Tar Heels Are Aged for Victory

MEMPHIS – After Roy Williams answered his last question Sunday night at the press conference following his Tar Heels' easy 72-60 win over Oklahoma to advance to next weekend's Final Four, a North Carolina sports information official barked out some trivia for the departing media: the Tar Heels won for the first time all season with forward Tyler Hansbrough, the defending player of the year, and shooting guard Wayne Ellington failing to score in double figures.

That is how good the latest edition of the Tar Heels is – they can soundly beat a No. 2 seed in the NCAA Tournament with two hands tied behind their back.

I don't know that these Tar Heels are better than the squad Williams coached to the 2005 national title in his second season atop Chapel Hill. That team had four first-round draft picks – the No. 2 overall in Marvin Williams, plus lottery picks Raymond Felton, Sean May and Rashad McCants. NBADraft.net predicts this season's Tar Heels have three first-rounders in Hansbrough, Ellington and their most-important player, point guard Ty Lawson, the Atlantic Coast Conference player of the year.

I don't know that these Tar Heels are playing better now than the team they'll meet Saturday in the national semifinals, Villanova.

I don't know that these Tar Heels, despite weathering an injury to Lawson and losing to injury Marcus Ginyard, have overcome more than Connecticut, which lost guard Jerome Dyson for the year, lost their coach for a spell at the tournament opener and are now playing under a cloud of NCAA scrutiny.

All I know for certain is none of that really matters. With two games left on the season, these Tar Heels - as was predicted by so many at season's start - have proven the last two weekends that they are the team to beat for the crown. The selection committee got that wrong.

After all, of the teams headed to Detroit, the Tar Heels are alone in getting there mostly without a hitch. Sunday against Oklahoma was par for their course. They jumped to an early lead and never relinquished it. The 12-point margin of victory was closer than the competition really was. Oklahoma never had a chance.


The only team the Tar Heels saw the past two weekends that managed to make part of a game interesting was LSU for a moment in the early second half. The Tigers wound up going down by 14.

The biggest worry the Tar Heels really had in this tournament was Lawson's injured toe that kept him out of the tournament opener against sacrificial lamb Radford. Said Lawson on Sunday, after leading the Tar Heels with 19 points, five assists and three steals: "Once I get the adrenaline and just the intensity of it [the game], I really don't feel the toe or start favoring it."

Lawson makes the Tar Heels look like an almost perfectly constructed team. They have inside might in Hansbrough. They have outside shooters galore in Ellington, Danny Green and Lawson. Green also is a slasher and Lawson is fast and quick and can get around most any guard to get to the rim for an easy bucket or pass.

If there is anything they don't have much of it is depth. A freshman shot blocker, Ed Davis, and senior guard Bobby Frasor were the only reserves to log double-digit minutes against Oklahoma. But what does that matter at this time of year?

Williams said his team played a nearly perfect game in overwhelming Gonzaga in the regional semifinal on Friday, 98-77. Sunday Williams said his team repeated that performance for at least the first half, when they jumped to a 12-point lead behind 13 points off nine turnovers. They didn't allow Sooners' superstar Blake Griffin to score a field goal until after 12 minutes expired and the Tar Heels had established a double-digit lead. (Update: There was no comparison between Griffin and Hansbrough. Griffin finished with 23 points and 16 rebounds.)

The Tar Heels won't see a more dangerous or determined player in Detroit than Griffin. They'll see better shooters and tougher defense with Villanova. If they escape that match up, which they should, they may see a more imposing defender in the paint with Connecticut in 7-3 Hasheem Thabeet. Or they could be forced to roll up their shirt sleeves against Tom Izzo's Spartans.

But these Tar Heels will have one more thing to lean on that none of those other teams have – the all important intangible of experience.

The Tar Heels last got this far just 12 months ago. They'll be the only team with players who've played in the Final Four. Winning it all is a big reason seniors Hansbrough and Green and juniors Lawson and Ellington came back for this campaign.

"This game, we were used to it," Lawson said of the Final Four, "and just experience overall in the NCAA tournament."

In the last Final Four, the Tar Heels looked like they suffered stage fright as the eventual champions from Kansas bolted to a 28-point lead before every fan had settled into their seats.

"It's a different team," Green said of himself and his mates. "It's a new year, a new day, a new game. We know what our goals are. We know what our focuses are and what we have to do to win games. Last year, of course, we use...as a learning experience."

Next weekend is the final exam and these Tar Heels will ace it.

Kevin B. Blackistone is a panelist on ESPN's Around the Horn, the Shirley Povich Chair in Sports Journalism at the Philip Merrill College of Journalism at the University of Maryland, and a former award-winning sports columnist for The Dallas Morning News. He lives in Silver Spring, Md.