Duke Basketball vs. North Carolina: 92 - 90

I got home and about 8 minutes had gone by in the game.  It looked like Duke was taking it to Carolina.  This being a rivalry game that only lasted so long.  Carolina slowly pulled closer.  Then a crowd silencing event happened:  Jahlil Okafor went down with what looked like a really bad ankle sprain.  This was a chance for Carolina to perhaps take the lead going into halftime, but Duke drilled a couple threes and was able to hold on to a 49 - 42 halftime lead.

From about the 2 minute mark in the 1st half until the 3:22 mark in the 2nd half, Carolina had total control of the game.  With 3:22 left in the game, Carolina was up 77 - 67.  Now a lot of that appeared to be due to Okafor's play on the court.  Though he had to leave the court for awhile after twisting his ankle, he soon returned; however, it just didn't seem like he was moving very smoothly.  In fact, with him not playing all that great, the rest of the team seemed to stall out, which resulted in Carolina building a significant lead.  It really looked like this wasn't going to turn out well for Duke -- even Jabari Parker (who was at the game) admitted as much during an after game interview.  

But then the game turned, perhaps driven by Okafor's ankle loosening up.  In fact, maybe it was a good idea that Okafor played the whole second half instead of heading to the bench when he was looking like a liability.  If he'd left the game, his ankle would have stiffened up.  I'm sure at this very moment of this blog post going up that his ankle is packed in ice.  Duke started to make a run and Carolina didn't seem to do what had gotten them the ten point lead, which was driving the ball into the lane -- which maybe once again was due to Okafor's ankle feeling better.  Instead, Carolina settled for shots from the outside.  J.P. Tokoto is a prime example.  He was scoring up a storm near the rim, but his last shot of the 2nd half was a jumper.

How else could this rivalry game end, but in overtime.  Carolina took a brief lead in overtime, but then Duke powered through to win by two.  They would have won by more, I think, but they had trouble hitting their free throws -- potentially due to exhaustion.

Though this game did go into overtime and the game was only won by two points, I don't think this was one of the more exciting Duke-Carolina games ever.  My issue is that Duke basically seemed to disappear for nearly half the game -- once again perhaps driven by Okafor's injury.  Just by how I was seeing the flow of the game, I think Duke would have won easily if Okafor hadn't had that fall.

Interesting note:  I watched a little of the post game.  One of the ESPN anchors who was doing SportsCenter from Cameron was as close to nirvana as one can get.  All Duke coaches need to do when talking to new recruits is show the first couple minutes of that anchor's time on ESPN and how he was on Cloud 9 regarding his experience in Cameron.  

Interesting note 2:  I noticed how Coach K took his last time outs in the 2nd half and overtime with about 1:30 left.  I wonder if he did this to give his guys a breather before pushing through the remaining time.