Jacobs: Burned Last Year, Heels Set Bar Higher

Milan Brown, the head coach at Mount St. Mary’s, took a biblical view of his 16th-seeded squad’s opening NCAA assignment, offering that the underdog Mountaineers would “show up with a rock and a slingshot, man.”

Top-seed North Carolina, the Goliath in that formulation, came to Raleigh brandishing the strength borne of 32 wins, the stature of one of college basketball’s great traditions, and a sense of mission first sparked late last March, one step short of the Final Four.

Unfortunately for the underdog from the Northeast Conference, that Mount St. Mary’s rock turned out to be a pebble. The Tar Heels made short work of “The Mount,” unsaddling an opponent which made the unfortunate choice of running with a team that thrives in transition.

Roy Williams exhorted his squad to take nothing for granted, a message that worked to devastating effect. “I tell them all the time – if you’re looking down the road at somebody else, that’s where you’re going, down the road back home,” the UNC coach said after a 113-74 victory.

The point output was the Heels’ highest this season, and tied for second-most ever by the school in NCAA competition. (UNC scored 123 against Loyola Marymount in 1988.) The easy victory allowed the Heels to advance a step closer to realizing what for most teams is an unattainable goal.

Teams in the ACC consider a season without an NCAA bid to be a disappointment. But the stakes are routinely higher for North Carolina and Duke, where any year without an NCAA appearance is an aberration.

Those programs perennially harbor national championship aspirations; anything short of a deep run in the NCAAs is regarded as a comedown.

“Obviously, our goal is to win the national championship, but we want to take it game by game. We don’t want to get ahead of ourselves,” Duke’s Jon Scheyer said before No. 15 Belmont nearly sent the second seed Blue Devils home early from the West Region.

Still, even at Duke and UNC, some squads more than others realistically eye the ultimate prize. While Duke has fluttered like a candle in the wind over the past month, the 2008 Tar Heels regained the top spot in the national polls and withstood whatever challenges came their way, winning 12 straight including their NCAA opener.

These Heels have not shied from their supposed date with destiny. They talked readily since preseason of the crushing nature of their overtime loss to Georgetown in the 2007 East Region finals. That experience became a motivating force, a measure against which this season would be judged, among themselves if not by the world at large.

In fact, as they prepared to face Mount St. Mary’s, several UNC players readily admitted they will consider this season a failure if they do not advance farther than they did last season.

“Personally, I feel like it would be, yeah” sophomore Wayne Ellington said before scoring 16 points in 22 minutes against Mount St. Mary’s. “We all have the experience. We’ve been through this before, and we know what it takes. So, for us not to get farther than we did last year, yeah, it would be a disappointment for our team.”

Ty Lawson, Ellington’s classmate and backcourt partner, readily echoed that sentiment.

“I feel the same way,” said Lawson, who tied Tyler Hansbrough for game-high honors with 21 points in 18 minutes against the NEC champs. “Our goal is to get past last year and hopefully get further than that. So, yeah, it would be a disappointment for our season if we don't go farther than last year, as Wayne said.”

Williams used last season’s meltdown against Georgetown to spur his players, both  individually and collectively. Yet experience has taught him caution in matching aspirations to achievements. His top-ranked Kansas squad was ousted in the 1997 Sweet 16. He was on the North Carolina bench as an assistant coach in 1984 when the No.1 Tar Heels with Michael Jordan, Sam Perkins, Kenny Smith, and Brad Daugherty lost to Indiana in the regional semifinals.

“It would be hard for me to understand that a season could be a failure if you win the regular season ACC and the conference tournament both, and (are the) No. 1 seed,” Williams said of the current squad. “You can be extremely disappointed that you didn't do more, but I'm never going to be one of those coaches that looks at a second- place trophy and throws it down and smashes and said we only think about No. 1. That's just not me. But we are going to try our butts off and see what happens.”

Perhaps Williams knows that history is not on the side of the 2008 Tar Heels.

Of 13 previous ACC teams that entered the NCAAs atop the Associated Press poll, only five went on to win the national title – North Carolina in 1957 and 1982, N.C. State in 1974, and Duke in 1992 and 2001. UNC fell short in ’84, 1994, and 1998, and Duke did not close the deal in 1986, 1999, 2000, 2002, and 2006.

Nor are such stumbles peculiar to ACC squads. Not since Duke in 2001 has the top-ranked team gone on to win the NCAA championship.

The fate of Duke’s 1999 squad is instructive. The Blue Devils finished 37-2 and remain the only squad since N.C. State in 1974 to go through regular season league play and the ACC Tournament without a loss. They boasted the ACC player of the year, the ACC coach of the year, and five first round NBA draft choices, of whom Elton Brand, Shane Battier, and Corey Maggette are still active.

Yet, because its second loss came in the NCAA championship game, that outstanding Duke squad fell short of its goal and is largely forgotten. When the roll is called of great ACC teams, the ’99 Devils are rarely mentioned.

Few schools reach the heights already achieved by this year’s 33-2 Tar Heels. But that is not enough. Fair or not, those who presume to greatness are judged by the standards to which they aspire.