PHILADELPHIA — North Carolina is headed back to the Final Four for the first time since 2009, which also happens to be the year it won its most recent NCAA championship.
The top-seeded Tar Heels avoided the fate of all three other No. 1 seeds — which all fell in the Elite Eight — by holding off No. 6 Notre Dame, 88-74, Sunday night at the Wells Fargo Center.
Thus, order was restored to this NCAA tournament, at least briefly. North Carolina, in a record 19th Final Four as a program, will face fellow Atlantic Coast Conference member Syracuse in Houston at the Final Four next weekend. The Orange are the first-ever No. 10 seed to reach the Final Four. The other national semifinal pits a pair of No. 2 seeds against each other: Oklahoma and Villanova.
BOX SCORE: Tar Heels 88, Irish 74
The Tar Heels will likely be the prohibitive favorite the rest of the way, and it’s easy to see why. When they’re firing on all cylinders, they’re nearly impossible to stop offensively. Certainly not when senior forward Brice Johnson is a walking double-double, senior guard Marcus Paige is draining threes and even a player as inconsistent as Kennedy Meeks is perfect from the field (4-4, all in the second half). This is the North Carolina team many thought it’d be; the Tar Heels topped both preseason polls. Paige and Johnson are the seniors who’ve endured years of NCAA investigative uncertainty hanging like clouds over the program, though the academic issues involved predate both of them. This is a group coach Roy Williams — in his eighth Final Four — is particularly proud to coach, and a season that’s been brutal on his body, and his bad knee.
And this is a Final Four-bound team, thanks to yet another strong performance Sunday night to end what had been an incredible Irish run — one Notre Dame coach Mike Brey thought featured destiny, considering how many frantic comebacks his team needed to reach the Elite Eight.
But the Irish ran out of luck. Though Notre Dame star point guard Demetrius Jackson led all scorers with 26 points, the Irish never really threatened to come back all the way in the game’s final minutes — though the game seesawed quite a bit in the early part of the second half, and the 14-point margin of victory is the smallest for North Carolina in the tournament.
North Carolina and Notre Dame had split their previous two meetings, but the most recent — a 31-point blowout in the ACC tournament — was on both teams’ minds all weekend. The Irish openly spoke about using it as motivation; the Tar Heels used it to guard against complacency.
Both teams started the game hot, a first half filled with terrific offense. Both teams shot better than 60% from beyond the arc in the high-scoring first half.
The second half featured run after run — until Notre Carolina took control of the game for good. A particularly emphatic moment came with just over nine minutes left. Paige had scrambled for a loose ball, fed teammate Theo Pinson who lobbed the ball to Isaiah Hicks, who slammed down the alley-oop.
Pinson, a day earlier, had crashed the Tar Heels’ news conference — which was for head coach Roy Williams and his five starters — jokingly asking, “Where’s my seat at?”
Fortunately, there will be room for everyone in Houston.
NCAA TOURNAMENT ELITE EIGHT HIGHLIGHTS
