CHAPEL HILL, N.C. _ It's hard to believe there was room for some new twist between these teams that have wrung every bit of drama out of each other, and Tre Jones managed to do it as much with his misses as his makes. And that is a new one.
His older brother carved out his own spot in the rivalry five years ago in his lone year at Duke. Tre Jones needed a second year for his moment to arrive. It arrived Saturday on an evening when things were finally going right for North Carolina in a season when they so rarely have, only for Jones to intervene.
Jones twice missed key free throws, once deliberately, once not. The first time, he won the scramble for the loose ball and forced overtime with a floater from just inside the 3-point line. The second time, the ball ended up back with him and his miss ended up in Wendell Moore's hands for a buzzer-beating lay-in. The first was incomprehensible, the second improbable.
And like Tyus Jones five years ago or Austin Rivers eight years ago, Tre Jones claimed a moment in this rivalry that became his and his alone, scoring 18 of Duke's final 23 points in a 98-96 overtime win that was as much about Jones' heart as it was heartrending for North Carolina, which sought any purchase in an otherwise dismal season was twice powerless as Jones erased late deficits.
"The position we were in, being down, it was on me," Jones said. "I wanted it to be in my hands. If we were going down, I wanted it to be on me."
In the recent anni horribilis for these programs _ 1995 for Duke and 2002, 2010 and 2020 for UNC _ the struggling team is now 0-8, losing by an average of 15.6 points. Like the double-overtime game in 1995, this one whittled that average down, decided by the finest of margins, drenched in pathos. The terrible Nike throwbacks that looked like off-brand practice jerseys didn't deserve this game.
North Carolina led by 13 with less than five minutes to go and by five with 20.6 seconds left in overtime, entirely deservedly, and lost by two. That kind of defeat is no orphan. It's not on Roy Williams, whose adjustments stymied a dominant Vernon Carey Jr. in the second half, or frequent fan finger-pointees Christian Keeling, Justin Pierce or Andrew Platek, all of whom played out of their minds.
There probably should have been a foul called on the last inbounds play as Moore body-checked Platek and the ball went out of bounds, instead of the umpteenth interminable review at the monitor, but the Tar Heels had every opportunity to that point not to leave their fate in the hands of the officials by missing fewer than 17 _ seventeen! _ free throws.
It was a collective failure of imagination as much as anything, the Tar Heels shrinking in the moment against a team that somehow rose to it. Against a player who rose above it.
"Tre made an unbelievably difficult play," Williams said. "It's hard to even throw a chest pass off the rim like that, and he got it to bounce out 30 feet, and he's the one who gets it and makes the shot. Really a tough, tough kid, and a kid I have a great deal of respect for as a player and a young man. And you're happy for him. But he's not on my team."
Williams has certainly seen this before, on this date and from a Jones, different instances of the same unlikely circumstances.
The overwhelming sentiment on Feb. 8, 2012, was how shocking it was, how quickly North Carolina's lead evaporated, how unlikely the quirks of fate _ Tyler Zeller tipping a Duke shot into his own basket _ that led to the finality of Rivers' coup de grace as Duke came back from 10 down in only 129 seconds.
There was nothing shocking about this. Everyone in the building could feel it coming, or at least lurking, even when North Carolina twice appeared safely ahead. Every free-throw attempt was cloaked in apprehension, growing like a fungus with each miss. When North Carolina remembered to foul up three at the end of regulation, unlike the historic Clemson loss, there was a complete absence of satisfaction or security in it.
Maybe that's what Jones was feeding on, the sense that the game _ despite what the score may have been at any given point _ was always there for the taking. With every drive to the hoop, with the two scrambles for his own missed free throws, one deliberate and the other not, Jones' influence on the game became stronger, almost gravitational.
When North Carolina seemed to take control in overtime, Jones looked like he was completely out of gas. Everybody did. He was far from alone. There was a general shortage of oxygen in the building. And then, somehow, Jones summoned some hidden reserve of energy to become the freshest player on the court in the final minutes.
"He was at another level," Duke coach Mike Krzyzewski said. "We won because of that kid. Anything he did tonight might work. You know?"
As Jones claimed his place in the legend and lore of the rivalry, he also carved out his own niche at the Thanksgiving table. Tyus Jones went 2-0 against North Carolina in 2015, almost single-handedly lifting Duke to the win in Cameron by scoring nine points in 58 seconds to force overtime, one clutch moment of very many in his very brief time on campus.
If there's anything hereditary about that, Tre Jones only showed hints of it as a freshman as Duke lost both regular-season meetings with North Carolina before Duke won in the ACC semifinals. His play in the final moments Saturday made a more convincing case. That isn't why he came back for a second season, but it's no less validating anyway.
"He did win here, he did," Tre Jones said. "I can match him with that one. I can't wait to get on the phone with him."
The younger brother's account in the Smith Center is now officially open. Tre Jones' own place in the history of the rivalry is secure. It really was the kind of night when anything he tried might work. And did.
