Can Duke win shoot-out against North Carolina?

Or is Duke's defense good enough to eliminate that necessity?

Fun fact. Manny Diaz has exactly as many wins over North Carolina as Barry Wilson, Fred Goldsmith, Carl Franks and Mike Elko combined.

That would be zero.

In other words, the rivalry hasn’t always gone Duke’s way. “Always” is the qualifier. Steve Spurrier won all three games against Duke’s archest rival and David Cutcliffe had a streak of fives wins in seven games. Going back further Wallace Wade, Eddie Cameron and Bill Murray won more than they lost against the Heels.

But that’s pretty further back.

But it can be done. Is Manny Diaz the next guy to do it?

Diaz is trying to thread a tight needle, a huge rivalry game in the fifth week of a 12-week regular season.

“It’s for our guys. As coaches, we get to do this a long time. The players’ shelf-life is much shorter than ours as coaches. But it’s still so early in the season. It’s still the next step in the progression of the team we want to be. It’s a great challenge to see where we are in our growth curve.”

Growth curve? Probably didn’t expect to see that one.

Duke and North Carolina are coming into Saturday’s contest off of very different experiences last Saturday.

After the opening 90 seconds or so Duke did everything it wanted to Saturday afternoon at Middle Tennessee State. Well, except control the weather.

Duke’s disruptive defense was about as disruptive as it comes, six sacks, 12 tackles for a loss, four forced turnovers.

About those turnovers. Defensive coordinator Jonathan Patke discussed those at Monday’s media availability.

“It showed us that our guys were physically ready to play and strike people. There’s no magical ingredient for creating turnovers. It’s playing really hard, it’s running to the football, it’s tackling the right way. Our guys tackled the right way, the way we teach and the ball ended up popping out. It’s really good to get four turnovers. We’ll take that the rest of the way.”

Duke has 46 tackles for loss over four games, an average of 11.5 per game, which just happens to lead the NCAA.

Duke only gained 340 yards against a defense that allowed over 600 yards in its two previous losses.

But that’s highly misleading. Duke’s defense kept giving Duke short fields. One of Duke’s touchdown drives was one yard. It’s hard to have a shorter field than that. Duke also had TD drives of 20, 24 and 14 yards.

Thank you defense.

And for the record, Duke also had TD drives of 75 (two plays) and 86 yards.

There’s a better way to gauge the effectiveness of Duke’s offense. Maalik Murphy completed 14 of 21 passes for 216 yards. That’s 10.3 yards per pass attempt, 15.4 yards per completion.

That’s good. Really good.

If we take away Murphy losing 11 yards on a sack and six yards lost on kneel downs, Duke averaged 4.5 yards per carry, with Star Thomas averaging 6.5 (17 rushes, 111 yards).

Also really good.