{"id":21948,"date":"2012-03-03T10:40:11","date_gmt":"2012-03-03T15:40:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/?p=21948"},"modified":"2012-03-03T10:40:11","modified_gmt":"2012-03-03T15:40:11","slug":"college-basketball-predictions-north-carolina-tar-heels-vs-duke-blue-devils","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/college-basketball-predictions-north-carolina-tar-heels-vs-duke-blue-devils-21948\/","title":{"rendered":"College Basketball Predictions: North Carolina Tar Heels vs. Duke Blue Devils"},"content":{"rendered":"

No. 6 North Carolina Tar Heels at No. 3 Duke Blue Devils
\nSaturday, 3\/3\/12, 7:00 PM EST, TV:\u00a0 ESPN
\nOpening Point Spread:\u00a0 North Carolina PK
\nCurrent Betting Line:\u00a0 North Carolina -2
\nOpening Total:\u00a0 154
\nCurrent Total:\u00a0 154
\nOdds Courtesy of Bookmaker<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
The North Carolina Tar Heels have revenge on their minds against the Duke Blue Devils Saturday night<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

North Carolina has won six games in a row since coughing up a large lead in dropping an 85-84 contest to the Duke Blue Devils as six-point home favorites on Feb. 8.\u00a0 \u201cThey\u2019re going to be ready to play because of that happened last time,\u201d commented Blue Devils freshman guard Austin Rivers.\u00a0 For the fourth time in the last seven seasons, the ACC regular season champion will be determined by the second game in this particular series.\u00a0 The program has won six consecutive conference road games, while going 29-5 in its last 34 ACC contests overall.\u00a0 North Carolina is 5-1 ATS as a favorite.<\/p>\n

The Tar Heels are 6-2 under current head coach Roy Williams in all second meetings of the season with the Blue Devils.\u00a0 North Carolina has allowed Duke to shoot 50 percent from the floor just once in 18 tries in the Williams\u2019 era.\u00a0 One of the major strengths of this squad is getting after it on the glass, out-rebounding its last 12 conference opponents, which is the longest streak against ACC teams since the 2007-08 campaign.\u00a0 Harrison Barnes and Tyler Zeller are the players to watch in this affair on the offensive end, combining to score 48 points last month against Saturday\u2019s opponent.<\/p>\n

Duke kick started its current seven-game win streak with the comeback victory in Chapel Hill and comes off a 79-71 win over the Wake Forest Demon Deacons as 12-point road favorites.\u00a0 Blue Devils head coach Mike Krzyzewski is 37-36 all-time in this series, including a 16-15 mark when playing inside Cameron Indoor Stadium.\u00a0 The program has won both regular seasons meetings against North Carolina seven times under Krzyzewski\u2019s direction.\u00a0 Duke is 1-7 ATS in its last eight home games and the \u201cover\u201d is 5-2 in that situation.<\/p>\n

The Blue Devils will definitely want to get the ball in the hands of Rivers, but they will also want to get Seth Curry involved, as he\u2019s averaging 17.0 points per game in four career meetings with the Tar Heels.\u00a0 Duke lives and dies on the perimeter, coming in with four players hitting at least 40 shots from beyond the arc.\u00a0 The team leads conference members in both shooting 39.0 percent from 3-point range and making 252 3-point shots.<\/p>\n

Bettors will likely back the Tar Heels due to their 5-1 ATS mark at Duke, while the home team is 2-8 ATS in the last 10 meetings.<\/p>\n

Don\u2019t miss out on a winning season and let the college basketball handicappers at Maddux Sports line your pockets with cash.\u00a0 Long term packages are available now!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

No. 6 North Carolina Tar Heels at No. 3 Duke Blue Devils Saturday, 3\/3\/12, 7:00 PM EST, TV:\u00a0 ESPN Opening Point Spread:\u00a0 North Carolina PK Current Betting Line:\u00a0 North Carolina -2 Opening Total:\u00a0 154 Current Total:\u00a0 154 Odds Courtesy of Bookmaker North Carolina has won six games in a row since coughing up a large […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":181,"featured_media":19774,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,1444],"tags":[387,5700,4014,607,3896,1661,32,545],"class_list":["post-21948","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-college-basketball","category-headlines","tag-acc","tag-austin-rivers","tag-cameron-indoor-stadium","tag-duke-blue-devils","tag-harrison-barnes","tag-mike-krzyzewski","tag-north-carolina-tar-heels","tag-tyler-zeller"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21948","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/181"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=21948"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21948\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":21949,"href":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21948\/revisions\/21949"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/19774"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=21948"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=21948"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=21948"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}