Duke will host North Carolina on Saturday night in top-10 matchup between the top teams in the ACC.
Carolina won the first meeting between these programs earlier this year, snapping a 2-game losing streak to the rival Blue Devils. A win for Duke in this game means the Tobacco Road rivals would share the ACC regular season title, while a UNC victory would give the outright crown to the Tar Heels.
This rivalry has been very equal straight-up over a large sample size, but this story will focus on some key betting trends from the past couple decades. All trends below are since the start of the 2000-01 season:
The Tar Heels have been the dominant team against-the-spread in this rivalry over the past quarter century or so. The Tar Heels have a cover rate of about 57.3% over that span, which is impressive considering they are just 23-32 straight up (44.2%) against the Blue Devils. Carolina often covers the spread as an underdog in this matchup.
Given Carolina’s edge ATS compared to its straight up record in this series this century, it’s not surprising to see these results. The Tar Heels have historically out-performed the market as an underdog in this series, but have not often won outright as a dog.
Five of North Carolina’s 10 outright wins as the underdog in this series have come when it was a dog of seven or more points. That’s not likely to be the case on Saturday in the 2024 regular-season finale, but it’s still worth noting to underscore how good UNC has been from this spot.
When Duke is the underdog, it’s a different picture. The Blue Devils have not been nearly as good against the spread when they’re the underdog in this matchup, but they do have a much higher overall win rate.
Duke is just 2-5-1 against the spread in its last 8 games as an underdog to Carolina.
There’s not much to separate these teams in Chapel Hill over the past 2+ decades. Carolina has been a bit better against the number recently on its home floor, going 5-2 ATS in its last seven games in this series.
North Carolina has been excellent against the number on the road in this series, covering at a rate of 66.7% in its last 24 trips to Cameron. UNC was the underdog in all but 5 of those games. The 5 times Carolina has been a favorite in Durham since 2000-01, the Tar Heels went 4-1 straight up and against the spread.
Since the start of the 2010-11 season, Duke has been a little more competitive ATS on its home floor but is still just 5-8 during that span.
Hubert Davis is preparing to coach his 7th game against the Blue Devils as UNC’s head coach. Back in his first season in 2021-22, Davis and the Tar Heels earned 2 massive upsets over Duke — one in Mike Krzyzewski’s final home game in Durham and one over the Blue Devils in the Final Four to end Krzyzewski’s coaching career altogether.
But outside of those two wins, Davis is just 1-3 straight up and ATS vs. UNC’s biggest rival. The lone win came earlier this season when the Tar Heels earned a 9-point victory as 4.5-point favorites over Duke.
This will be Jon Scheyer’s 4th contest against UNC since he officially took over as head coach at the start of the 2022-23 campaign. Scheyer and the Blue Devils swept UNC — straight up and against the number — in his first season at the helm, which help earn some immediate goodwill from the Duke faithful.
Scheyer couldn’t make it 3 in a row when these teams met earlier this year in Chapel Hill, but he has another chance at redemption on Saturday night inside the friendly confines of Cameron Indoor Stadium.
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