NCAA Tournament 2022: 5 storylines for Duke vs North Carolina in Final Four
By Bryan Mauro
4,567 combined wins, 96 combined NCAA tournaments, 38 combined Final Fours, and 11 combined National Titles. If you didn’t know those are the combined numbers for Duke and North Carolina and their history in NCAA Basketball.
These are two of the premier Blue Blood schools in the NCAA and they are bitter rivals. With as much success as these two teams have had over their history this Saturday, April 2nd, 2022 will be the first time, they have ever met in the NCAA tournament.
It is only fitting that these two teams meet in the final four, not meeting on the biggest stage in college basketball would not do this game justice and this will likely be one of the biggest games in NCAA tournament history. The path for both teams to get here was extremely different. Duke went through the ACC and won the league regular season before falling in the conference title game to Virginia Tech. Duke was going to be a top seed most of the year and they entered the tournament as the 2 seed in the West region.
The Tar Heels were not even in the tournament field two months ago. They went on a run to end the year and they beat Duke in Cameron for Coach K’s final home game. That was the game that likely got North Carolina into the tournament. The Tar Heels came into the tournament as the 8th seed in the East region and on their path to the final four they beat Marquette, Wake Forest, UCLA, and finally, surprise Saint Peter’s to set up the matchup in New Orleans with the Duke Blue Devils.
This game is going to be one of the most covered games in the history of the sport, the winner gets a chance to play for the National Championship. There are thousands of storylines that are going to be written about and talked about leading up to the game. I believe there will be five key storylines to focus on that will determine the outcome of this game. The five storylines are below and enjoy the game.