North Carolina handles Princeton easily

BY MIKE LONDON
SALISBURY POST

Friday night in a first-round NCAA Tournament game in the Superdome, the Princeton Tigers had to be wondering if the Tar Heels ever miss anything.

Certainly the Tar Heels, second-seeded in the South Regional, weren’t missing chemistry and cohesiveness as they were last Sunday in an ACC Tournament final disaster against Duke.

The Heels may have quit against Duke, but they hit against Princeton. And they bit defensively.

UNC played efficiently until it had the game wrapped up. It displayed passion and smiling faces and shot 60 percent in the first half, while dousing Tiger upset dreams in a waterfall of layups and dunks. The final was 70-48.

“Feud dudes” Joseph Forte and Jason Capel had right-off-the-bat 3-point baskets as the Tar Heels (26-6) took an immediate 8-0 lead and were never seriously threatened.

In one first-half sequence, Forte actually passed up an open 16-footer to get the ball to Capel for an easier shot. That innocent exchange was good news for the Heels and their followers. So was Julius Peppers’ return to a meaningful role. Peppers dumped one ball inside to Brendan Haywood and let out a gleeful roar that could be heard several blocks away on Bourbon Street.

Princeton (16-11), a No. 15 seed, ran its painstaking, clock-exhausting offense and usually got decent shots, but couldn’t convert nearly enough outside jumpers (2-for-13 on first-half 3-point tries) and suffered a rash of terrible turnovers. The Tar Heels didn’t try to speed the Tigers up, preferring to watch patiently as they self-destructed.

The Ivy League champs turned out to be paper tigers and tiger lilies, not the giant-killers that Tar Heel fans had feared. There was no eye of the Tiger in the look of the overmatched guys wearing black and orange. The Tigers had no guys on the roster named Tony, so maybe that explains why they weren’t exactly grrrrrrreat.

Kris Lang, who didn’t start because of a muscle tear, gave the Heels their first 10-point lead at 16-6 at the 11:40 mark in the first half. Forte followed with a dunk off a steal to push the steadily swelling lead to a dozen.

Princeton didn’t even reach double figures until Nate Walton hit a 3-pointer with 6:04 remaining in the first half and by then the lead was 17 and it was all but over. Nate’s dad, Hall of Famer Bill Walton, went 21-for-22 from the field in the Final Four in 1973. The Tigers certainly could have used the original Walton to make this one tighter.

Lang, 6-foot-11, and 7-footer (11 first-half points) made hay inside against the Tigers, who had no starter taller than 6-7. Princeton got only one offensive board in the first half.

The only Tar Heel that Princeton coach John Thompson ever tried to recruit was Will Johnson, who is roughly the Heels’ ninth man. Most of the Tigers look a lot and play a lot like Johnson. And where there are five Wills, there is no way to beat a team with Fortes and Haywoods.

The Heels could do little wrong when it still mattered. Even struggling Ronald Curry buried a first-half 3-pointer that sent the lead past 20 for the first time at 34-13. It took a 3-point buzzer-beater by Princeton guard Ed Persia (a shot that came almost from ancient Persia) just to get the Tigers into the locker room down 36-16.

Princeton did make a belated second-half move when Persia got loose from Forte on several backdoor cuts. The Tigers crept within 12 at 46-34 at 13:40, forcing a timeout call by Doherty. It actually got as close as 50-40, but Haywood scored and Peppers put in a couple of hoops in the paint to push the lead to 16. A behind-the-back driving gem by Forte made it an 18-point edge.

The win keeps the Heels looking ahead to a Sweet 16 berth if they can beat Penn State (20-11) here on Sunday at 3:30. It would be their 17th trip to the final 16 in the last 20 years. Beyond that, if they sustain this kind of harmonious effort, there is the possibility of a seventh Final Four trip in the last 11 seasons.

Carolina won for the eighth time in 13 meetings with the Tigers and avenged a loss in the 1967 NCAAs when the Final Four-bound Tigers whipped the Heels. That was the teams’ only previous meeting in the NCAA Tournament.

Princeton no doubt hopes it’s at least a 34-year interval before they see the Heels again in the postseason.

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NOTES: The Heels were bad news again for Thompson, who watched them beat his father’s Georgetown team in this building in the1982 title game. ... This was Carolina’s 115th NCAA tourney game, second only to Kentucky (122). ... The Heels are 81-34 in tournament games. The 81 wins are second to Kentucky’s 86. ... Carolina’s only losses in the first two rounds of the tournament the past 20 years were to Boston College (1994, second round), Texas Tech (1996, second round) and Weber State (1999, first round). ... The Tar Heels are 19-6 in the NCAAs as a No. 2 seed. They’ve been a No. 1 or No. 2 16 times in the 23 years the NCAA has seeded the tournament. ... This was the 12th NCAA game for Tar Heel big man Brendan Haywood.