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DURHAM, N.C. - Many supporters of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and Duke University will finally see a basketball game they've long thought of.
A National Collegiate Athletic Association men's basketball tournament game between Carolina and Duke.
Although it won't be the 2022 tournament final, it will be a semi-final.
The two teams have for decades played two regular-season games, one in Chapel Hill and one in Durham.
The two have often played in the Atlantic Coast Conference tournament.
They've never met in the NCAA tournament. Until now.
It's long been true that when these two teams play each other, all bets are off. It rarely seems to matter which team is better on paper. You just never know what will happen in this game between two universities that are 15 minutes apart.
And never mind the mispronunciation of Duke that you often hear in the broadcast press. Duke doesn't rhyme with Luke. It rhymes with the second syllable in rebuke.
Although not all Duke undergraduates attend basketball games, those who do tend to be hard-care fans.
And when one attends a game in Duke's Cameron Indoor Stadium, one quickly sees it's small by Division I standards.
Undergraduates sit in bleachers as close to the court as they'd be at many high-school basketball games.
For the Carolina game at Duke some undergraduates nowadays camp out for weeks in what has come to be known as Krzyzewskiville, named for Mike Kyzyzewski, the men's head-basketball coach in his 42nd and final season in Durham.
It's mind boggling that family members paying what it costs to attend Duke put up with this.
Not that long ago there was no Krzyzewskiville. Undergraduates were still allowed to wait outside of Cameron for as long as they wanted. But if they left the line for any reason, they went to the end of the line.
So the length of time one waited in line was a function not of how long one was willing to live in a tent but of the capacity of one's bladder.
In other words, the lines were measured not in weeks but in hours.
And there was a way to beat even that system.
Shortly before one Carolina at Duke game that was to start at 7:30 p.m. on a Saturday evening, two undergraduates were finishing dinner shortly after 7 p.m.
One of them - this columnist - wondered to the other whether the bleachers weren't full, because, despite all the hype, not enough undergraduates were willing to stand in line or otherwise go significantly early. So the two decided just to go to Cameron and walk in.
At 7:25 p.m.
And had great seats.
Those were years when all players stayed, and thus were in classes with other undergraduates, for four years. Many players continue to do this.
Now, however, the National Basketball Association allows one-and-done student-athletes - at Duke and elsewhere - to play in the professional league after one year of college. Some of them - at Duke and elsewhere - do that.
It doesn't take an academic purist to understand why that just isn't right.
Anyone who doesn't understand this might begin by reading the aspirational and inspirational plaque near the front doors of Duke Chapel: "The aims of Duke University are to assert a faith in the eternal union of knowledge and religion set forth in the teachings and character of Jesus Christ, the son of God; to advance learning in all lines of truth; to defend scholarship against all false notions and ideals; to develop a Christian love of freedom and truth; to promote a sincere spirit of tolerance; to discourage all partisan and sectarian strife; and to render the largest permanent service to the individual, the state, the nation, and the church. Unto these ends shall the affairs of this University always be administered."
Randy Elf, a Duke alumnus, roots for the Blue Devils.
ç 2022 BY RANDY ELF