2B
Thursday, April 6, 2000
UNC's Run to Indy Salvages Season
By Evan Markfield
Senior Writer
North Carolina's march to the Final
Four seemed about as unlikely as the
downward spiral of a regular season
that preceded it
The Tar Heels were ranked No. 2 in
the nation in November, and nobody
really expected the crash-and-bum reg
ular season that followed.
The ACC Tournament was the
absolute low point. UNC was starting to
hear the doubters’ voices sing out in full
force after being held to its lowest point
total and shooting percentage in a first
round loss to Wake Forest.
There was all kinds of talk about
three letters not heard in Chapel Hill in
decades: N-I-T.
But the Tar Heels got their NCAA
berth, and the drama began.
They were seeded No. 8 in the South
Region. At that moment, there was little
reason to believe they would end up in
Indianapolis as the only North Carolina
team to make a Final Four seeded lower
than second.
There was little reason to believe the
Tar Heels would get past Missouri, a
quicker, smaller team - the kind of
team that had given the bigger, slower
Tar Heels fits in the regular season.
There was little reason to believe,
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DTH/MILLER PEARSALL
UNC center Brendan Haywood was down but not out in UNC’s 60-53 upset of No. 1 Stanford. He scored
12 points and grabbed eight rebounds while helping hold the Cardinal’s starting frontcourt to 18 points.
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Getting Defensive
The North Carolina men’s basketball team rebounded from a subpar defensive performance
during the regular season and shut down opponents from the field in the NCAA tournament.
3FG Scoring
FG-FGA FG Percent 3FG-3FGA Percent PPG Result
Regular Season 838-2032 .412 197-622 .317 71.3 18-13
(31 Games)
NCAA tournament
Missouri 3/17 27-66 .409 8-31 .258 70 Won 84-70
Stanford 3/19 20-58 .345 6-22 .273 53 Won 60-53
Tennessee 3/24 21-59 .356 6-21 .286 69 Won 74-69
Tulsa 3/26 22-59 .373 5-20 .250 55 Won 59-55
Florida 4/1 25-64 .391 7-28 ,250 71 Lost 71-59
NCAA Totals 115-306 376 32-122 362 616
period.
Apparently, coach Bill Guthridge and
his squad were the only ones who did.
After a season of inconsistency, the Tar
Heels finally came together. They
played stifling defense. And game by
game, they started making believers of
more and more people.
North Carolina 84, Missouri 70
Brendan Haywood had to shake the
haunting memories of last year’s NCAA
tournament somehow. He put up a one
point, zero-rebound performance in last
season’s first-round loss to Weber State,
The Road to Indianapolis
and there was only one way to silence
the talk about it to blow up against the
smaller Tigers.
Plus, the Tar Heels had to worry
about Missouri’s 3-point shooting
because their perimeter defense had
been suspect in the regular season.
Both questions were answered
strongly in UNC’s first-round win.
Haywood threw down a career-high
28 points and added 15 rebounds, the
way a big 7-footer should against a
smaller lineup.
At the other end, the Tar Heels deep
sixed the 3-point attack, holding the
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Tigers to 8-of-31 shooting from the arc.
That first win was out of the way. But
there was no way the Tar Heels would
be able to take out No. 1 seed Stanford
in round two. Right?
North Carolina 60, Stanford 53
Both sides called it the most physical
game they had ever played. No more
mismatches - the Tar Heels versus the
Cardinal was big on big.
And UNC’s big men made a defen
sive statement against the Stanford front
court. Tar Heel reserve forward Julius
Peppers held Stanford’s Mark Madsen
to five points and, along with Haywood
and forward Kris Lang, limited the start
ing Cardinal big men to 18 points.
The defense didn’t stop up front.
UNC forward Jason Capel was on
Stanford’s leading scorer, Casey
Jacobsen, like shrink wrap.
Capel heldjacobsen to five points on
2- shooting, including l-of-8 from
3- range. The Cardinal shot just
34.5 percent overall in the game.
But UNC didn’t do it with defense
alone. Coming out of a timeout with less
than seven minutes remaining, leading
scorer Joseph Forte had to step up. He
had missed eight of his 10 shots in the
game, including his last five in a row.
“Coach Gut said to me, ‘Either stop
shooting like you’re scared or stop
shooting,’” Forte said after the game. “I
didn’t want to stop shooting.”
And he didn’t. Forte hit a pair of
3-pointers to give UNC a 53-47 lead
and send the Tar Heels to the Sweet 16.
But with Tennessee looming in
Austin, Texas, UNC would have to
switch gears once again.
North Carolina 74, Tennessee 69
Before this matchup, Guthridge
called Tennessee “a more athletic ver
sion of Virginia,” a team that beat the
Tar Heels twice in the regular season.
“They like to press,” Guthridge said.
“Their guards take a lot of shots.”
The Volunteers sounded a lot like
Missouri, only better. And as the game
went on, things started to look worse.
Haywood, who had dominated
Missouri and helped stifle Stanford,
fouled out of the game with 8:03
remaining.
But senior point guard Ed Cota took
matters into his own hands, getting two
consecutive buckets to give UNC a
66-64 lead with 1:59 to go that it would
n’t relinquish. Thanks to a 12-5 run in
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North Carolina forward Jason Capel hauls in one of his 11 rebounds in
the Tar Heels' first-round win against Missouri. Capel added 14 points.
the final three minutes, UNC had a date
with Tulsa in the South Regional Final.
North Carolina 59, Tulsa 55
Same story, same result. The story: a
quick, small Tulsa team that liked to
pressure and cause turnovers. The
result: Tough UNC defense and a big
time performance from Forte sent the
Tar Heels to the Final Four for the third
time in four years.
The freshman scored a career-high
28 points, and UNC held the Golden
Hurricane to 37.3 percent shooting from
the field. Forte was named the South
Region’s Most Outstanding Player, and
it was on to Indianapolis.
Florida 71, North Carolina 59
For all the times it could have hap
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pened earlier in the tournament, the Tar
Heels’ lack of depth finally caught up
with them.
North Carolina recovered from an
early 18-3 deficit to take the lead in the
second half, going up by as many as six
points.
But foul trouble and fatigue plagued
UNC down the stretch as Florida’s
relentless 10-man rotation continued to
press throughout the game. The Gators’
bench outscored the Tar Heel reserves
37-2, and the magical, unexpected run
had finally come to a less-than-fulfilling
end.
“I’ll remember that everybody gave
up on this team, except this team,”
Haywood, who had 16 first-half points,
said after the loss. “I’m proud this team
made it as far as it did.”