DURHAM, N.C. — North Carolina got caught in Duke’s dismantling buzzsaw on Saturday night, and proceeded to get chopped to pieces.
The No. 2 Blue Devils overwhelmed the Tar Heels 87-70 in ACC basketball at Cameron Indoor Stadium, delivering a dominating blowout in this lopsided matchup of rivals seemingly headed in opposite directions.
Kon Knueppel scored 22 points and freshman phenom Cooper Flagg supplied 21 points, eight rebounds and seven assists, as league-leading Duke (19-2 overall, 11-0 ACC) exploited UNC’s weaknesses while running college basketball’s longest winning streak to 15 straight victories.
The Tar Heels, sinking through a number of hapless stretches, looked like a team without a plan to combat Duke’s exceptional size and elite appetite for defense. UNC (13-10, 6-5) suffered its fourth loss in the last five games.
The Blue Devils led 77-45 with less than nine minutes of game time remaining, and appeared poised to pile up one of the largest margins of victory in the pages of this storied rivalry. Carolina used a late 18-2 run to trim Duke’s huge lead to 79-63.
Drake Powell scored all 12 of his points in the second half. RJ Davis finished with 12 points. Davis, the fifth-year senior guard, had been 3-1 in road games here at Duke’s Cameron Indoor Stadium. Seth Trimble added 10 points.
(Photo: Jim Hawkins / Inside Carolina)
Duke delivers knockout punch in first half
Duke led 47-25 by halftime, as the first half ended in a fashion indicative of how Saturday night had been going for the Tar Heels. Flagg had picked up dribble and was stuck against RJ Davis with the clock expiring. So the 6-foot-9 Duke freshman simply spun and swished a turnaround jumper over the 6-foot UNC first-year senior.
Flagg supplied 13 points, five assists, four rebounds, two blocked shots and two steals during the first half alone, his immense skills fully on display at times. He scored or assisted on Duke’s first 18 points of the game, as the Blue Devils piled up a big lead that just kept growing. Later, with the Tar Heels mired in a scoreless drought of 5½ minutes, Duke extended and went ahead 40-13.
Duke stormed out of the gate and led 23-6 in the game’s opening seven minutes, on the strength of an early 16-0 run that effectively knocked the Tar Heels stumbling into submission. The Blue Devils were on fire, hitting nine of their first 13 shots from the field, including a combination of four 3-pointers from Flagg, Knueppel and Proctor. Duke’s lead crossed the 20-point threshold in the first half, as 7-2 Khaman Maluach went up and over 6-6 Drake Powell for an offensive rebound and put-back. The Blue Devils lead 34-13 by that juncture, and were feasting on UNC’s weaknesses.
Meanwhile, RJ Davis and Ian Jackson went scoreless across the game’s first 15 minutes. The Tar Heels shot just 29.6 percent from the field during the first half, and entered the intermission break with more turnovers (nine) than successful field goals (eight). Elliot Cadeau had five turnovers in the first half. He coughed up three turnovers during the game’s opening 4½ minutes.
Next on the schedule
UNC reaches the mid-week bye that the ACC league schedule affords, and will have a six-day break between games before returning to action next Saturday at home against a familiar foe in Pittsburgh (4 p.m., ESPN2). Carolina will be playing Pitt twice across a three-game stretch. The Panthers are among the three teams that the Tar Heels square off against home-and-home style during conference play this season, with rivals Duke and NC State the others. Carolina and Pitt just met earlier this week, a road assignment the Tar Heels lost 73-65 after leading in the game’s final three minutes.
Pitt lost on Saturday at Wake Forest, dropping to 14-7 overall and 5-5 in the ACC. The Panthers have a short turnaround to their next game, which arrives Monday night against Virginia. UNC leads the all-time series 17-9 against Pitt, including 7-3 in home games and 6-3 at the Smith Center. But coach Jeff Capel’s Pitt teams have won six of the last nine meetings with the Tar Heels, including three straight in Chapel Hill — road victories that were secured in January 2020, February 2022 and February 2023.
