Tar Heels Look Awfully Good

CHARLOTTE North Carolina is making March look like November. It has played three NCAA tournament games now, and the walk-ons have gotten a chunk of playing time in all three of them. Only the opponents aren't Iona, South Carolina State and Nicholls State. They're NCAA tournament teams, and the Tar Heels are now one step from the Final Four without having played a game that was even close to being close.

Thursday night at Charlotte Bobcats Arena against Washington State in the East Region semifinals, the final score was 68-47 and, to be honest, the Tar Heels could have named any final score they wanted. They have now won three games in this tournament by the astounding total of 91 points.

They're really good. But how good?

"We're usually pretty good at getting back and stopping teams once we get set up on defense," Washington State center Aron Baynes said. "But these guys just ran it right down our throats."

There is a tendency, when a very good team blows out a good team this late in the NCAA tournament, to anoint the winner as unbeatable.

In 1985, after Georgetown crushed St. John's in the national semifinals, it almost seemed pointless for Villanova to show up for the national championship game. Villanova, as every basketball fan knows, won the game.

Three years later, Oklahoma manhandled Arizona on semifinal Saturday. It had already beaten Kansas, its opponent in the final, twice that season. Kansas, of course, won the title. Three years after that, Nevada-Las Vegas arrived in Indianapolis 34-0, a shoo-in for a second national title. The Rebels lost in the semifinals to Duke.

And then there was Kentucky in 1995. The Wildcats were so impressive in destroying Arizona State in the round of 16 that one veteran columnist declared them national champions and said North Carolina, Kentucky's opponent in the regional final, would be lucky to lose with dignity.

That column, not surprisingly, found its way to the Carolina locker room. The Tar Heels -- naturally -- won the game.

Flash forward to Thursday night. Washington State came into the East Region semifinals with a 26-8 record, coming out of what was arguably the best conference in the country this season. North Carolina was the only team left playing from a once-proud basketball conference that can't even win NIT or CBI games at home anymore.

And yet, for a third straight game in the NCAA tournament, the Tar Heels made it look easy. Very easy. Okay, Mount St. Mary's was supposed to be easy. Arkansas came out of a down Southeastern Conference. But Washington State had size, it had maturity and it played great defense.

What's more, it had Baynes, a 6-foot-10 junior center who clearly wasn't intimidated by Tyler Hansbrough, the consensus national player of the year. Hansbrough had two points at halftime -- and no field goals.