Duke vs North Carolina Winner Is Obvious, Says ESPN
The Duke vs North Carolina winner is obvious, says ESPN.
Ahead of Saturday’s big showdown, tensions are running high.
The Blue Devils versus the Tar Heels is still pound for pound one of the best rivalries in sports.
As such, any match-up between them, even when one is clearly in the midst of a down year, is exciting.
ESPN recently developed a computer model to help it predict the outcome of looming games.
According to the model, Duke has an 87.2 percent chance of emerging from this weekend’s battle with a win.
This should not come as a surprise to anyone.
North Carolina has been having a rough, injury-plagued year up to this point.
Duke, meanwhile, is currently the seventh-ranked team in the nation and boasts a 19-3 record with a 9-2 record in conference play.
North Carolina is 10-12 on the season and only 3-8 in the ACC.
There was a lot of hype in recent weeks surrounding the return of Tar Heel star Cole Anthony, but even after he came back this week, the team still lost to Boston College and Florida State.
Duke is the better team this year, plain and simple. As such, it would be a shocker if the Blue Devils did not ultimately prevail this weekend.
Fortunately for North Carolina, this will not be the final meeting between these teams. So if it can get its stuff together over the next month, maybe the program can be a more worthy adversary for Duke when the two meet again on March 7.
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A longtime sports reporter, Carlos Garcia has written about some of the biggest and most notable athletic events of the last 5 years. He has been credentialed to cover MLS, NBA and MLB games all over the United States. His work has been published on Fox Sports, Bleacher Report, AOL and the Washington Post.
