2017 ACC Tournament: Duke vs. North Carolina preview, prediction, TV schedule

On Friday night in the ACC basketball league, the Duke Blue Devils take on the North Carolina Tar Heels in the first game of the ACC Semifinals.

 TV Schedule: Friday, Mar. 10, 7:00 p.m. ET, ESPN

Arena: Barclays Center, Brooklyn, New York

UNC against Duke is always entertaining, and we are usually lucky that we get to witness such great basketball squaring off twice a year. How spoiled are we that we get to see them play for a third time? North Carolina vs. Duke. Round three. Let’s take a look at this match-up.

North Carolina is playing excellent basketball right now and have set themselves up for a potential number one overall seed in the NCAA Tournament. An ACC Tournament title should all but seal the deal for the Tar Heels, but, first, they must beat their arch-rival for the second time in a week.

Duke was starting to struggle a bit as the regular season came to a close. Overall, the Blue Devils are such a difficult team to figure out. They went from a number one ranking and talks of a potential undefeated season to almost being unranked after dropping three of four games without head coach Mike Krzyzewski.

Upon his return, the Blue Devils strung off seven straight wins and climbed into the top ten rankings. All seemed well in Durham until the Blue Devils dropped two in a row to Syracuse and Miami, before finishing the season with a loss to Carolina.

Duke is going to be playing in their third game in three days and that will start to wear on them. We didn’t see major signs of it against Louisville, but playing in your third game in three days, and coming off of a grind-it-out game against Louisville may be what puts Duke away.

Duke saw incredible production from their future lottery pick players, as Jayson Tatum went for 25 points and Luke Kennard went for 24 points. Grayson Allen looked rested coming off the bench and contributing 18 points of his own. Can the Blue Devils get this much production from these three again?

One thing to watch for is Duke’s zone. Did it feel weird reading that? It felt weird typing it. Duke ran a zone against the Cardinals which forced them to shoot 4-21 (19%) from beyond the arc. North Carolina hasn’t been a historically good three-point shooting team as of late. On the year, the Heels have connected on 37% of their threes.

Carolina shot 4-12 (33.3%) in their loss to Duke this year. Duke may want to force the Heels to play from beyond the arc, as well as try to slow down a team that loves to get up and down the court and averages 85.2 points per game. The Blue Devils may be gassed and slowing Carolina down and forcing them to shoot three-point shots seems like a win-win scenario for Duke.

On the flip side, Carolina should try to attack the Blue Devils, and get out into transition as much as possible. They should also attempt to force Duke to shoot jump shots as the Blue Devils may not have their legs under them after three games in three days.

Prediction: North Carolina 85, Duke 80

Next: 5 Duke storylines to keep an eye on

All of these will be huge factors, and round three should be as close as the previous match-ups this year. However, North Carolina should come out on top in this one. The bigs of Carolina will cause too much havoc for Duke, and Joel Berry seems to be catching fire again at the end of the season, after going off for 28 points in their match-up last week. Three games in three days may cause Duke’s demise. We will be in for a treat, but Carolina should own this tiebreaker when the final buzzer sounds.