Duke-UNC Moments: Upset Of 1984 Changed Everything

Feb. 4, 2004

By John Roth
Blue Devil Weekly

DURHAM, N.C. - Growing up in Arizona, Mark Alarie knew little of Duke and even less about its basketball rivalry with North Carolina. It was only after Mike Krzyzewski began recruiting him that he learned the university wasn't located in the northeast. And it was after he headed to Chapel Hill for a summertime pickup game that he began to realize what the storied rivalry was all about.

"I saw Michael Jordan, James Worthy, Sam Perkins and all these guys schooling anyone who walked out on the court and challenged them," Alarie recalls. "I was looking around at my freshman teammates wondering what the hell I'd gotten myself into."

The smooth All-America forward was a key component in Krzyzewski's first blockbuster recruiting class that also included Johnny Dawkins, David Henderson and Jay Bilas. When that group faced the Tar Heels as freshmen in 1983, they were twice humbled by the defending national champs as Jordan scored 32 points in each contest.

But over the next three seasons, Alarie played on teams that elevated not only the Duke program but its best rivalry as well. By the time he and his cohorts graduated in 1986, the Blue Devils had regained their national following and the Duke-UNC game was higher on the must-see list.

The transforming season came in 1984, when freshman point guard Tommy Amaker joined the previous year's class to form a nucleus that carried Duke to 24 wins and Krzyzewski's first NCAA Tournament. The biggest of those wins came in the semifinals of the ACC Tournament against UNC, which was ranked No. 1 nationally and had gone through the conference season undefeated.

After two narrow regular-season losses to the Heels, one in double-overtime, Duke pulled the tournament upset, 77-75. Alarie was the leading scorer with 21 points and was part of an excellent defensive effort that kept UNC's inside power players -- Perkins, Joe Wolf, Brad Daugherty and Dave Popson -- in check with single-figures scoring.

The ACC Tournament has seen its share of upsets over the years, but that one was a stunner coming against a supposedly-invincible team by a squad that went just 7-7 during the conference schedule. According to Alarie, playing UNC was never the same after that. "To me that was the coming of age for all of us," he recalls. "We all truly felt we could do it, although I know a lot of people following us didn't think we could. But Coach K gave us a ton of confidence going into every game that we could compete against Carolina, and when we finally beat them it really felt like the mantel was being handed over to the Duke program. Even though the programs have battled back and forth since then, that was a huge monkey off of our backs and off of Coach K's back.

"I remember that game vividly. Of all the games that many of us played in that four-year span, that was the biggest one for all of us."

There were others, however, that were almost as noteworthy. The following season, the Blue Devils ended a run of 18 straight losses at Carmichael Auditorium by blowing past the Heels 93-77. Duke had lost in overtime to Maryland on Monday of that week and dropped another overtime game to Wake Forest on Thursday. But instead of limping into Chapel Hill on Saturday afternoon, the Devils soared behind one of Dawkins' best-ever performances: 34 points, eight rebounds, four assists in 40 minutes.

"That was a game we would not have won had we not beaten them in 1984, because the stature and reputation of the (UNC) program would have overwhelmed us had we not known these guys are beatable," Alarie surmises.

"Johnny was far and away the best player I ever played with, college or NBA, at bringing a confident, no one-can-stop-us attitude to every game. And no one could stop him. But just because Johnny's unstoppable, that doesn't mean the team is unstoppable. Once we beat them in

Duke-UNC Moments: Upset Of 1984 Changed Everything

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