Neither Duke nor UNC are ranked in basketball’s Top 25. That hasn’t happened since 1982.
For the first time since December 1982, The Associated Press men’s basketball poll doesn’t include Duke or North Carolina.
The blue-blooded rivals, famously located eight miles apart with 11 NCAA tournament championships between them, are struggling simultaneously, with North Carolina having started this season 8-5 while Duke is 5-3.
The Blue Devils started the season ranked No. 9, rose as high as No. 6 and were ranked No. 19 in last week’s poll. But Duke dropped out of Monday’s poll after losing 74-67 at No. 20 Virginia Tech last Tuesday.
That ended a streak of 702 consecutive polls that included one or the other.
The Blue Devils appeared on 10 of 64 ballots from the nationwide media panel, securing 43 points. This is the first AP Top 25 poll without Duke since Feb. 8, 2016.
North Carolina started the season at No. 16 but hasn’t been ranked since it was at No. 17 in the Dec. 21 poll. The Tar Heels were not included on any of the 64 ballots this week.
The last poll to not include Duke or UNC was Dec. 27, 1982.
The 1982-83 season was Mike Krzyzewski’s third at Duke and the team was never ranked. The Blue Devils went 11-17, a season so poor that many boosters were calling for Krzyzewski to be fired. Duke athletics director Tom Butters stuck with Krzyzewski, and he’s gone on to win five NCAA championships and become the sports all-time leader in coaching wins.
UNC started the 1982-83 season as the reigning NCAA champion with Michael Jordan and Sam Perkins in the lineup. The Tar Heels were No. 3 in the preseason poll but started 0-2 with losses to St. John’s and Missouri.
UNC remained in the next three polls, at either No. 15 or No. 17, before an 84-74 loss to Tulsa on Dec. 17, 1982, left the Tar Heels with a 3-3 record. UNC beat Texas-Rio Grande the following day, but fell out of the next poll on Dec. 21, 1982.
The Tar Heels remained out of the Dec. 28, 1982 poll but returned to the poll at No. 18 on Jan. 4, 1983. UNC won 18 games in a row after losing at Tulsa that season, climbing all the way to No. 1 in the poll by Feb. 1, 1983.
Since the 1982-83 season, Duke and UNC have both appeared in every poll throughout 21 seasons: 1985-86, 1987-89, 1990-94, 1996-99, 2000-01, 2003-05, 2007-09, 2011-12 and 2014-2019.
So while UNC was only ranked five weeks in the 1989-90 season, for example, Duke was ranked in every poll that season. The same was true when UNC had unranked weeks during the 1999-2000 season as well as in the 2001-02, 2002-03, 2005-06, 2009-10, 2010-11, 2012-13, 2013-14 and 2019-20 seasons.
Conversely, Duke was only ranked in five polls in the 1983-84 season when UNC was ranked all season.
The only other seasons when Duke has missed a poll since then were 1994-95, 1995-96, 2006-07 and 2015-16. The Tar Heels were ranked in every poll in those seasons as well.
Expanding further around North Carolina, this is the first poll since Dec. 28, 1970, that doesn’t include a team from N.C. That was a streak of 903 consecutive polls.
It’s also the first time since the Dec. 18, 1961, poll that Duke, UNC and Kentucky are all unranked. This ends a streak of 1,043 consecutive polls.
AP College Basketball Top 25 Poll for Jan. 18, 2021
1. Gonzaga
2. Baylor
3. Villanova
4. Iowa
5. Texas
6. Tennessee
7. Michigan
8. Houston
9. Kansas
10. Wisconsin
11. Creighton
12. Texas Tech
13. Virginia
14. West Virginia
15. Ohio State
16. Virginia Tech
17. Minnesota
18. Alabama
19. Missouri
20. Clemson
21. Oregon
22. Illinois
23. Connecticut
24. UCLA
25. Saint Louis
This story was originally published January 18, 2021 at 12:00 PM with the headline "Neither Duke nor UNC are ranked in basketball’s Top 25. That hasn’t happened since 1982.."