Tar Heels hurting after Final Four fall

By Drew Wilson

Published: April 6, 2008

SAN ANTONIO, Texas — Tyler Hansbrough sat there with a blank stare on his pale face. Not even he could believe what had just transpired in North Carolina’s 84-66 loss to Kansas in the Final Four on Saturday night at the Alamodome.
“First word that I think of is ‘frustrating,” Hansbrough said in a soft voice during the post-game press conference. “You know, you get here to the Final Four, you feel like you’ve been playing good and then we just didn’t come out with the energy we needed to tonight. Just frustrating.”
The Tar Heels (36-3) looked startled. Stunned even. No one had run straight at them like this before — at least not that much and definitely not for that long. But that’s the glaring differences between the talented Jayhawks and the rest of the opponents that were on Tar Heels’ schedule.
Kansas (36-3) played the aggressor from the opening tip — both on offense and defense. And it’s the reason why the Jayhawks beat the Tar Heels.
“We sort of came out a little more casual than we’d like to,” North Carolina coach Roy Williams said. “They hit us right between the eyes. We probably rushed things a bit. They just kept hammering.”
Although North Carolina initially weathered the storm, the Jayhawks pulled ahead with an 18-0 run over a four-minute stretch.
“Our guys were in attack mode right from the outset,” said Kansas coach Bill Self, who called it the best 15 minutes of basketball one of his team’s has ever played.
North Carolina, meanwhile, shot a horrid 29 percent from the floor in the first half and at one point was down 40-12 with six minutes to play. Getting outrebounded 23-15 early on did little to help stop the bleeding for the Tar Heels. Even the normally tenacious Hansbrough was getting boards ripped away from him by Kansas’ post players. In the end, the Jayhawks beat the Tar Heels — who had been outrebounding opponents by 11.5 this season — by nine on the glass.
The Jawhawks crushed the Tar Heels down low all night, outscoring them 50-30 in the paint.
Carolina’s 27 points at halftime was their lowest offensive output in a half this season (it had just 29 against Ohio State on Nov. 28). And it would have been even worse had Danny Green not gotten hot and hit two 3-pointers and a layup in the final three minutes of the first half to cut the gap to 44-27 at the break.
“Even at half, I still told them — and I really believed it — I thought we had a chance to come back and win the game,” Williams said.
The Tar Heels looked more like themselves in the second half, rapidly trading baskets with the Jayhawks over the first four minutes. The momentum even swung their way for a while. Carolina held Kansas to just one basket over the next six minutes and outscored them 14-2 during that span to cut the lead to 54-50. Perhaps the turning point game minutes later when Danny Green’s 3-pointer rattled in and out. Had it gone down, it would have pulled the Tar Heels to within two points. But it didn’t. Will Graves lost the ball out of bounds and Kansas scored at the other end.
“There was a point when Danny’s shot almost went in, we felt like everything was kind of going our way,” Hansbrough said. “But, you know, they made little runs and we didn’t get stops. They just kept going at us.”
The four-point deficit was the closest Carolina would come in the second half. Kansas outscored North Carolina 17-5 over the final five minutes to close out the game send it to Monday night’s title game against Memphis. The 18-point final deficit was North Carolina’s worst loss under Williams.
“It just hurts,” said North Carolina’s Wayne Ellington, who led the team with 18 points. “It just really, really hurts. I mean, we had a successful season. We did a lot of great things this year. We just fell short of one goal.”
• Contact Drew Wilson at or (434) 791-7995.