UNC vs Duke Final Four game has former Tar Heel Joel Berry wishing he ‘could suit up’
Joel Berry played 144 games in a North Carolina uniform.
If it were up to him, he would get one more.
“I really wish I could suit up,” Berry, now an analyst for the ACC Network, said Wednesday ahead of this weekend’s Final Four game between Carolina and Duke. “This is the type of game you come to college for.”
For the first time in history, the Tar Heels and Blue Devils, separated by eight miles of highway, will play each other in the NCAA tournament. And not just the tournament, but the Final Four, the biggest stage in college basketball.
Berry led UNC to the national title game twice, winning it all in 2017, his junior year. After that game he was named the Most Outstanding Player. Now with the ACC Network, Berry said he would trade his shirt and tie for his No. 2 jersey, just to get one more crack at the Devils in a game of this magnitude.
Duke (32-6) and North Carolina (28-9) split their regular-season matchups. The Blue Devils blew out the Tar Heels in Chapel Hill during their first meeting in February. UNC exacted revenge a month later, playing spoiler to Mike Krzyzewski’s final game in Cameron.
The teams nearly had a rematch in the ACC tournament title game, but eventual champ Virginia Tech upset UNC in the semifinal round.
When the field of 68 teams was released, the potential for Duke-UNC III jumped off the page. Right away, most fans of both teams expressed their desire for this game not to take place. Tar Heels fans were content with a win over Coach K in his final game in Cameron; Duke fans don’t want to live the rest of their lives with UNC potentially ending K’s career.
The brackets, and tournament Karma, had other plans. The Blue Devils went west and emerged from that bracket for the first time under coach Mike Krzyzewski, while North Carolina stayed east, knocked off defending champion Baylor and forced its way into the Final Four.
Berry, though, welcomed the chaos.
“These are the moments you want to have when you look back over your career,” Berry said. “This is great for the state. This is great for college basketball, this is great for the tournament.”
During his four-year career, Berry went 4-6 against Duke. They met twice in the ACC tournament when Berry started for Carolina, going 1-1 in those two meetings.
This year’s regular-season finale at Cameron was considered the hottest ticket in college basketball at the time, with tickets exceeding Super Bowl prices. Little did fans know that would be trumped a few weeks later by another showdown.
Berry is in New Orleans for the game and has already picked up on the excitement.
“I can understand the magnitude around this game,” Berry said. “Just doing the interviews and stuff, you just realize how big this game is. This will go down as one of the best games in history.”
Berry admitted he was a bit wide eyed in his first Final Four, played that year in Houston. The next season in Phoenix, he was still in awe of the spectacle around the event, but knew he had to lock in on the goal. That’s easier said than done, but his advice to his former team would be to worry about winning it all, and not the rivalry. The goal is to get to Monday and win.
Berry would tell the players to stay loose, enjoy being in the Final Four, but take a business-like approach once the games start.
“I want to win a national championship,” Berry said. “Forget everything else. I want to be able to have something else to hang in the Dean Dome that everyone will remember forever and that speaks for itself.”
Both coaches understand that. Hubert Davis played in the Final Four at UNC, and was an assistant in 2016 and ‘17. Krzyzewski has been to the Final Four 13 times, winning five titles. The coaches will have a good handle on how to prepare their teams, while outsiders will continue building up the hype.
Berry also realizes, regardless of the outcome, this moment is huge for the conference.
He added, “The one thing you should never do is count the ACC out.”
This story was originally published March 31, 2022 at 4:00 PM with the headline "UNC vs Duke Final Four game has former Tar Heel Joel Berry wishing he ‘could suit up’."
