What’s a nine-hour drive on a school night? There is still basketball to be played!

As an individual walked into the Greensboro Coliseum on Thursday night, one thing became clear: Binghamton University’s men’s basketball team, despite being almost 600 miles from campus, was not going to feel too far away from home.

About one quarter of the arena was filled with Tar Heel blue, another eighth or so in a sea of Binghamton green. On this night and this night only, the two were one and the same.

“Here in North Carolina, you’re either for Duke or against Duke,” said Mo “Reese” Taylor, the BU pep band leader, speaking on the support that the Bearcats would get from University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill fans due to their hatred for the Duke Blue Devils.

“For this game, we’ll take what we can get,” Taylor added.

For Tar Heels fans, it is almost as if hating Duke is just as important as supporting their team.

“Anybody but Duke is the way to go,” said two Tar Heels fans who grew up in North Carolina. “We’re all for teaming with the Binghamton fans for this game.”

With five minutes left in the half during the game that preceded the Binghamton vs. Duke contest, the “Let’s go Bearcats!” chants commenced. The Blue Devils’ fans, known as the Cameron Crazies due to the fact that their home court is named Cameron Indoor Stadium and that they have rather extravagant antics, did not seem to have much to say in return. The Crazies had a relatively minuscule turnout at the game.

“They’re not even crazy,” Andrew Erlick, a senior at Binghamton, said of the Crazies before the game. “We’re gonna out-cheer them.”

Erlick and Aaron Kleinman, Binghamton University class of 2008, said they wish that the team would have been more competitive during their first few years at Binghamton.

“I hope freshmen appreciate what the team is doing this year,” Kleinman said. “They weren’t always this good.”

Almost deafening boos permeated the arena when Duke came out (though the sound was heightened by some Duke fans cheering, “Duuuke!”), as if the Blue Devils were the away team. The Bearcats came out to a myriad of cheers.

A few alumni who traveled all the way from Manhattan and Tampa Bay were impressed by the fan turnout in Greensboro.

“It was pretty awesome,” said Bob Farricker, who graduated from Binghamton in 1991. “I had no idea there would be this kind of energy!”