Stunner on Tobacco Road

By David Sole, sportsnet.ca

"The best day of my life."

That is what Duke freshman guard Austin Rivers told ESPN’s Erin Andrews after playing North Carolina on Wednesday night. Just seconds after Rivers’ three-pointer over Tyler Zeller completed a furious Duke comeback that left the Carolina players and a jam-packed Dean Dome of 22,000 in stunned silence.

Carolina had led for every moment of the second half and was up 10 with 2:10 left on their home floor. Even though the Tar Heels hit only one three-pointer all night, they had dominated Duke inside and led by as many as 13 in the second half. UNC entered the game with a 31-game win streak at the Smith Center and No. 32 was seconds away. All they needed to do was make free throws and guard the perimeter.

With the win, North Carolina would also take over sole possession of first place in the Atlantic Coast Conference, after Florida State was shocked earlier in the night at Boston College.

The young kids from Durham had other ideas. They kept hanging around, kept hitting shots and ended the game on a 13-2 run, beating the Tar Heels 85-84 in a stunning finish. The only time Duke led in the second half was when the clock hit 0:00. The win was the fifth for Duke in their last six meetings against the Tar Heels.

It was an important win for Coach K and his team, not just because they were coming off a shocking loss at home to Miami in overtime on Super Bowl Sunday (The Blue Devils first-ever loss to the Hurricanes at Cameron Indoor Stadium), but because Rivers finally played up his capabilities and led his team back from a seemingly-insurmountable deficit. He wanted the ball in his hands with the game on the line and didn’t disappoint.

Harrison Barnes and Tyler Zeller combined to score 48 of Carolina’s 84 points, but Zeller had a second half he’d like to forget. In one of his final home games, the senior forward scored just four points in the final 20 minutes, missing 2 huge free throws late in the game, tipped in an errant Ryan Kelly jumper late, scoring two points on his own basket with 15 seconds left and then didn’t put his hands up or step out far enough on Austin Rivers, who calmly buried the winning three in his face. Zeller, the only significant senior on the Tar Heels roster, made the crucial decision to switch off his man, Mason Plumlee, when Plumlee set a high screen on Barnes. Rivers dribbled right and even though the quicker Barnes wanted to stay with his man, and admitted later that he knew Rivers would attempt a three, Zeller made the switch and played suspect defence allowing Duke to hit their 14th and final three-pointer of the game.

Rivers admitted that Zeller just kept backing off and backing off and that the shot, "felt good when it left my hands."

Mason Plumlee said he had no idea what Rivers was doing on that last possession and Seth Curry could be seen screaming at Rivers from the baseline to take the shot.

The Tar Heels shot an impressive 59 percent from the field in the second half but missed seven free throws down the stretch which came back to haunt them.

"This one hurts," is all Heels coach Roy Williams could say following the loss.

ESPN’s Dick Vitale said during the game that Carolina’s top seven players were the most talented in the country, even better than Kentucky’s, but after last night, it’s clear the Tar Heels are a soft team that don’t know how to put a team away when they have them down.

Duke on the other hand, never gave up or stopped playing hard which allowed a 19-year-old freshman from Winter Park, Fla. to take over the game and take the shot that will go down in history as one of the biggest in the history of Duke-North Carolina.

With his father, Doc Rivers, sitting one row behind the Duke bench, the 6-4 guard scored the most points of any Duke freshman in the history of the Duke-UNC rivalry and made Duke fans forget Kyrie Irving, Nolan Smith and Kyle Singler. The young Blue Devils also got a solid performance out of junior guard Curry, whose father Dell was also behind the bench Wednesday night. Curry scored 15 points while hitting 4-8 from behind the arc and Kelly added 15, but this night belonged to Rivers. In 39 minutes, he hit six three-pointers (five more than then entire UNC team), recorded five rebounds and scored a career-high 29 points against the No. 5 ranked team in the country.

Rivers has had a target on his back since arriving on the campus at Duke. He’d been the most-hyped player in the country during his final year of high school ball in Florida. A McDonald’s All-American, Rivers is a cocky kid who said that once he got to the NBA he wanted to "destroy" LeBron James and other NBA all-stars on the floor. He had to replace Irving, who left after one year at Duke and was taken No. 1 overall in last year’s NBA Draft. He was prone to turnovers and was not getting the ball to his Duke teammates enough.

Just a few weeks ago, Coach K removed Rivers from the starting line-up in a game against Wake Forest because he felt the freshman wasn’t working as hard as he could. Rivers responded with a breakthrough performance. After sitting out the first two minutes of the game, he came off the bench to score 20 points and played a team high 32 minutes.

The Hall of Fame coach couldn’t help but praise the freshman after the win over North Carolina.

"To hit a game winner like that is storybook," Krzyzewski said.

Rivers has slowly won over his teammates but after his performance Wednesday night in Chapel Hill, he has become not only a legend in the history of the Duke-Carolina rivalry, but a leader on the court as well.

Doc Rivers may have summed the night up best during a post-game interview: "Duke – Carolina… it doesn’t get any better than this."