Duke-NC State may not be Elite 8 grudge match we expected, but it’s the one we deserve

And here we are. If you followed this ACC basketball season to its logical conclusion, of course you’d end up with Duke and N.C. State in a steel-cage death match for a spot in the Final Four.

Couldn’t everyone see this coming? Didn’t everyone?

How we got here is probably less interesting than where we’re going at this point. There’s going to be a Triangle team in the Final Four for the fifth time in nine years, no matter what happens Sunday in Dallas, a time zone away from the center of the college basketball universe.

If it’s Duke, then not only did the Blue Devils complete the mission their sophomores came back to pursue, but Jon Scheyer will have reached his first Final Four in four fewer seasons than his mentor did at Duke. (Not exactly apples to apples.) Duke lost the regular-season ACC title to a rival, lost the ACC championship to a rival and still has a chance to have the last laugh.

If it’s N.C. State, then a team that has fought for its basketball life eight times truly does have nine lives, tapping into primal Wolfpack basketball memories that seemed long forgotten, “2024” forever spoken with similar reverence to “1983,” another team that hit its stride at the precise right moment. Why not them, indeed.

And on and on and on.

Even in a state that has newly legalized gambling on sports, it seems almost trivial to attach a financial stake to this game. As Hemingway wrote about bullfights: “It would be like betting on the war. You don’t need any economic interest.”

“It’s not going to be like an ACC game or anything like that,” veteran Duke guard Jeremy Roach said. “It’s a March Madness game and they’re a totally different team from when we played them, even from D.C.”

Still, how we got here actually does matter, because the two different paths these teams have taken are one reason the stakes are so high.

Duke, recipient of 11 of the 63 No. 1 votes in the AP preseason poll, enters every season with the bar set here, to get to this point. Scheyer bristled a little Friday night when the Tennessee loss a year ago came up — “You don’t have to apologize for losing in the tournament; every team loses except one” — but he also knows Duke, of all programs, is never judged on a curve.

Duke’s toughness was tested, again. This time, the Blue Devils were not found wanting

It is judged on banners, and if the Blue Devils missed their first two chances to secure one, they have put themselves in position now, not a moment too late but just in time. The fact that they have to get past the same team that denied them a chance at an ACC title, and it also happens to be their neighbors from just down the road, is almost immaterial at this point.

It is far from immaterial to that opponent, of course, a team that took an entire season for all the parts and pieces to click into place but became an entirely different whole once they did. With point-forward D.J. Burns exerting an almost gravitational force on games, Mo Diarra and Ben Middlebrooks crashing the boards and D.J. Horne, Michael O’Connell and Casey Morsell knocking down open shots, the Wolfpack has become the ultimate pick-your-poison challenge.

Confidence is a funny thing, and wherever the Wolfpack found it, these players are overflowing with it now, as full of belief as they are grievance. They were doubted by outsiders for a reason, and if that has fueled this run, so be it. Regardless of what happens Sunday, the ACC title is theirs to keep, their legacy already secure. But there’s so much left to add to it, should they again seize the opportunity.

Wave carrying NC State hasn’t broken. It’s taken Pack within a win of the Final Four

It obviously can get bigger than this, as Duke and North Carolina famously proved in 2022, but both of those teams have been on that stage so often before, if never before against each other. Having N.C. State involved, after decades in the shadows, is a new spin on things. And in this particular case, only one will go to the Final Four. There is no consolation prize.

After N.C. State won the ACC title, Scheyer left N.C. State coach Kevin Keatts a congratulatory message, a generous gesture to a rival-slash-colleague. Keatts actually called back, and the two had a long conversation, never knowing they would renew acquaintances again so soon, so far away.

“It’s funny, I was thinking about it last night,” Keatts said. “Like, man, we both could have just flown home and played this game somewhere — probably at PNC (Arena) would have been a good idea.”

Scheyer said the short turnaround is one difference between this and 2022, when some time and many games elapsed between that last night in Cameron and their arrival in New Orleans. Here’s another: There was nothing about that long-awaited, long-feared collision that felt transitory. Duke and North Carolina had been fighting the same war on many different fronts for decades, and that merely opened a new one.

But there’s no guarantee, now, that Duke and N.C. State will continue to see each other except like this. As much as the ACC is reveling in its March success, it can’t erase the fact that one of the three ACC teams in the Elite 8 is suing to get out. The future is tenuous and uncertain, for the ACC and both schools alike, neither of which should have the same sense of security that UNC has if the great unraveling comes.

This may not be the zenith of ongoing hostilities that date back to Everett Case and Vic Bubas and Mike Krzyzewski and Jim Valvano; it may instead be one of the latter acts of the rivalry as we know it, a rivalry that doesn’t get the attention that Duke and North Carolina gets, but certainly runs deep in its own right.

“I knew it was a possibility, just with their side of the bracket and everything,” N.C. State guard D.J. Horne said. “I honestly thought Houston would be here right now. So the fact that Duke is here just speaks to the toughness of the ACC. It’ll be a great game. I would love to go out and get another win against them and uneven this tie on the season.”

So if this isn’t the climactic settling-of-local-grudges we expected this weekend — R.J. Davis and Caleb Love’s joint 0-for-9s Thursday took that off the table — perhaps it’s the one we deserve.

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