Hoosiers never had a chance against dominant Tar Heels

The late NCAA game at the Wells Fargo Center on Friday night showed off two distinct methods for trying to attain the same goal. North Carolina and Indiana, with their great traditions and five NCAA titles each, want to play without brakes, accelerator to the floor, 80 points the minimum scoring goal, breaking the opponents' will the ultimate plan.

Styles and matchups are what make the tournament such a fascinating annual puzzle. On paper, this was that. The paper, however, quickly got shredded.

UNC does it by shooting every 15 seconds, but scoring only 20 percent of its points from the arc, 345th in the country. In fact, the Tar Heels are typically so bad from the arc, 31.4 percent, the worst accuracy in school history, they just don't make the three a significant part of their offense.

So how exactly do you account for Marcus Paige, a 33 percent three-point shooter, hitting four threes in the first five minutes and Carolina getting instant separation that held up to the finish, sending the Tar Heels an101-86 winner to an all-ACC East Region Final against Notre Dame on Sunday? How do you explain a truly awful three-point shooting team making its first seven from the arc?

You don't account for it or explain it. It's the tournament where strange and mysterious phenomena just seem to happen without warning.

"Marcus was making video game shots to start the game," Indiana coach Tom Crean said. "I mean, seriously. He's a tremendous player."

IU puts up its big numbers with great three-point shooting (41.6 percent) and equally good shooting inside the arc (56.6 percent).

UNC has America's most dominant inside game and, after that early arc flurry, it was on full display, its massive front line scoring in the lane, at the rim, on lob dunks and from the foul line. The Tar Heels score 62 percent of their points on twos, third nationally. Their big men, Brice Johnson and Kennedy Meeks, punished the Hoosiers as they did Temple on opening night at the Naval Academy and so many teams since then.

"We never really got the post game under control," Crean said. "The threes hurt us, no question about that, but the post-ups, they destroyed us."

The teams scored as many points by midway through the first half as Notre Dame and Wisconsin, the teams playing in the opener, scored in the entire first half. The problem for the Hoosiers what that even though were not having much trouble scoring, they were having major trouble getting stops.

UNC's first 26 possessions over 15 minutes resulted in 42 points, a ridiculous 1.615 points per possession and a 15-point lead. The weakest of the four units on the floor was Indiana's defense and Carolina, about as dominant in the tournament as Villanova, took full advantage.

Each team came in averaging 82 points. IU was on that pace at halftime. UNC was on pace to score 104. IU's defense got better early in the second half, but Carolina was in the bonus after only four minutes and that was never going to compute.

"I think we knew they were coming in and there was going to be a lot of points scored in this game," Paige said. "Indiana is terrific offensively. We're pretty good offensively as well. The tempo was going to be higher than the traditional college basketball game."

The season math strongly suggested the Hoosiers had a massive edge from the arc, outscoring opponents by 375 points, while UNC had gotten outscored by 228 points. One game, however, can skew any stats, and that is exactly what went down through the first half.

UNC was the best team in the ACC, a league that has half of the Final Eight, with Notre Dame, Virginia and Syracuse.

"I feel our league is showing the kind of depth and strength of the teams the way they're playing right now," UNC coach Roy Williams said.

And the best team played its very best Friday night.

"North Carolina played outstanding," Crean said. "If they play like that, even remotely close to that, then they're going to be very, very hard to beat. And I hope they do because Roy deserves it."

The game within the game, the senior point guards, Paige and Yogi Ferrell, was pretty much a draw after Paige's early flurry. But so much damage had been done that Ferrell, the only player in Big Ten history with more than 1,900 points, 600 assists, 400 rebounds and 250 assists, was not able to will his team back into the game.

And Saint Joseph's great and Virginia AAU coaching legend Boo Williams, sitting two rows behind the Hoosiers bench, could do nothing to help his nephew, IU's explosive forward Troy Williams. It was Williams who kept IU semi-alive early in the second half with three treys, but it doesn't matter how much you score if the leading team never stops scoring. This was not about coaching or encouragement. It was really about domination after an upside-down start changed the game dynamic instantly.

On Twitter: @DickJerardi