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CHAPEL HILL — The grand old rivalry that is Duke vs. North Carolina renews tonight at the Smith Center, but some of the luster is gone.

Why? These are two teams headed in different directions Duke (19-4, 7-2 ACC) sits alone atop the ACC standings, while North Carolina (13-10, 2-6) is a half-game above last place.

So what's at stake tonight? Maybe, just maybe, the game on North Carolina's home court could help answer a couple of questions.

How good is Duke? Final Four good?

How bad is North Carolina? NIT bad?

Through the first half of the ACC season, Duke established itself as the league's best team.

Then again, this looks like a down year for the league. Seven teams are ranked higher than the Blue Devils in the AP Top 25, and No. 20 Georgia Tech is the only other ACC school in the poll this week.

At this point one season ago, Duke, North Carolina and Wake Forest were ranked in the top seven, and Clemson and Florida State were also in the poll.

Duke

The Blue Devils are still good — especially on the perimeter.

Steady point guard Jon Scheyer is in the midst of an outstanding senior season, and he has an outside chance to reach 2,000 career points. Kyle Singler's move to small forward has created headaches for opposing defenses.

But the emergence of Nolan Smith (18.1 points, 44.2 percent 3-point shooting) has been important. Last season, he played himself out of the starting lineup. Now, Smith allows Duke to put two scoring point guards on the court.

Outside of the Big Three — they account for two-thirds of Duke's scoring — the Blue Devils have enough big bodies to do the dirty work of rebounding, screen-setting and low-post defense.

Duke's depth is a problem. Scheyer, Smith and Singler average at least 35 minutes per game, and no one else is scoring more than 6.5 points per game. And the Blue Devils have been a human 6-4 away from Cameron Indoor Stadium.

Bottom line: Most people won't put them in the Final Four when office-pool brackets get filled out, but the Blue Devils wouldn't surprise anyone by making it, either.

North Carolina

The season after a different group of Tar Heels won the national championship, this team has lost three in a row and seven of its last nine.

Since his first season at Kansas, when he took over a program on probation, coach Roy Williams has not only reached the NCAA tournament 20 times in a row but also won at least one game in every one of them.

Now his Heels are staring down the barrel of the NIT.

The magic number is 20 wins. Since the NCAA expanded the tournament, no North Carolina team with at least 20 victories has been excluded.

But the Heels need seven wins to reach 20. And they're guaranteed only nine more games (eight regular season, plus first round of the ACC tournament).

Can they do it?

Only if their perimeter play gets much better. Point guard Larry Drew II is averaging 6.2 assists but 3.2 turnovers per game. Senior Marcus Ginyard has been limited by injuries and has scored erractically. Freshmen Dexter Strickland and Leslie McDonald have played like, well, freshmen.

But this season in the ACC, there is always hope.

After all, Duke has lost to last-place N.C. State. A few days later, North Carolina blew out the Wolfpack.

The victory was the Heels' only win in their last seven.

Contact Jeff Mills at 373-7024 or jeff.mills@news-record.com