DURHAM, N.C. -- The world's most infamous pair of basketball shoes just sat there, tucked in purgatory beneath the Duke Blue Devils bench. The left sneaker, the one that had blown apart like an old trailer tractor tire 36 seconds to injure the right knee of Zion Williamson, lay in a heap of material atop its righty partner, the one that had managed to keep it together.
Only a few feet away, college basketball's greatest rivalry plowed ahead without college basketball's greatest player. The reviled North Carolina Tar Heels were running away with a 88-72 road victory over Duke.