Tar Heels show class, oust Orange

HOUSTON — There is a golf course in the mountains of North Carolina that has a concrete block, and on this concrete block it reads: “Spot died here.”

So it goes that golfers are always asking better players to spot them strokes.

“Well,” Roy Williams said, “spot dies here, too. There are no points or strokes or anything given in the NCAA Tournament.”

Bad news for Syracuse. It could have used a dozen or so.

In a season when teams ranked No. 1 were beaten at a rate like never before, when it was assumed the NCAA Tournament would prove the most unpredictable in recent times, when most brackets were busted before the opening weekend of play finished, when a No. 10 seed advanced to the Final Four for the first time, the team most believed was the best all along is 40 minutes from confirming such a view.

North Carolina began the season atop most rankings and can conclude it on such a lofty perch, having advanced to the national title game by dismissing Syracuse 83-66 on Saturday in a second national semifinal before 75,505 at NRG Stadium.

The Tar Heels on Monday night will engage a Villanova side that earlier made history in a most dominating fashion, handing Oklahoma the worst defeat in Final Four history by a 95-51 count.

The Wildcats shot 71.4 percent. They won’t need to be that terrific to win Monday, but can’t shoot the 41 percent that the Orange managed.

“North Carolina is a hell of a team,” Syracuse coach Jim Boeheim said. “They’re just too big and strong and good. We didn’t need to be perfect to beat them, but we needed to shoot better than we did. We couldn’t press them. It like, you know, if I’m on the top of the Empire State building, I don’t have to jump to know it’s going to hurt. I don’t need to press North Carolina to know it’s going to hurt. They like pressure. They score off pressure.”

The Tar Heels did more of their scoring inside, where Syracuse as a No. 10 seed couldn’t match up and Villanova might encounter the same issue. North Carolina won a Final Four game by 17 points and shot just 4-for-17 on 3-pointers, missing its first 10 attempts from distance. But it also had 50 of its 83 points come in the paint and outrebounded the Orange 43-31.

Brice Johnson wasn’t always this good. Not even close. Williams was recruiting another big when he noticed a different kid at the prestigious Peach Jam. Noticed the quick jump, the quick bounce. Four years later, Williams says he has never coached and pushed and prodded and criticized a player more.

The 6-foot-10-inch Johnson had 16 points and nine rebounds in 28 minutes Saturday, and the player who wasn’t a McDonald’s All-American and who dreamed only of one day perhaps playing for money in Europe, is now a consensus first-team All-American and headed to the NBA lottery and the one guy Villanova figures to have the biggest issues with when devising a game plan.

“When he came to us, Brice didn’t really know how to work,” Williams said. “Wasn’t the strongest guy. There was so much more he could do. But he has grown leaps and bounds in front of us. I still want him to work harder. The day I die, I’ll probably send a message to Brice: ‘You can do more.’”

Syracuse did all it could, advancing further than most imagined, rallying late for NCAA wins against Gonzaga and Virginia along the way, beginning Atlantic Coast Conference play 0-4 and with its coach serving a nine-game suspension in the wake of the program violating all sorts of NCAA rules, having lost five of six games entering the tournament.

North Carolina, however, isn’t done.

It opened as a 2-point favorite against Villanova , which has won five tournament games by an average of 24.2 points and is shooting nearly 60 percent over that time. No one in the world is going to spot the Wildcats anything right now.

Spot is dead and six feet under.

But there is a reason the Tar Heels were ranked No. 1 to begin the season.

They have everything you need to win it all.

“(Former NFL coach) Marty Schottenheimer is a great friend,” Williams said. “He always said, ‘Let’s enjoy the blankety-blank out it till midnight, then worry about what comes after that.’ I did not watch one second of Villanova-Oklahoma.

“But the next 48 hours are going to be a lot of fun.”

Ed Graney can be reached at egraney@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-4618. He can be a heard on “Seat and Ed” on Fox Sports 1340 from 2 p.m. to 4 p.m. Monday through Friday. On Twitter: @edgraney