As the Maryland upset win over Duke in the ACC Tournament dwindled down, the ACC Network announcers had some fun with an old, tired, trite angle \u2013 that Carolina fans hate Duke and vice versa.<\/p>\n
Cory Alexander, color analyst, said, \u201cThe Carolina Blue faithful are standing up and cheering as hard as the Maryland fans.\u201d Veteran play-by-play announcer Tim Brando chimed in laughing, \u201cBe careful what you wish for Carolina fans.\u201d<\/p>\n
That\u2019s cute and all but the problem is it just wasn\u2019t true. The Carolina fans, while I\u2019m sure they were enjoying the trouble Duke was having with Maryland, were not standing up, shouting and pumping fists like Terp fans. In fact, after Maryland\u2019s Alex Len jammed in a dunk late in the game to put the Terrapins up by nine, while the Maryland fans were going nuts, viewers could see a solid bank of Carolina fans in the background who didn\u2019t appear to move a muscle.<\/p>\n
Besides, are they really going to cheer loudly for a team that is snubbing the ACC by leaving for the Big Ten?<\/p>\n
Most Carolina fans, I\u2019m convinced, wanted to play Duke again. After all, as Dean Smith always used to say, it\u2019s difficult to beat a team three times in a season. The Tar Heels, had they hit free throws, would have beaten Duke in Durham. After the embarrassing loss on senior day a week ago, most Carolina wanted another crack at Duke.<\/p>\n
It was lazy announcing to retread the conventional wisdom that Carolina fans always root against Duke (and vice versa). But they didn\u2019t leave it at that. \u201cA Carolina fan would tell you that they\u2019d rather lose to Maryland than lose to Duke a third time,\u201d Alexander said. \u201cAbsolutely,\u201d Brando agreed. I don\u2019t think Carolina fans are planning on losing to Maryland or Duke. That\u2019s stinkin\u2019 thinkin\u2019 to be deciding who you\u2019d rather lose to.<\/p>\n
Carolina worked hard to defeat Maryland twice. The intangibles are with Maryland while intangibles would be with Carolina against Duke. In other words, Carolina would be more up to play Duke than they would be to play Maryland.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
As the Maryland upset win over Duke in the ACC Tournament dwindled down, the ACC Network announcers had some fun with an old, tired, trite…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[82,79,80],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5207","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-duke-blue-devils","category-featured-stories","category-north-carolina-tar-heels","wpcat-82-id","wpcat-79-id","wpcat-80-id"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/capitalsportsnc.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5207","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/capitalsportsnc.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/capitalsportsnc.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/capitalsportsnc.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/capitalsportsnc.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5207"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/capitalsportsnc.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5207\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5220,"href":"https:\/\/capitalsportsnc.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5207\/revisions\/5220"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/capitalsportsnc.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5207"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/capitalsportsnc.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5207"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/capitalsportsnc.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5207"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}