In a sea of green, Michigan State flat out drowned.
At least, that's what it looked like as a crowd one and one-and-half times the population of Chapel Hill watched the Spartans flounder and wheeze from a pace that would've left Usain Bolt doubled over to catch his breath.
There would be no great moral victory, no thumb-your-nose at the economy win that already been scripted by some Disney scribe. And that much is fine. A Spartans victory wouldn't changed Detroit's real problems any more than a cup of coffee would make the ocean boil.
And maybe it did give Detroit something to smile about. After all, for the first time in months, somebody in that city had a worse night than the Big Three.
That was Tom Izzo and a gameplan that made such little sense you'd be forgiven for assuming it was written on Matt Millen letterhead.
About the only thing that went right for the coach Monday night was the one thing he must've secretly hoped didn't, his glum pre-game assessment of his team's chances.
."If we had everybody perfect, the way they played that night," Izzo said earlier of his team's 35-point loss to North Carolina in December, "instead of winning by 35, they could have beat us by 20."
As it turned out following the Heels' 89-72 drubbing for the national title, they probably would've won by 17. And that may have only been because you got the feeling even the Tar Heels were wondering what was on the other channels.
"It was a blur," Travis Walton said. "It was a blur in the first five minutes when they jumped out on us so fast. ... The second part is North Carolina is an excellent team."
Even in this awful economy, the Heels racked up points faster than the national debt could grow. 22-7. 34-11. 59-36. Before it ever even got comfortable, the crowd was already doing the sort of complex math usually reserved for your taxes just to figure out the deficit..
And yet all the time, Michigan State trying to prove it could run with the Tar Heels.
Passes zinged to nobody in particular (uncannily familiar in Ford Field). What turnovers the Spartans could generate turned into foolish 1-on-3s. Got a 3-on-1? Lob it out of bounds. Twenty-one turnovers and what seemed like more contested shots in the first 10 seconds of a possession than folks on hand watching and the Spartans were just another notch on Carolina's championship belt.
"A lot of them," Travis Walton said aptly. "Were kind of foolish turnovers."
Foolish seemed like an all-too fitting word.
Championship Routs
By the time they were midway through the first half, the Tar Heels were playing only against history. Their 17-point blowout of Michigan State is tied for the ninth largest margin of victory in championship game history. Click through the gallery to read about the other nine one-sided romps.
Paul Sancya, AP
1992: Duke 71, Michigan 51 The Fab Five's first trip to the Final Four was a bit of a Cinderella story, but it ended in a rout as the Blue Devils become the first team to win back-to-back titles since John Wooden's UCLA dynasty
Jim Mone, AP
1990: UNLV 103, Duke 73 But the Blue Devils knew intimately what it was like to wind up on the wrong side of a laugher. Two years earlier, a UNLV team led by Anderson Hunt, Larry Johnson and Stacey Augmon routed Duke by 30, far and away the biggest romp in finals history.
Eric Risberg, AP
1976: Indiana 86, Michigan 68: The last undefeated national champion in college basketball history did it with an exclamation point at the end. Even more impressive, the Hoosiers actually trailed by six at the half. This would be the second title game rout for Indiana, which drubbed Kansas 60-42 in 1940.
AP
1973: UCLA 87, Memphis 66 How could it not have been a runaway victory when UCLA star Bill Walton was this good? The center score a still championship game record 44 points as the Bruins won the last of seven straight titles and the ninth of John Wooden's career, humbling relative upstart Memphis State.
AP
1969: UCLA 92, Purdue 72 Not only could no one stop the UCLA dynasty with Lew Alcindor in the center, no one could even come close. The Bruins won three title games with Alcindor, later Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, by an average of 19 points. Alcindor score 37 in his farewell in 1969.
AP
1968: UCL8 78, North Carolina 55 This time, the Tar Heels finished on the wrong side of a historic drubbing. Dominated by Alcindor, who scored 34 points in his junior season, Dean Smith's second Final Four team trailed by 10 points at the half and gave up 46 in the second stanza.
AP
1960: Ohio State 75, Cal 55: The Jerry Lucas-led Buckeyes jumped out to an 18-point halftime lead in this halftime drubbing. The best seat in the house belonged to a future coach. Reserve Bob Knight missed his only field goal attempt for the Buckeyes and picked up a single foul.
AP
1952: Kansas 80, St. John's 63: Led by Clyde Lovellette, one of the great big men in NCAA history, the Kansas Jayhawks won their first national time in dominant fashion. The 6-foot-10 tower Lovellette scored a then-record 141 points in the tournament. But despite the rout, Jayhawk reserve Dean Smith didn't register a single field goal attempt.
AP
Yeah, Michigan State ran with the Heels, as the Spartans wanted, but only in the way a bug drives with a car's windshield. The Heels glided on ice. The Spartans forgot their skates.
Why Michigan State thought it could run with a team with the nation's eighth fastest tempo is anyone's guess, other than a belief that it was Big Ten defenses alone that had turned a world class sprinting game into the 131st tempo in the nation. Even if you believed the Spartans were a greased fast break waiting to happen, it should've been painfully obvious they couldn't keep up with the Heels. Barry Sanders was fast. But even he wouldn't challenge Michael Johnson.
To a man, the Heels were better and faster than the Spartans and it was as plain as the nose on Sparty's face before they ever tipped off.
By halftime, Ty Lawson had matched the NCAA championship game record for steals with seven. The Heels, who had the nation's most efficient offense this season, had smashed the record for points in a half, which does seem like the logical conclusion of multiplying the the nation's best point per possession average by enough possessions to make a team of Stephon Marburys happy.
"We looked a little bit either shell-shocked or a little bit worn down," Izzo said. "You can't do that against a good team."
And yet they did it against a great team. Again. And again. And again.
Maybe it was the adrenaline of the moment or maybe it was the whole storyline of being Captain Detroit, but the Spartans played right into North Carolina's hands for no particularly good reason. At least other than fostering a beating so severe the telecast should've had one of those TV-14 ratings.
Of course, it probably wouldn't have mattered. Not against this team. Not on this night. Not with the talent disparity.
Michigan State had to hope to play perfectly while perfection was just another play in North Carolina's playbook.
But losing the way the Spartans did, trailing North Carolina down the court, trying to play a fast tempo when the only way the odds played in their hands was to shrink the sample size, they looked more like a stereotype of a Big Ten team and less the Big East killer.
They looked bumbling by comparison. Strong but slow, like a pickup truck trying to win at Daytona.
They just seemed lost and uncomfortable.
"I did feel a little deer in the headlights look," Izzo said.
Which was funny. It certainly looked more like a fish out of water, gasping to breathe.
