Duke women’s basketball coach Kara Lawson is focused on the immediate challenge, the task of preparing her 16th-ranked Blue Devils to host eighth-ranked North Carolina.
Yet a win would reach beyond mere bragging rights in a backyard scrap with a nearby rival.
These days, that’s true of every Atlantic Coast Conference game in the 919 area code, for that matter.
The Blue Devils, Tar Heels and No. 9 N.C. State — all located within a 30-minute drive of one another in North Carolina’s “Research Triangle” region defined by that trio of universities — have made their home state the only one in the country with three different programs cracking the top 10 of the AP Top 25 women’s basketball poll this season. That has them all within reach of being seeded highly enough in the NCAA Division I tournament to host opening weekend games together for the first time in more than a quarter-century.
“I think that’s just what makes this area unlike any place in the country,” Lawson said. “You think about Power Four schools within a 30-minute radius of one another and how much this area loves basketball — the environments in each of those venues on the men’s and women’s sides are great. College basketball is not like this anywhere else. It’s just not.”
They all made the cut when the committee that selects and seeds the NCAA field released its preliminary top 16 on Feb. 16. The committee will update that list again Thursday night, shortly before the Blue Devils and Tar Heels tip off in Durham.
AP photo by Ben McKeown / N.C. State’s Saniya Rivers (22) celebrates as Notre Dame’s Cassandre Prosper (8) reacts in the final moments of an ACC game on Sunday in Raleigh, N.C.The three schools have hosted in the same year only once since the tournament expanded to 64 teams in 1994. That came in 1998, when the Wolfpack made the Final Four while the Tar Heels and Blue Devils reached regional finals.
It could happen again, depending on how things fall in the final week of the regular season and next week at the Atlantic Coast Conference tournament in Greensboro. In the committee’s previous reveal, N.C. State was a regional No. 2 seed, while Duke and North Carolina were both No. 3 seeds.
The Tar Heels are the nation’s only NCAA D-I women’s team still unbeaten on the road this season, with their mark in true road games 9-0 away from Chapel Hill. The Blue Devils are the highest ranked of the trio (ninth) in the NET rankings used by the committee as it sorts through bid candidates. Then there’s the Wolfpack with six Quadrant 1 wins, the highest level of regular-season victories when it comes to credentials for the postseason; the only teams with more Quad 1 triumphs are No. 1 Texas (11), No. 2 UCLA (10), No. 4 Southern California (nine) and No. 6 South Carolina (11).
N.C. State (22-5, 14-2 ACC) is coming off Sunday’s win against then-No. 1 Notre Dame in a double-overtime classic, a game with 21 lead changes, elite guard play and a few highlight-reel plays to double as a showcase moment for the entire sport.
It also came in front of a packed Reynolds Coliseum, where fans lined up for hours to get in — prompting the Wolfpack team to bring them doughnuts — with ESPN’s “College GameDay” broadcasting on site in Raleigh.
“If we can play here at home in the first and second round, we’ve got a pretty nice home-court advantage,” Wolfpack coach Wes Moore said afterward.
Yet only a week earlier, the surging Wolfpack lost for only the second time since November. That came in Chapel Hill to the Tar Heels (25-4, 13-3), who survived losing fifth-year forward Alyssa Ustby early to injury and won on two clutch free throws by Grace Townsend in front of a sellout crowd.
It wasn’t long after that win, which pushed the Tar Heels into the top 10 a day later, that sixth-year coach Courtney Banghart pointed to that buzz in the building to weigh in on the hosting question.
AP photo by Nell Redmond / Duke women’s basketball coach Kara Lawson talks to her team in a timeout during a Dec. 5 nonconference game against South Carolina in Columbia, S.C.North Carolina, which is still awaiting Ustby’s return, hasn’t hosted NCAA games since 2015, while N.C. State has done it four times and Duke twice in that span.
“This is a place where basketball is adored,” Banghart said. “I don’t care that we’re all so close. If the teams are good enough to host, they should host. If we’re all trying to save money, great, ESPN can just send one crew down and they can do all the games.”
Now it’s Duke’s turn to make its own statement.
The Blue Devils (21-7, 12-4) have had two separate stints inside the top 10 this year. They’ve lost two of three going back to a road loss to Notre Dame before last week’s home loss to Louisville, and they’ve lost both road meetings against their Triangle neighbors.
This is the only time one of those teams will be visiting Cameron Indoor Stadium, and Duke is battling to stay in the mix for a top-four seed in the ACC tournament and the double bye that goes with it.
Do that, and Duke could be in good shape, too.
“You want to get as high in the standings as you can,” Lawson said. “You want to get as high in the NCAA tournament committee’s rankings as you can. And that puts you in a good position to have home-court (advantage).
“If they’re going to be giving it to 16 teams, why not be one of the teams that that tries to go after it?”