In my neck of the woods there is no bigger or bitter basketball rivalry than Carolina and Duke. Allegiances to these two schools a mere 8 miles apart can divide families, friends, neighbors, co-workers, and fellow congregants. Some relationships within this rivalry are hard to explain. For instance, I have a friend who graduated from UNC, married a Carolina cheerleader, but has remained a lifelong Blue Devil fan. Go figure. A few take the rivalry to the extreme, including one Tar Heel fan who wrote a book on how much he despises those Devils from Durham (see Will Blythe’s To Hate Like This Is to Be Happy Forever: A Thoroughly Obsessive, Intermittently Uplifting, and Occasionally Unbiased Account of the Duke-North Carolina Basketball Rivalry). Even former U.S. senator and presidential and vice presidential candidate John Edwards, a Carolina law school grad, once risked alienating potential voters by admitting to a reporter that he “hated” Duke basketball. But as we head into tonight’s regular season finale between the highly ranked Heels and Devils, a few days after UNC’s student body president was violently gunned down in a quiet, seemingly safe Chapel Hill neighborhood, we’re reminded that we need to put such things as the Carolina-Duke rivalry in perspective. As UNC head coach Roy Williams told his team before practice Thursday: “This is just a basketball game. It’s a big game, it’s a game that’s going to get a lot of attention, but it’s still a game. …”