Big Four Teams Doubling The Score

When North Carolina defeated Syracuse 93-83 on Monday night, the UNC sports information office quickly calculated how many times the Tar Heels had doubled the score against an opponent in consecutive games.

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The Heels had lost to the Orange 45-57 in their previous meeting, at Syracuse in 2014. The school also had doubled its offensive output in consecutive games on six other occasions dating to 1920.

Fair enough.

So, we decided to see how many times other ACC teams had the same experience. And got a shock. The occurrence is far more common than one might imagine, although most instances came prior to the ACC's advent in 1953-54.

In fact, the doubling scenario was so common we chose to limit ourselves to league action involving the Big Four -- ACC teams from North Carolina - and still found 52 times a team doubled its scoring from one game to another against the same opponent.

Prior to this season, there was no such occurrence among the Big Four in more than 30 years.

Both times it happened, the games spanned the 1982 and 1983 seasons and the opponent was Virginia.

UNC beat the Cavaliers 47-45 in a highly controversial slowdown in the '82 ACC Tournament title game, then followed with a 101-95 victory at Charlottesville in January 1983. Meanwhile N.C. State lost 40-45 at Charlottesville in February 1982 and lost 80-88 at home against UVa in January 1983.

In all, 39 doubling instances came prior to the start of the ACC and 13 came since the conference was founded. That includes two times when teams played in contests separated by decades - Wake against Virginia in 1921 and next in 1955, and against Virginia Tech in 1932 and then in 1954.