The Jayhawks embarrassed Williams and the Tar Heels in the NCAA Tournament semifinal, 84-66.

Williams coached an overawed group that included three starters who would have been NBA players this season had they been in the draft pool - all of whom vow this time, it will be different when they face Villanova tomorrow night in the semifinal.

After the Kansas game, Williams, a Hall of Fame inductee, underwent a skinning the likes of which he had not seen in his 2 decades as a head coach. He was raked, he says, unjustly.

Those aren't the only reasons why he feels ill, literally, when he thinks about the Kansas game. He was ill.

"I'm throwing up in a towel over there. I'm sick as a dog," Williams said. "It's the first time in 21 years as a head coach I've ever leaned over to an assistant and told him to stand up and call a play."

Steve Robinson called something called B-23, one of the few that worked that Saturday night in San Antonio, but it was Williams who needed the vitamins. He looked up from his misery to assure Robinson:

"I patted him on the knee. I didn't want to barf on him, so that's all I did."

Williams this week revealed that he contracted a stomach bug the morning of that Final Four game. It knocked him off his feet for 3 days; on Sunday, in fact, he only received a few visitors in his hotel room.

Then again, any observer might have deduced that Williams was sickened at his own team's performance.

The Heels gave up an 18-point first-half run from which they never recovered. Adrenaline carried them through the first 6 minutes of the game. Then, they went flat.

"We definitely didn't come out like we wanted to," said Tyler Hansbrough, last season's consensus national player of the year. "I think maybe we were blown away a little bit with everything that's involved with the Final Four and didn't come out prepared."

"We were kind of relieved to get over the hump and just get to the Final Four," said shooting guard Wayne Ellington.

"It's probably the worst game I ever played," said point guard Ty Lawson.

It was not, Williams insists, the worst game he ever coached. But it will stay with him, especially because he was hammered for not stemming Kansas' run with timeouts.

"I've been criticized more for that game than the rest of the games I've coached in 21 years. There were seven dadgum timeouts in the first half. And everybody acted like I'm supposed to call a timeout every 13 seconds," Williams said. "You go back and look. Seven timeouts."

Actually, there were six. Four of them were media timeouts, only one of which coincided with Carolina's scoreless stretch. Shortly after the drought ended, Williams called his only timeout of the first half. By then, Kansas had stretched its lead to 26.

Williams' point, though, is that timeouts and resets didn't seem to matter.

"Every time we left the bench, we went out and screwed it up again," Williams said. "I thought I should call a timeout and go to the bathroom."

Given his condition, he probably should have. By the time he finally did call a timeout, his team was lost.

"I don't know how to put it," said Hansbrough. "There's a lot more put into the Final Four than any other stage of the tournament. Everybody's at that one site. Everybody's watching."

This time, they say, let them watch.

"The pageantry, the extravaganza of the whole Final Four production - the experience does help you be aware of that," said Williams, who noted that his team's first four turnovers all happened when they ignored the scouting report. "I'm sure we'll mention being more ready to play, and not to be looking around up the stands."

Exactly, said the NBA trio - each of whom likely will be playing for pay this time next year.

"We know how to handle ourselves now," said Hansbrough, the only senior among the three. "We'll use that loss as a little motivation."

"There's definitely a chip on our shoulders," Ellington agreed.

For a guy with an NCAA title and seven Final Four appearances, for some reason, there's a boulder on Williams' shoulder. His talented team played badly. It froze. It was nothing like the top-seeded powerhouse it had been.

And Williams believes he became a scapegoat, and undeservedly; that he endured "very, very, very, very - add as many as you want - unfair treatment of me 2 days later," Williams said. "It will bother me forever."

At least the virus was fleeting. *