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CHAPEL HILL -- Struggling to break the will of Carolina and its home crowd, Duke took the last gasp of energy out of the Dean E. Smith Center and held on for a 89-78 win in the first meeting of the Tobacco Road rivals since last year's bloody game.

The thick atmosphere of the biggest college basketball game so far this season wore down North Carolina and had Duke struggling for air in the final minutes.

After a year of anticipation and then almost 40 minutes of suffocating pressure, Carolina finally wilted in the Wednesday heat. The burden of playing without its point guard was too much for the team considered the deepest in the land.

Ty Lawson, who injured his ankle against Florida State three days earlier, was a game-time scratch. Carolina played on without him, forced to alter its style just enough for Duke to get control of a game that was probably decided before it ever began.

Roy Williams asked Lawson before the game began if he could go.

"I don't know,'' Lawson said.

"Then we're not going to play,'' Williams said.

Williams said it was an easy decision and then blamed himself for the loss. But it was clear Carolina wasn't the same team even before the lineups were announced.

Despite the gnawing suspicion Duke would win, thus setting up an even bigger game in the season-finale a month from now, Carolina came out dancing and jumping and booing Gerald Henderson and trying to avoid what seemed to be a foregone conclusion.

Without its point guard, Carolina is not the best team in the state.

Lawson watched from the bench in full uniform as Williams tinkered with lineups and combinations that sparked several Tar Heels runs but contained the seeds of their own destruction. Quentin Thomas ran full out as Quentin Thomas is wont to do, and Marcus Ginyard played point the way Marcus Ginyard plays point, and Carolina struggled all night for some semblance of offense.

Williams tried forcing the ball inside, where Hansbrough scored 28 points and grabbed 18 rebounds. The North Carolina center wrestled with any number of Duke defenders, including Henderson, and almost willed Carolina to a win by himself.

In the hectic environment inside the heated Smith Center, it was Carolina's only hope.

He couldn't do it alone.

In a blistering postgame, Williams took nothing from Hansbrough's hard play except what he considered to be less-than-hard play from the rest of his team. The onslaught started from the first shot, but the pace took down both teams in the second half.

Duke took off first, scoring 13 seconds into the game on a long jumper by Greg Paulus, then after a Henderson brick Hansbrough swished one from 15 feet and the house began to shake.

Dressed in black and playing against as loud a crowd as any Duke team has since the Heels moved into the Smith Center, the Blue Devils weathered a long, sustained run by the Heels. The long runs slowly dragged down both teams.

Hansbrough overcame an airball, one of several by each team, then made up for it at the other end with a defensive play that left freshman Kyle Singler's legs tied in a hitch knot in the Duke lane. Carolina led 18-13 before the Blue Devils got their feet under them. That was about the time the North Carolina offense shut down around Thomas.

Duke came back with a barrage of 3-pointers as Paulus, Singler and sophomore Jon Scheyer began to fan out around the Carolina defense. Duke surged to a 27-20 lead then steadily pulled away.

The lead reached 42-31, equaling Carolina's season-high deficit, and things suddenly seemed bleak for the Tar Heels. The offense had collapsed with Thomas and Ginyard at point, and the defense looked helpless against Duke's outside shooting.

And then Henderson came to the line to shoot two free throws with 2:26 left in the half. He looked into the void between him and the rim, the one where he and Hansbrough collided last March, the one that stared back at him in a blur of light blue students behind the plexiglass back board. They were holding up wanted posters. He missed both shots

From that point on, the game wore down to an even slower pace. Duke struggled to the end, trying to drag itself to the final buzzer. Carolina played frantically as the minutes wound down.

The clock stopped at zero long after the energy went to empty.

And then another clock started, one that will end in Cameron Indoor Stadium.

Another chapter in the long rivalry paused the way so many have before, unfinished after the first meeting of the year and building already on a collision course for March.

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