Saturday was always going to be different, a new day, as clean a slate as there can ever be when North Carolina visits Duke or vice versa.
That was going to be true no matter what happened last March and April, the void left by two gigantic personalities exiting stage left. So much of what this rivalry is now — or what it was — came from the collision of two coaches who couldn’t see the common ground on which they actually stood even as they fought over it.
And while the roots run so much deeper, back to Art Heyman and Larry Brown and beyond, to sociological and even political forces that go far beyond basketball — public vs. private, just to start — so much of what’s visible above the ground these days bloomed and flowered when Dean Smith was a titan and Mike Krzyzewski was an upstart who would one day occupy that position.
