March 6, 2005

Duke's basketball team made its first visit to newly-opened Carmichael Auditorium on Jan. 8, 1966. Duke won that game 88-77. No one was surprised. Duke was ranked number one in the country and was en route to Vic Bubas' third Final Four. UNC coach Dean Smith was still building his program.

What happened afterwards was surprising. Bubas lost in Chapel Hill the last three times his team visited. Bucky Waters went winless in four trips, as did Neill McGeachy's sole Duke squad. Bill Foster revived the Duke program but couldn't break the Carmichael jinx.

Duke was zero-for-the-1970s at Carmichael. Some games were close. Duke's late-game collapse in 1974 has become the stuff of legend. Foster took his young powerhouse to Chapel Hill in 1978 but lost 87-83 behind Phil Ford's 34-point Senior Day swan song. Some games weren't close. Foster's last team, which included Mike Gminski and Gene Banks, lost at Carmichael 96-71.

Mike Krzyzewski didn't have any better luck at the beginning, losing at Chapel Hill in 1981, 1982, 1983 and 1984. Duke led much of the 1984 game, but Dan Meagher missed a chance to put it away from the foul line late and UNC won in double-overtime.

Carmichael was on the way out when Duke made its last visit on Jan. 19, 1985. The Dean Smith Center was under construction and would open the next season. The Blue Devils' 18-game losing streak in Chapel Hill loomed large but Duke had other things on its mind. The Devils had opened the season with 12 consecutive wins and had jumped to No. 2 in the polls, trailing only Georgetown. But Duke came into the game off losses to Maryland and Wake Forest, both in overtime. North Carolina, on the other hand, had won its first four conference games, the most recent being a comeback win over North Carolina State.

Already two games behind North Carolina in the loss column, Duke couldn't afford another defeat in Chapel Hill and Krzyzewski resolutely kept his team's focus on the importance of this game, not the historical context. "Coach K didn't talk about the history at all," remembers Jay Bilas, a junior on the 1985 team. "It wouldn't have meant anything to us anyway. When you're 19 years old, you tend to think nothing happened before you. Any game against North Carolina is huge, but coming off of two losses that we thought should have been wins gave some added incentive to a game that didn't need much added incentive."

"Coach K doesn't often use that sort of thing for motivation," adds Mark Alarie, another junior on that club. "We were concentrating on our game and what we had to do to win that game. I'm sure he didn't want to put any doubt in our mind by bringing up history. I only knew that no one on our team had ever won in Chapel Hill."

Although North Carolina had lost Michael Jordan and Sam Perkins from the previous year's team, the Heels still were a formidable opponent. Seven-footers Brad Daugherty, Joe Wolf and Warren Martin gave UNC a significant size advantage in the post, while Kenny Smith, Steve Hale and Buzz Peterson were key players on the perimeter.

But Duke had defeated an even more formidable UNC team in the 1984 ACC Tournament. "That one got us over the hump, got the question out of our mind," says Alarie. "We knew we could beat these guys."

"I'm not sure we really expected to be in a position to win there in 1984," adds Dan Meagher, a senior in `85. "The next year, we didn't have any fear. We knew it was our time."

Duke was led by junior guard Johnny Dawkins, who was coming off perhaps the worst game of his career. Dawkins had made only 4-of-14 field goals earlier in the week against Wake Forest and had been held to eight points, the first time he had scored in single figures at Duke. Dawkins rebounded in a big way. He and backcourt running mate Tommy Amaker consistently broke UNC's press and converted the advantage into fastbreak points.

"Given UNC's size, we weren't going to get a lot inside off of our halfcourt offense," recalls Alarie. "But we knew our big guys could beat their big guys down the court and get good shots. Johnny opened it up for us inside."

Duke led by as many as nine points in the first half. But North Carolina began to funnel the ball inside to Daugherty and Martin and fought back to a 39-39 tie at intermission.

Duke's big guys responded in the second half. "Carolina's size was staggering," says Bilas. "We knew we weren't going to block their shots, so we concentrated on playing good position defense and putting pressure on the ball."

Bilas gave Duke the lead for good with a three-point play early in the second half. The Devils led 51-49 with 15 minutes left when they went on a run. Big plays included a David Henderson steal that turned into a Dawkins layup and an Alarie three-point play (dunk and free throw). When Bilas scored on a follow shot, Duke was up 67-53. Smith, famous for his parsimony with timeouts, used two during this Duke surge.

North Carolina had overcome a 15-point deficit against State earlier in the week in part because of State's inability to make foul shots, while Duke had made only 15-of-24 free throws against Wake Forest. The logical strategy was to foul Duke down the stretch and wait for the misses. Duke didn't cooperate. The Devils converted 19-of-23 free throws over the last eight minutes and maintained a double-digit lead. When the buzzer sounded, Duke was comfortably ahead, 93-77. "It was remarkably easy for us. We felt like we could do anything we wanted," recalls Alarie.

Dawkins ended with a stat line for the ages. Playing all 40 minutes, he made 12-of-22 from the field and 10-of-12 from the line for 34 points. He pulled down eight rebounds, with four steals, four assists and no turnovers. Alarie added 19 points. Bilas battled Daugherty inside to the tune of 17 points and 11 rebounds, while Meagher pulled down 10 rebounds. In fact, Duke outrebounded the much larger Heels 42-30. Henderson also had four of Duke's 14 steals. Daugherty led UNC with 18 points and 11 rebounds, while Martin and Smith scored 16 and 14 respectively.

Alarie feels that this game "encapsulated what Coach K was trying to do, what he was trying to establish. An inside-out attack on offense, intense defensive pressure, poise in the clutch."

The win may have meant more to the senior Meagher than anyone. "I remember going to Chapel Hill early in my career when guys like Worthy and Perkins pushed us around like we weren't there," he says. "Now we were men. We could compete against anybody."

Duke didn't get much short-term bounce from the big win. In fact, the Devils were blown out at North Carolina State in their next game. The 1985 regular season played out as perhaps the most competitive ACC regular-season ever. Duke had a chance to tie for the title at home against UNC in the season finale but UNC turned the tables, winning on the road 78-68. Duke finished at 8-6, one game behind UNC, North Carolina State and Georgia Tech. Injuries to Alarie and Henderson in the postseason helped end Duke's campaign in the second round of the NCAAs.

On a bigger scale, however, the win ended an unprecedented streak of futility and proved that Duke could not only compete in Chapel Hill but could win there. Duke was winless in Chapel Hill for 18 seasons. In the ensuing 20 years, Duke has won there nine times.

"I had no knowledge of the streak until Johnny Moore (former Duke publicist) told me about it after the game," Bilas says. "When he started mentioning all the guys who had never won in Chapel Hill, Spanarkel and Gminski and Banks, that got my attention. It was one of those games whose significance has grown over the years."

Meagher, whose contentious relationship with Dean Smith is well known, admits, "Beating Dean is his place was very satisfying. But more important, this game juxtaposed where we had been and how far we had come. It was a coming-out party for Coach K and his program."