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DURHAM — It wasn't eight points in 17 seconds, but it might've seemed like it to Carolina.

One of the great comebacks ever in this series left Duke deliriously celebrating a 79-73 win over North Carolina and left Roy Williams crestfallen. It was one of the great Duke victories in recent years and one of the most disappointing UNC losses.

Nolan Smith scored a career-high 34 points, and Duke erased a 16-point deficit to win a game that might've ended the ACC race in early February.

Mike Krzyzewski refused to accept total victory, and Williams refused to accept total defeat. They both left it to each other to explain the outcome, and to everyone else to tell the story.

The win gave Duke 100 wins all-time against UNC. It had far more meaning than that in a conference that needed a game like this in the worst way.

All day, the anticipation built toward something big. This game is always like that, the first meeting of the year between the ACC's two giants. The day is almost like a holiday in this state, and the night is an annual television event. No other game in the regular season, in any conference, comes close.

Nor will the second game these two teams play.

Krzyzewski said it was almost too much for his team.

"They knocked us back," he said. "We were ready to play, but sometimes we get so ready to play we go nuts. I thought we went nuts."

That described the atmosphere most of the day here, and set the tone for a game that got away from Krzyzewski and Duke almost from the beginning.

"What are you guys doing?" he asked his team at one point.

He later called the comeback "vintage" and said it was a little bit courageous and a little bit the crowd and a little bit Carolina finally going nuts, too. He also said it would be easy to read too much into it.

The suggested the win was timeless, reminding everyone there was a lot of basketball left to play.

"A win over an outstanding program is a big win all the time," he said. "This was a really big night for us. I'm very, very proud of my team."

Carolina, he said, is the best team Duke has played all year.

That might come as a surprise to people who think the ACC is down this year. The conference is rated somewhere below the made-for-TV Big East and the mid-major darling Mountain West and somewhere above God's football conference and the Atlantic Sun, which are a combined 7-18 against the ACC.

The nonsensical rankings of leagues is all the rage again, particularly among the hairdos and talking heads that push the buttons in the opening days of February. That's in part because the ACC has only Duke and Carolina, who both know that the cocktail parties and tournaments will take care of all that in due time.

In the meantime, we get games like this. At least here on Tobacco Road. We've been watching this game for so long, it feels like forever. From the days of C.D. Chesley, sailing with the Pilot with Jim and Billy to today's cable franchise, the television event that is Duke-Carolina is set in granite.

Beginning next year, ESPN will get exclusive rights to the game.

The rights to this game cost between $400 and $1,000, depending on which shark you ran into out front. One couple stood in shock after being told the upper end of admission for those without tickets.

"It's on TV," she told her husband, taking a drag on a cigarette.

"Thanks for the light," she told the shark.

Somewhere between now and April, the prices will go up on Tobacco Road and the games will mean more and the nonsensical conference rankings will cease to matter. Until then, we get the game that means more to college basketball than all the others.

Duke came back from 16 points on national television to defeat arch-rival North Carolina in front of a crazy crowd watching two teams trying not to go nuts. It was a huge win and a huge loss.

"I'm not big into moral victories," Williams said.

Krzyzewski said he's not into analyzing too much beyond what happened Wednesday night. What happened was Duke came back to beat Carolina, as Carolina had done to Duke so many time over the years.

On a day when everything seemed to pause in this state, you could see something big coming, all through the insane build-up and wall of noise and the banks of camera lights and the painted faces and the eyes of the freshmen.

It was a game fitting of the series history, a vintage meeting between the best two programs in America, a comeback for the ages on a night to remember in Cameron Indoor Nuthouse.

Contact Ed Hardin at 373-7069 or ed.hardin@news-record.com