Wet piles of cardboard were being heaved into dumpsters at Krzyzewskiville on Thursday afternoon, remnants of the soggy sleepover by Duke students camping out to get in Cameron Indoor Stadium on Saturday for the annual home hatefest with North Carolina. The tents have all been relocated to the concourse of the football stadium now, where the vigil continues amid cold temperatures, leaden skies and spitting rain. It’s crappy camping weather.
That fits the muted buildup to this resumption of the epic Tobacco Road basketball series. If a rivalry can have a hangover, this one does.
The towering fanfare and flowing emotion that accompanied Mike Krzyzewski’s final game in Cameron last March is gone. So are the massive stakes that went with the teams’ first meeting in the Final Four a month later, when the Tar Heels ended Coach K’s career. Those are impossible acts to follow.
