North Carolina Defeats Oklahoma to Advance to Final Four

MEMPHIS, March 29 -- North Carolina swingman Danny Green was the last player to take the scissors and climb the ladder inside FedEx Forum on Sunday evening. Green snipped the last connected strand and hung the net around his neck, a reward for his performance over the previous two hours. But his face remained expressionless. This, he said later, is what it is to be a Tar Heel.

"We have high expectations every year," Green said a half-hour later, net still draped around his neck. "It's nothing new to us. I think it was more this year; they were expecting us to go undefeated or whatever all that talk was. We lost a couple of games and everybody thought the world was ending, but we knew we could still achieve the things that we wanted to achieve."

North Carolina marked off one more item on its checklist with a 72-60 win over Oklahoma in the South Region final, lifting the Tar Heels to the Final Four for the third time in five seasons. Most notably, North Carolina handled the Sooners with relative ease despite an off night from its marquee attraction.

The contest was billed as a matchup between Oklahoma forward Blake Griffin, this season's presumed national player of the year, and North Carolina forward Tyler Hansbrough, who claimed the honor last season.

But after more than six minutes of play, neither had scored nor made his presence felt. For North Carolina, Hansbrough's relative silence did little to disrupt its offensive flow. The Tar Heels jumped to a nine-point lead before Hansbrough got on the board with a layup over Griffin to push the margin to double digits.

Though Griffin eventually found his rhythm, Hansbrough, who finished with eight points, remained a non-factor on offense the rest of the night. The difference for the two stars was that one received plenty of assistance, while the other struggled to carry a majority of the load on his own.

"If Tyler's not having a good night, Wayne [Ellington] can step up and hit some shots or myself or Deon" Thompson, said Green, who finished with 18 points on 6-of-9 shooting. "Deon came up big and made some shots inside for us tonight."

Thompson tallied 10 points and Ellington chipped in with nine, but North Carolina's other source of offense stood out the most. Point guard Ty Lawson tallied 19 points, 5 assists and 5 rebounds. He was selected the South Region's most outstanding player.

North Carolina's balanced approach on offense was supported by a sound plan to fluster the Sooners. Griffin recorded 11 points and nine rebounds in the first half, but no other Sooner tallied more than four points or two rebounds. Oklahoma missed all nine of its three-point attempts and had nine turnovers before intermission.

"Every time they passed it to [Griffin], I just went down and doubled on him and tried to get the ball out of his hands and make one of his other teammates create something and score," said Lawson, who also recorded three steals. "When we watched tape, a lot of their players don't create or anything like that."

Griffin finished with 23 points and 16 rebounds, but when he could not find a shot, Oklahoma's perimeter players struggled to pick up the slack. The Sooners made 2 of 19 attempts from three-point range.

"We were just doing what we've been doing all season," said Blake's brother, Taylor, who finished with four points. "We've been pounding it inside, letting Blake do his thing, getting kick-outs from him when they were available. We were getting good looks; it just wasn't falling."

Led by freshman guard Willie Warren, the Sooners went on a 9-0 run late in the second half that cut the deficit to 12. Warren finished with 18 points, 14 of which came in the second half.

But Oklahoma struggled to draw within 10 points of the lead because it could not contain all of North Carolina's scoring options.

"I think each and every year you put yourself in a position that you can be one of those teams that has a chance to win it all, and that's my dream and my goal every year," North Carolina Coach Roy Williams said. "This team has dealt with a great deal of adversity, a great deal of expectation from other people. And they've got us going to Detroit, and we're excited about that."

Even if they don't always show it.