By Andrew Jones
FOXSportsSouth.com
March 8, 2011
An odd thing happened early in this college basketball season. North Carolina essentially became irrelevant. At Christmas time, the Tar Heels were off the national radar.
The same went for the end of January, as well. In fact, national pundits spoke of them more as an NIT team than an ACC regular season champion and possible No. 1 seed in the NCAA Tournament.
To be frank, that thinking was understandable. Carolina was coming off the worst season (20-17, NIT finals) of coach Roy Williams' career, and suffered losses to Vanderbilt, Minnesota and at Illinois before semester exams. Some ugly victories, and then a defeat in Greensboro, NC, to Texas pretty much buried Carolina in the consciousness of its sport.
Meanwhile, Duke was on top of the universe. And to understand the dynamics of this rivalry, when either Duke or UNC are ranked No. 1, the other program is regarded along Tobacco Road as down if it's not among the top five. Duke won 30 games in 2009, but Carolina claimed the national title, hence, Duke was down.
But UNC wasn't coming off a 30-win season in November and certainly didn't appear headed toward one. Carolina looked like the recovery process of losing so many players
