North Carolina Duke College Basketball Odds

One of the greatest rivalries in all of sports takes center stage Wednesday night when the North Carolina Tar Heels head to Cameron Indoor to take on the Duke Blue Devils in the first installment of this year’s Tobacco Road Rivalry. This year’s matchup has the look of one for the history books as both teams are stacked with experienced talent, both are tied for the conference lead, and both appear to be capable of making a Final Four run. North Carolina is listed as a 2-point favorite at BetUS.

North Carolina had a couple hiccups to start the ACC season but the No. 3 team in the country has since rebounded to move into a tie with Duke at 7-2 atop the conference. It’s hard to bet against Duke at Cameron Indoor considering the amount of success this team has on its home floor each year. The Dukies are off to a perfect 14-0 start at home this season, but they will surely have their work cut out for themselves against Tyler Hansbrough and company tonight.

While Duke has won 90 percent of its home games the past few seasons, North Carolina has been the biggest reason why Duke’s home winning percentage isn’t even higher. With Hansbrough in the post, North Carolina is a perfect 3-0 at Cameron and that’s saying something. That would be like if a Michigan QB led the Wolverines to a pair of wins in four years over Ohio State in the horseshoe. If Hansbrough is able to make it a perfect 4-for-4 in Cameron in his career, he will join future Hall of Famer Tim Duncan as one of the few visiting players to drop a goose egg on Coach K. Wing player Danny Green would also join Hansbrough as the only North Carolina players to ever win four in a row at Duke. Back in 2006, Hansbrough spoiled stars Sheldon Williams and J.J. Redick’s home finale with an 83-76 over then-No. 1 Duke. It’s been all UNC in this series since, taking four or the last six overall.

But don’t think for a second that Duke doesn’t know what is at stake here. All these boys have heard leading up to this game is how the Heels have taken three straight in their house.

Duke has fallen quickly from No. 1 in the nation to No. 5 with two losses in its last four games. After getting crushed at Clemson, many felt Duke would respond with a big win over Miami, but it took overtime to beat the Hurricanes. Perhaps, Duke was already looking ahead. That shows you exactly how big this game is. Besides bragging rights, the winner takes over first place outright in the ACC standings and picks up the early edge as a No. 1 seed in the NCAA Tournament.

In short, a key for a North Carolina win will be how it deals with Duke’s pressure defense. It will help that it will have a healthy Ty Lawson this time around. Lawson was injured when Duke won the first meeting at the Dean Smith Center last year. A major key for Duke will be to knock down three pointers. Outside of Gerald Henderson, Duke does not have a lot of players with the ability to penetrate so it will be essential that they open up some driving lanes by knocking down threes.

A loss in this matchup likely won’t doom either of these teams. In UNC’s most recent national titles (1993, 2005), it lost the first meeting. Same for Duke. It lost the first meeting and went on to win its last two titles in 1992 and 2001.

Beat the college basketball spreads with the help of Jimmy Boyd’s college basketball betting tips. Play Jimmy’s NCAA basketball picks today and take your book to school.

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