Should Duke and North Carolina both win on Thursday – each as a higher seed – they will advance to meet in the ACC Tournament semifinals. That would be the 23rd time overall the neighbors clashed in any round in the league’s official championship event.
Duke holds a 13-9 edge in the tournament against Carolina, a 59.1 percent success rate.
A dozen of those matchups occurred in the final, with the teams splitting evenly at six titles apiece. Since 1992 the Blue Devils won five of the last half-dozen meetings in the final, most recently in 2011 at Greensboro.