By Liz Clarke
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, March 27, 2008; E06

CHARLOTTE, March 26 -- During the NCAA basketball tournament's opening weekend, Washington State held Winthrop to 40 points in the first round, then allowed Notre Dame just 41 to earn passage to the East Region semifinals in Charlotte.

So what score does Washington State guard Kyle Weaver have in mind for top-seeded North Carolina (34-2) Thursday night, when a wildly partisan throng is expected to pack Charlotte Bobcats Arena to cheer the Tar Heels against the fourth-seeded Cougars (26-8)?

"39!" Weaver said Wednesday, smiling as he chuckled at the notion. "It would be nice."

North Carolina, of course, boasts a junior standout, Tyler Hansbrough, who scores nearly that much single-handedly, averaging 22.8 points per game. And while Washington State earned its trip by muzzling its rivals, the Tar Heels have bludgeoned opponents with a scoring barrage, averaging 110.5 points in romps over Mount St. Mary's and Arkansas.

Now comes a game that should test the strengths of each and, in the process, offer a delicious contrast in talent, tempo and technique.

No team has waltzed into the NCAA tournament's round of 16 more often than North Carolina, which is making its 22nd appearance this year. That tradition was imprinted in the minds of Washington State's starters, a hodgepodge of lightly regarded and nominally recruited players, from the time they fell in love with the game.

"When I think about college basketball, the first name that pops up for me is North Carolina because of all the history, the great coaches, the players -- especially Michael Jordan," said senior guard Derrick Low, from Honolulu, one of the few Cougars to receive an offer to play Division I basketball from a school other than Washington State. "When I was growing up, if you asked me what college I wanted to go to, my first answer was North Carolina."

About the same time, the Tar Heels' basketball prowess was also making a huge impression on a youngster half a world away from Chapel Hill: Aron Baynes, the Cougars' 6-10 center from Cairns, Australia.

"That's kinda what college basketball is back in Australia," Baynes said, "so I definitely knew more about North Carolina than the other states."

But it was an entirely different style of basketball that lured Baynes, Low and Weaver to Pullman, Wash., which resembles nothing quite so much as the far side of the moon.

That's where Dick Bennett was trying to construct a basketball team that could hold its own against the Pacific-10's more glamorous squads. And Bennett's philosophy was as basic as Henry Ford's Model T: fundamentally sound and decidedly not flashy. Bennett believed in a deliberate, purposeful half-court game that prized smart shot selection, assiduous ball control and relentless defense. The program is now in the hands of Bennett's 38-year-old son, Tony, who took the reins last season and won several national coach of the year honors.

"We can't always recruit with the upper-echelon teams in our league or in the country," Bennett said Wednesday, "so we have a system, we feel, that gives us a chance, when we play together collectively, to be competitive and hopefully successful against the best."

Much like his Cougars, who bolted to a 14-0 start this season, Tony Bennett embodies the virtue of doing more with less. In the mid-1990s he took his relatively slow and stubby physique and parlayed it into a three-year NBA career. That achievement informs everything about the current Washington State squad.

"He pushes our limits to see how far we can go," 6-1 guard Taylor Rochestie said of the younger Bennett.

"He's got that underdog mentality, and that's a big reason why a lot of the players are on this team and came to Washington State because they believe in being the underdog and wanting more than they might be given."

Indeed, desire is powerful adrenaline. But it may not be enough against a team such as North Carolina, which has so many advantages -- from the speed and athleticism of its blue-chip recruits to the rabid fan support that comes with playing in its home state, less than 150 miles from campus.

Against the Tar Heels' up-tempo offense, the Cougars know they must slow down the pace, contest every shot, work each possession and limit their turnovers. The formula has served them well so far.

But there is another element of Washington State's game plan -- something that's more philosophical than strategic. Rochestie uses terms such as "servant-hood" and "playing for a higher power than yourself" in trying to describe it.

"We're playing for the people next to us in the locker room -- not for individual accolades," Rochestie said. "And when you get people coming together and believing in a system and believing in the coach and believing in each other, you can achieve greater things than by recruiting great individuals."