Carolina's Top 3 Recruiting Wins Over Duke Are...?

With Duke week here, it’ a good time to go back in time looking for North Carolina’s three biggest head-to-head recruiting wins over its arch rivals from down the road.

In covering elite basketball recruits for over 20-years, with special attention paid to Duke and North Carolina, there are many top prospects that chose Duke over North Carolina. Extending back even further, some prominent Duke victories include Shane Battier, JJ Redick, Christian Laettner and Zion Williamson choosing the Blue Devils despite a valiant recruiting effort from the staffs in Chapel Hill.

Legend has it that Dean Smith was so upset that Battier picked Duke, he got off the phone abruptly when the Detroit Country Day star called to inform him. Laettner told this reporter that his mother cried when her son, a 6-foot-11 star from Angola, NY, told her that he was going to Duke. She loved Dean Smith so much that she was brought to tears when Laettner decided Duke was his selection.

Covering both schools for two decades has allowed me access into many of the back stories of some heated recruitments between the two ACC rivals.

But today, we cover the three biggest wins in recruiting that North Carolina won over Duke. The selections are based on recruitments that I personally covered from the last 20-years.

This was probably the one recruitment that I enjoyed covering the most. It was full of suspense, twists and turns. I had tremendous access to Barnes and his mother.

The Ames, IA, wing was 6-foot-8 and as skilled and athletic as anyone in his class. He shot the ball extremely well, had a skillful handle and was a matchup nightmare due to his versatile skill set. He could have gone to any school in the country, and while he always said the right thing about Iowa State, anyone with an ounce of common sense knew that Barnes was going to pick UNC or Duke.

Mike Krzyzewski and Roy Williams were both all-in on this recruitment and they battled until the end where Barnes famously Skyped his announcement live to the audiences. In the end, the articulate baller pledged his allegiance to UNC devastating the Duke staff, alumni and fans.

In my opinion, this recruitment was as difficult to crack as any that I have ever covered. The Barnes family did communicate with media, but they were strategic and clever enough to give enough information, but not enough to tip their hand. Rumor has it that the sting that the Duke staff felt radiated throughout the entire city of Durham.

Now, most Duke recruiting followers may disagree that the ridiculously relentless post player from Poplar Bluff, MO, was really a huge Duke recruiting target. Their chase of Hansbrough was not well documented.

Nobody in the media really gave the Blue Devils a chance with the raging, energetic workhorse that was Tyler Hansbrough. And most UNC recruiting scribes, including myself, had commitment articles written well in advance of his announcement because it was known that he was headed to Chapel Hill.

The reason that Hansbrough is included here is because I followed his recruitment insanely close and a great relationship with his AAU coaches on the St. Louis Eagles and I had a lot of intel that I didn’t share in my articles as it was kept off the record.

However, what I can tell you, is that Duke really wanted ‘Psycho T’ and they wanted him badly. The Devils’ staff recruited him as hard as anyone for a good amount of time and tried really hard to overcome the objections. After all, in recruiting, which is much like sales, you will have to deal with objections. And while Duke worked hard to get Hansbrough to Durham, in the end, his love for North Carolina won out and he couldn’t wait to play the Blue Devils. His camp was vocal about the fact that he did not care for Duke.

By the way, he ended up becoming the leading scorer in ACC history and went 4-0 versus Duke in its home arena, Cameron Indoor Stadium.

While I covered this recruitment, the long and slender power forward from Brentwood Academy in the Nashville, TN, area was not an easily assessable talker with us. So, most of the pulse that I had for this recruitment came from college coaches, other reporters and just by data gathering.

The pulse was that Wright favored Duke. And he was a huge national recruit and coveted instant impact star.

It was easy to see why, as he ran gracefully, had feathery soft touch from short and mid-range and was super explosive around the basket with his breathtaking length, agile bounciness and quickness for his size. But it was his upside that was the most appealing aspect. Wright was super slender and hadn’t even really begun to work on his strength, so college coaches and scouts saw a guy who was a ridiculous player and a long-term prospect with a big upside.

As I recall, the pulse was strong for Duke going into Wright’s official visit with UNC.

After the visit, I remember trying to reach Wright on the phone unsuccessfully. So, we worked our other sources of intel, networking hard to get a pulse on how his time in Chapel Hill went. And since the UNC staff wasn’t very vocal about it and kept things quiet, we didn’t learn much there. It was a call from a Blue Devils source that alerted us that the momentum had swung and just a few days later, the whole world knew that the elite five-star had really fallen in love with Carolina.

In closing: These stories are told from our point of view and our read on the pulse of the recruitments. And they are our choices for the three biggest recruiting wins over Duke in the last 20-years.