Ingram Eyes First Taste of UNC-Duke Rivalry
CHAPEL HILL – Growing up in Dallas, TX, Harrison Ingram lived over 1,000 miles from Tobacco Road. At Stanford, he was close to 3,000 miles from Chapel Hill, only ever experiencing the North Carolina-Duke rivalry as a basketball fan and recruit, not a participant.
On Saturday, that all changes.
Ingram and the Tar Heels (17-4, 9-1 ACC) will take part in the 261st installment of the historic rivalry, as the Duke Blue Devils (16-4, 7-2 ACC) make the short eight-mile trek from Durham.
Following North Carolina’s lone ACC loss of the season against Georgia Tech on Tuesday, it may have turned the page, looking forward to its next opportunity this weekend.
But, no matter how much anyone tries to down play it, the energy is different, and it's something Ingram is looking forward to experiencing.
“I definitely noticed how energetic everybody is,” Ingram said Thursday about his teammates. “Everybody is going to sleep early and getting their eight [or] nine hours, then getting up and getting their shots up.”
Ingram has experienced being in a heated rivalry when the Cardinal took on Californis twice a year in the Pac-12. The games were always packed and intense, Ingram said. But it's not Carolina-Duke. And his teammates are reminding him that no matter how much he preps, it won’t simulate what’s to come at 6:30 Saturday evening.
“They’ve been telling me how there’s nothing that can really prepare me for the energy the crowd’s gonna bring [and] the energy that I’m gonna feel from the fans,” said Ingram.
As the likes of Armando Bacot and RJ Davis, who are veterans of the rivalry, prepare for the tilt, they aren’t the only ones cranking up the energy within the program.
Director of Basketball Operations Eric Hoots, who is in the midst of his 20th season on the UNC staff, has witnessed his fair share of the rivalry and has been constantly reminding Ingram of how Saturday he will need to be different.
“Every time (Hoots) sees me, he tells me to be ready to be a grown man,” said Ingram.
Hoots hasn’t told Ingram what that means exactly, and Ingram doesn’t know what that will be yet either. As a described Swiss Army knife, his impact on the game can come in different forms.
Whether being a grown man involves rebounding and crashing the glass or taking on Duke’s best scorers on defense, he knows he will make an impact.
“I feel like the special thing about my game is that I’m not quite sure which one [area] it will be. [It’s] whatever the game calls for. If I have to rebound, I rebound. If I have to knock down threes, play defense, whatever the game calls for, I’ll show up.”
Ingram has notched double-digit rebounds in four straight contests and reached the 10-point mark in four of the last five games.
While Ingram is set to take part in the rivalry for the first time, he is not the only member of his family with ties to Tobacco Road. His sister, Lauren, is a freshman on the Duke volleyball team, donning a shade of blue that doesn’t quite match Harrison’s wardrobe.
She is expected to support her brother in Carolina blue on Saturday, but that hasn’t stopped her from participating in trash talk like thousands of college basketball fans across the state.
“She FaceTimed me [Wednesday] and she was just smiling,” said Ingram. “I asked her why she was smiling and she said ‘You lost.’”
Nowadays, the sibling rivalry and the UNC-Duke rivalry is one in the same in the Ingram household.
And Ingram will get his first taste as the ACC schedule crosses the halfway mark for the Tar Heels.
“Knowing I’m going to be playing in this UNC-Duke game on national television and it’s one of the biggest games every year, it can’t be beat…," Ingram said. "I don’t think that anything, any game, any sport can match the UNC-Duke game."
And he's about to find that out in a participatory way.