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Tonight (Saturday, April 2, 2022), for the first time ever, Duke University and UNC-Chapel Hill’s storied basketball teams will meet in the NCAA Final Four. It is being heralded as one of the most exciting games in sports…ever. And the Governor of North Carolina, Roy Cooper, an avid basketball fan himself (and UNC grad), has declared North Carolina to be the center of the college basketball universe. Those of us who live and work on Tobacco Road already knew that to be true, but it’s nice to have an official proclamation.
In light of all this, as one of the few places where Duke and UNC [materials] come together, we thought we’d take a look back at the first game between these two great basketball programs as described by the teams’ fellow students on the newspaper and yearbook staffs. On January 24, 1920, Duke (then Trinity College), took on UNC at Trinity in Durham and UNC won, 36-25.
The Daily Tar Heel and the Chronicle both published articles detailing the game (and both note a game that may have happened in 1898 but we can’t find any articles about it – it was in 1898 that UNC introduced features of a new game known as basketball to their gym)
Trinity College’s Chronicle staff had a bit of a different take on that particular game; the staff felt very strongly that it was a result of a “jinx” that Carolina won, not a better team. After all, they then went on to beat State College (NCSU).
The yearbooks from each school also comment on the first matchup in their basketball features. Trinity’s yearbook added a note that will sound a bit too familiar to 2022 ears – their season was almost ended before it started due to the flu epidemic.
Trinity’s Chanticleer staff felt it was a surprise to everyone – even UNC! – that UNC beat them:
UNC takes a different tack, describing their win not as a surprise versus Trinity but as the result of a lot of hard work at the gym:
The yearbooks also feature team portraits – with UNC already sporting their familiar logo in 1920.
UNC’s 1920 Basketball Team
Trinity College’s (now Duke University) 1920 Basketball team
We’ll see what the matchup looks like tonight and inevitably, the resulting hot takes, 102 years later!
If you want to check out more UNC and Duke content on DigitalNC, check out their partner pages. UNC is here and Duke’s is here.
A couple of weeks ago UNC’s university archivist tweeted about finding articles in the Daily Tar Heel about a flu epidemic on UNC’s campus in early 1941. Intrigued – and figuring it was in no way contained to UNC’s campus – we did some digging in other newspapers on our site to find other stories about the epidemic’s impact on other campuses in NC at the time. A topic that is feeling quite relevant now, we found mentions scattered throughout the papers in January and February 1941 (for context – what would have been a year that started with an epidemic for these students and ended with the country involved in a World War) about how students were reacting to this sudden uptick in the flu.
Several campuses seemed to have a newfound appreciation for the infirmary, with an “Ode the Infirmary” published in Mars Hill College’s student newspaper.
From the Montreat College paper, a look “Through the Infirmary Door”
The social lives of the Belles of Saint Mary’s were put on hold for the flu that struck campus in mid January. Their society pages in their student newspaper detail such and the following flurry of activity as they were able to come out of quarantine.
At the high school level, reports of basketball games and academic competitions were cancelled or put on hold as school was cancelled for several days to prevent the spread of the flu virus. Both the students at Greensboro High School and High Point School reported such.
Other social and academic events were also cancelled – all citing the epidemic as the cause.
Other college campuses did not seem to have large effects from the flu but did report on students who were travelling from other areas of the state who then had to quarantine upon arrival on campus. For example, in an article in Montreat College’s student paper, they reported on students who had to quarantine upon arriving back to campus.
All in all, nothing quite as dramatic as what appears to have happened at UNC was going on at other North Carolina schools, perhaps another echo of what has happened in 2020. A brief perusal of the community papers from the time show that the flu epidemic was something affecting the whole state for sure, with mentions of it in papers from as far east as Beaufort, NC and as far west as Franklin, NC in Macon County.
Clipping from The Beaufort News , January 16, 1941
Clipping from The Franklin press and the Highlands Maconian, January 23, 1941
Several articles note that this particular epidemic was moving from the western part of the state to the eastern part of the state, which was apparently unusual, and overall cases had been fairly mild (which likely explains in part why it rarely pops up as an event in history).
January 22, 1941 issue of the State Port Pilot discussing the effects of the flu across the state.
To explore our over 1 million pages of digitized newspapers yourself, visit our North Carolina Newspapers page and read here about how colleges in NC responded to the 1918 Spanish Flu pandemic.
