Last time Duke and UNC weren’t both ranked when they played

The Duke vs. North Carolina rivalry is of a special sort; it's one of the few matchups in sports where fans of each team can look back, no matter how the season at large played out, and say... "Well, at least we beat those guys."

I don't subscribe to the moral panic about the modern NBA, but there is merit to the idea that no one in the pros really dislikes each other anymore. They're all kind of friends!

That isn't the case in college hoops; Duke and Carolina still despise each other, and even with Carolina entering Cameron Indoor as big underdogs against the No. 2-ranked Blue Devils, there's plenty of hype for another iteration of college basketball's best rivalry.

When was the last time Duke and UNC played and weren't both ranked?

You don't have to go back too far to find a version of this game where one of the two teams didn't crack the AP Top 25; in fact, the last time one of the teams was unranked, they both were. In 2023, both versions of the game occurred when Duke and UNC were unranked.

Duke ended up making an Elite 8 run in the NCAA Tournament last year and finished the season ranked No. 12 in the country, but when they played UNC in February and early March, neither team cracked the top 25.

Last season, both games were high stakes; these two rivals battled for ACC supremacy, with UNC eventually taking the conference crown. The Tar Heels won both matchups and those two wins pushed them over the top in the ACC.

The Blue Devils made a deeper run in the NCAA Tournament — Elite 8, compared to UNC's Sweet 16 run — but then the Blue Devils lost to another in-state rival, NC State. North Carolina's season ended at the hands of Michigan State.

This year, UNC enters the game squarely on the bubble. Although this game doesn't mean a ton for Duke in terms of resume, the chance to potentially keep the Tar Heels out of the tourney is a pretty huge incentive — not that this game needs any extra juice.