Those who say the North Carolina Tar Heels’ road from Tampa and the ACC Tournament to the national championship runs through Richmond, Kentucky, are speaking quite literally. Richmond is the home of Eastern Kentucky University, UNC’s first round opponent, and is located beside the same Interstate 75 that runs through Tampa, Florida. Incidentally, Kentucky's Richmond is named after the Virginia capital, in honor of founder Colonel John Miller, who won naming rights in a 1798 brawl.

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North Carolina defeated 14^th-seed Murray State 69-65 in the opening round of the ’06 NCAA Tournament. The Racers won the automatic bid from the Ohio Valley Conference, which this year sent forth the Eastern Kentucky Colonels to do battle.

Standing in the hallway of Joel Memorial Coliseum in their burgundy warm-ups – the Colonels were called the Maroons until 1966 -- the EKU players watched a monitor replay video clips of the final basket of their one-point triumph over Austin Peay in the OVC championship game. (Another clip repeated on the monitor showed UNC’s Tyler Hansbrough getting his nose broken by Duke’s Gerald Henderson, bloody aftermath and all.) As they left for their hotel, one player informed a teammate, “They’re showing a marathon of first round upsets on (ESPN) Classic.”

Of course, the Colonels will see no examples of fellow 16 seeds recording upsets in the first round. It’s never happened, and coach Jeff Neubauer was quick to note the daunting challenge presented by North Carolina. “They obviously play faster than anyone else in the country,” he said. “We can’t let it be a high-scoring affair.”

Neubauer worked for eight years for Jim Beilein at Richmond and West Virginia. Beilein, to whom N.C. State reportedly offered its head coaching job after being snubbed by Rick Barnes of Texas and John Calipari of Memphis, runs a modified version of the so-called Princeton offense. That is, spread the court, look for backdoor cuts, shoot threes, control the tempo.

“We are naturally a patient team,” Neubauer said at his press conference. Well, having watched video of the Tar Heels’ performance in the ACC Tournament, Neubauer was asked in the hallway if N.C. State was similarly deliberate to his team. The second-year head coach laughed. “Not even close,” he said. According to Neubauer, the Wolfpack plays a far more uptempo game than the Colonels.

Earlier, Neubauer reluctantly shared with the media a story he fretted might stoke the fire of North Carolina fans sure to pack Joel Memorial Coliseum.

While working as an assistant at The Citadel in 1993, Neubauer invited his fiancé to come down from Philadelphia to Durham to watch the Bulldogs play at Cameron Indoor Stadium. Following the shootaround prior to the December game, the native of Slidell, Louisiana (ironically the home of Duke alum Chris Duhon) proposed to Karen Feret. The Citadel lost the game 78-63, but Neubauer gained a wife.

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To enter Joel Memorial Coliseum, a media member driving from the Triangle area leaves the car in the Mountain Dew parking lot, sandwiched conveniently between the Pepsi parking lot and Winston-Salem's Deacon Boulevard, then passes through the Sierra Mist parking lot without ever reaching the Diet Pepsi parking lot .

Where does anyone get the idea the NCAA and its tournament are a commercial rather than an education-related enterprise?