, very different paths for both teams that led to the same point, and had the same driving force at their core.
These teams are both here for the same reason. It was never about talent. The talent was always there. They play Saturday night because they both found heart.
That sounds like a cliché, but it’s not. Two teams that too often took the easy way out figured out how to do things the hard way. And that has made all the difference.
It’s what Mike Krzyzewski said after Duke flipped the scenario that had plagued it all season, blowing a second-half lead against Michigan State but — for the first time — recovering to pull out a win when all seemed lost.
“It had nothing to do with coaching those last four or five minutes,” the Duke coach said that night. “It all had to do with heart and togetherness. They followed their hearts, and God bless them.”
It’s what Hubert Davis was referring to when he talked often early in the season about how he didn’t expect to have to coach effort, or acknowledged Thursday that when people called his team soft, he couldn’t argue. Now, he’ll argue.
“I felt like at the beginning of the year, the thing I had to coach the most was effort and toughness,” the North Carolina coach said. “I haven’t had to do that the last two months, at all. I’ve gotten to coach basketball.”
For both teams, some of this was a natural process. Duke did as much growing up in the two weeks between the home loss to North Carolina and the comeback against Michigan State as Krzyzewski’s older teams did in the space of years, an evolutionary leap some of Duke’s other very talented teams have failed to make.
North Carolina, with a new coach and a new coaching staff and two impact transfers, was a team very much in flux, unusually so for a program so philosophically grounded at its roots. It took time, practice and the departure of one of those transfers — Dawson Garcia, who arrived from Marquette — for everything to click into place, after a dismal loss to Wake Forest.
“I think after that, we just drew the line and said we have to stop being selfish,” North Carolina’s Armando Bacot said. “In order for us to get it done we have to play together as a team. I feel that’s what been helping us and getting us to this point.”
And while it has not been a linear progression — neither team looked particularly vibrant in their losses to Virginia Tech in Brooklyn, each disheartening in its own way — the discovery of some inner strength that had previously been absent has been the common thread between their arrivals here, on this stage, in this cataclysmic winner-takes-everything game.
The tangibles were never in doubt, for either team. The questions, the issues, were always about intangibles.
“It was really up to us,” Duke’s Paolo Banchero said. “And once we made that decision to fully commit, then everything kind of came easier. We started communicating more. We started playing defense, just being better overall as a team.”
Duke could have as many as five players chosen in the first round of the NBA draft, three one-and-done freshmen, a sophomore and a junior. This was the team Krzyzewski chose for his final season, because it had the talent to win a national title. It had to grow into that role, and now it has.
North Carolina had two guards who arrived as freshmen as potential one-year players, but have emerged as stars in their second. They boasted a lockdown perimeter defender and senior who does everything but score, and the ACC’s preseason player of the year who is one double-double away from an ACC record, then added a shaggy sharpshooter to that mix. The pieces didn’t always fit together. Now they do.
“It’s not the same team we played either time,” Krzyzewski said. “They’ve grown and they’re better.”
Neither of these are the same teams that played March 5, when North Carolina spoiled Krzyzewski’s Cameron finale. They have advanced along disparate routes to reach the same point. One of them will play for a national title on Monday. Both have reached down inside and found something they lacked.
Call it whatever you want. But you can definitely call it heart.
