By Art Chansky

You’ve got to hand it to Duke.

Wait a minute, no you don’t. Not when you’re up 10 with two minutes to play; not when you’re killing them on the offensive boards. Not when you’re a veteran team playing at home with your foot on your arch rival’s neck.

So what did you do?

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You basically stopped playing and started watching the clock. You missed free throws that would have put the game away. Your best passer (Kendall) threw one away. Your smartest player (Harrison) committed a dumb offensive foul. And your 7-foot academic All-American senior center, who had just about wrapped up ACC Player of the Year in the first half, turned goat in the second half by accidentally tipping in a Duke basket and failing on two of the four critical free throws missed.

Finally, Tyler Zeller, who is so much better than this, let a 6-4 freshman guard launch the winner over his wing span when he HAS to make him a driver and, at worst, tie the game or push him so far beyond the three-point line he has to heave the last shot underhand instead of squaring up and becoming the latest legend in this unbelievable rivalry.

A stunned Smith Center crowd that became comfortable in the second half and turned fretful fans in the final minutes watched another Duke pig pile on a player who made a last-second winner in their house. Chris Duhon’s coast-to-coast capper in 2004 comes to mind.

And, worst of all, the veteran Tar Heels’ total lack of killer instinct gave a reeling Duke team a shot of adrenaline that it sorely needed to stay in the ACC race, which is now tied three ways with Florida State. And guess who doesn’t have either tiebreaker at the moment.

Roy Williams was complimentary of Duke, which he should have been, and praised his team for playing hard but making “some mistakes” down the stretch. That’s what classy coaches do in public. But chances are by the time you read this, Williams still hasn’t slept a wink, and they had better make sure Thursday and Friday’s practices are closed so tight that nothing gets out.

Because Williams will try to make his players understand that what happened last night NEVER should have happened. A victory that would have tied the series (9-9) with Duke since ol’ Roy returned inexplicably became Carolina’s fifth loss to the Blue Devils in their last six games. A loss so careless that the opposing coach still maintained his team had beaten the best team in the ACC.

Carolina may be the most talented team in the ACC and one of the most experienced, but the Tar Heels will have to live with this loss for a long time, because the old saw about them being soft will come back, ironically, after they appeared to shake that rap forever with a truly gutsy win at Maryland.

The first 37 minutes of a game like this don’t matter, unless you finish the job. Carolina did everything right to send Duke to the locker room at halftime doubting itself. After all, the Devils made 7 three-pointers and the Heels hit none, yet they still trailed by three because their taller and tough-seeming hosts outscored them in the paint by 14 points and made six more free throws.

That was a losing proposition for Duke, and it showed for most of the second half as Carolina moved out to as much as a 13-point lead behind Barnes' brilliance on a bum ankle. But the one thing you do not do with the Devils of the last three decades is let them hang around. Don’t we all know that by now?

Their tradition, alone, guarantees they won’t quit. You don’t stop attacking and let them crawl back into the game, where luck becomes a factor. Where Zeller accidentally scores two points for the wrong team, where the one shooter you back off (Tyler Thornton) hits a rally-starting three-pointer and, when it has all unraveled into a shaky two-point lead, you give a cocky kid with a shooter’s mentality a chance to win a game that had been lost for most of the night.

You do have to credit Austin Rivers for making a bomb over the outstretched hand of Zeller, who backed off just a bit instead of forcing Doc Rivers’ son to put the ball on the floor or fling it from 30 feet.  But at that point, in that position, you figure he’s going to make it.

That’s what this rivalry is all about; making heroes forever out of young people. The Tar Heels sure accomplished that Wednesday night. But you don’t have to hand it to them.