Portal:Basketball/Selected article/August, 2007

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The UNC-Duke rivalry, sometimes referred to as The Battle of Tobacco Road or The Battle of the Blues, is a fierce rivalry, particularly in men's college basketball, between Duke University and the University of North Carolina athletic teams. Considered one of the most intense rivalries in all of sports, a poll conducted by ESPN in 2000 ranked the basketball rivalry as the third greatest North American sports rivalry of all-time. The intensity of the rivalry is augmented by the proximity of the two universities, located only eight miles apart roughly along U.S. Highway 15-501, and the dissimilar funding structures of the schools, with Duke being privately funded and North Carolina a state-supported school.

Battling it out at least twice a year since 1920, Duke and North Carolina routinely rank among the nation's best basketball teams. The games frequently determine the Atlantic Coast Conference champion - Duke and UNC have combined for 79% of the regular season titles and 58% of the tournament titles in the 53-year history of the conference. The final game of the regular season alternates between Durham and Chapel Hill and has been played in Cameron Indoor Stadium since 1940 and the Dean Smith Center since 1986. Duke has won three NCAA championships and has been in fourteen Final Fours, while North Carolina has won four NCAA championships (the team was also awarded a fifth national championship by the Helms Athletic Foundation in 1936 for their undefeated 1924 season) and has appeared in an NCAA-record sixteen Final Fours.

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