Tar Heels enter rivalry trip to No. 2 Blue Devils running low on time to help NCAA bid case

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CHAPEL HILL, N.C. (AP) — RJ Davis can take comfort that he’s been here before.

It was nearly three years ago that his North Carolina team looked uncertain of earning an NCAA Tournament bid as the Tar Heels prepared to visit rival Duke in the homecourt farewell for retiring Hall of Fame coach Mike Krzyzewski.

In a surprise, the Tar Heels won. In a bigger surprise, it catapulted them into a wild ride to the NCAA title game, complete with beating the Blue Devils again in the Final Four to end Coach K’s career.

And now, as Davis is in his fifth and final year, the Tar Heels are hoping to find some similar elixir through Saturday’s renewal of a blueblood rivalry. That comes with the second-ranked Blue Devils humming along and looking every bit like an NCAA title favorite, while the Tar Heels look iffy to crack the 68-team field.

“Going into that game in 2022, our backs were against the wall, people didn’t really believe in us, but we believed in ourselves,” Davis said. “And that’s what got us over the hump, that’s what allowed us to make that run. And that’s the same way of how I feel about this team right now.”

Maybe so, but the Tar Heels (13-9, 6-4 Atlantic Coast Conference) have to get moving quickly.

They opened the year at No. 9 in the AP Top 25 poll with Davis as the country’s lone returning first-team Associated Press All-American. But they were unranked by mid-December, with losses to a who’s who of the nation’s top teams: current No. 1 Auburn, No. 4 Alabama, No. 5 Florida, No. 7 Michigan State and No. 11 Kansas, among them.

They’ve shown stretches of high-level play, yet fail to sustain it. They enter Saturday having lost three of four, including one-point losses to Stanford and Wake Forest. The lone win came in surviving at home in overtime against a Boston College team with one league win.

“I mean, you change one possession in (some) of their games, their record looks a lot different,” Duke coach Jon Scheyer said. “So the respect level we have for them is as…

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Source link : https://sports.yahoo.com/tar-heels-enter-rivalry-trip-204914634.html

Author : Associated Press

Publish date : 2025-01-31 20:49:00

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