ESPN Men's Basketball

Kentucky's Brandon Knight discusses his team's trip to the Final Four after the freshman point guard led with Wildcats with 22 points in a regional final win over North Carolina.

NEWARK, N.J. -- Clutching the regional trophy tight to his hip, Josh Harrellson stood amid the din of the Prudential Center, shaking his head in wonder.

This, he knew, wasn't supposed to happen. Not to him, certainly, and not to this team.

Kentucky was supposed to go to the Final Four a year ago, riding some of the best freshman talent ever assembled in one place.

That's long been John Calipari's game plan. He has built a career shredding the complexities of the college basketball game into one simple tenet: He who has the most talent wins.

And for the most part, his theory works. Calipari's teams win at a blistering rate, stockpiling victories like milk during a blizzard before the talent bolts for the greener pastures of NBA paychecks.

So how, then, to explain this: Harrellson, a guy who averaged all of 1.3 points per game last season, is going to the Final Four and DeMarcus Cousins didn't. DeAndre Liggins, a guy everyone told Calipari to run off when he took over for Billy Gillispie, hit the decisive bucket in the Wildcats' 76-69 win over North Carolina and not John Wall.

If basketball were a morality play, the moral at the end of this story might read simply: Talent isn't always enough.

Click here for the full story.

Jay Bilas, Digger Phelps and Hubert Davis on Kentucky's 76-69 win over North Carolina.

NEWARK, N.J. -- A quick take on Kentucky's 76-69 win over North Carolina on Sunday at the Prudential Center:

What It Means: Kentucky, the No. 4 seed, wins the NCAA tournament East regional and advances to the Final Four by knocking off the No. 2 seed, North Carolina. For the Wildcats, its their first Final Four since 1998 -- ending the longest Final Four drought in the history of the program. The Cats had lost in the Elite Eight four times since then, including last season.

North Carolina fails to advance to the Final Four for what would've been a record-setting 19th time. The Tar Heels had faced the Wildcats twice before in the NCAA tournament -- both times in the Elite Eight -- and had won both times.

The Skinny: Kentucky dominated the first half of the game. After falling behind 4-2, the Wildcats were the much better team -- leading by as many as eight, which was the halftime margin, 38-30. Kentucky's swarming defense held North North Carolina to 36.7 percent shooting (11-for-30), and power forward John Henson picked up his third foul with 6:39 left before intermission. On offense, UK did not slow it down against the run-and-gun Tar Heels, as many expected it would. Instead, the Wildcats looked to attack on the fast break, and did so effectively. They also drained six of their 11 first-half 3-point attempts.

It took Kentucky almost three minutes to score its first point of the second half, but once it did, it jumped out to its largest lead of the game, 47-36, with 16;02 left. North Carolina kept making comeback runs, and Kentucky kept answering the bell. The Tar Heels actually tied it up at 67 with 3:18 remaining on a pair of Tyler Zeller free throws -- but they were never able to take the lead. A Brandon Knight trey with 2:51 remaining gave the 'Cats the lead for good, and the biggest shot of the game was a DeAndre Liggins trey with 35.6 seconds remaining that pushed a 70-69 lead to 73-69.

Star Watch: Knight -- who hit two game-winning shots in the first three games of this tournament, including on Friday night against Ohio State -- was the best player in this game, scoring 22 points, including five 3-pointers. Four other Kentucky players chipped in 12 or 11.

For North Carolina, Zeller had 21 and Harrison Barnes finished with 18, but Barnes really struggled with his shot.

Number Crunch: Kentucky made 12 of 22 3-pointers (54.5 percent) -- shooting even better from beyond the arc than they did inside of it (48.2). That was the difference in the game. North Carolina made just 3 of 16 from beyond the arc.

What's Next: Kentucky will play UConn -- the No. 3 seed from the West region -- on Saturday night in Houston, with a spot in this year's national championship game on the line. North Carolina heads home to Chapel Hill -- its season is over.

Dick Vitale previews Sunday's regional finals: Kansas-VCU and Kentucky-North Carolina.

NEWARK, N.J. -- A quick look at the East Regional final:

No. 4 seed Kentucky Wildcats vs. No. 2 seed North Carolina Tar Heels, 4:55 p.m. ET

Storyline: Kentucky and North Carolina -- two of the most storied programs in history, the aristocracy of basketball that rank first and third in the all-time win column -- meet with a berth in the Final Four on the line. North Carolina last made it to the final weekend in 2009, when Tyler Hansbrough took the Tar Heels to the national championship.

In between, though, UNC had a very un-UNC-like year, missing the NCAA tournament and settling for a run in the NIT.

“The older guys talk about that all the time, about playing in Starkville, Mississippi,’’ freshman Kendall Marshall said, referring to the Tar Heels’ second-round NIT game at Mississippi State. “Guys were talking about how they were in this old hotel, with twin beds, their feet dangling off. Now it’s four-star hotels and everyone wants to be your friend.’’

The drought is a little longer for Kentucky. It has been a Saharan stretch, by Lexington standards, of 13 years without a spot in the Final Four.

The Wildcats have made four regional finals since that 1998 run.

How they got here: North Carolina cruised past Long Island in the opener, survived a wacky finish against Washington and rolled easily past Marquette to reach the regional final. Kentucky’s path has been slightly more arduous.

The Wildcats twice needed Brandon Knight's late-game heroics: first against Princeton in Kentucky's opening round and then on Friday night to oust top-seeded Ohio State. In between, the Wildcats slipped past West Virginia.

Rich history: If there were a Mt. Rushmore of college hoops, the mascots for both of these teams would be on it.

There’s plenty to pull from the college basketball annals about these two programs. They rank in the top five in some of the most important NCAA records on file: most NCAA tournament appearances (UK first with 51, UNC second with 42); most tournament games (UK first with 149, UNC second with 144), most tournament wins (UNC first with 105, UK second with 104), most NCAA championships (UK second with 7, UNC fourth with 5), most NCAA Final Fours (UNC first with 18 and UK fourth with 13).

“Most of us up here weren’t here for many of those games,’’ John Calipari joked. “We got to 2,000 [wins] and I think we were here for nine of them. So this is at the point, yes the names on the front, Kentucky-Carolina, wow. The history of both these programs is wow. But I don’t think they are worried about that and I’m certainly not. I know they are going against terrific players and I’m going against a Hall of Famer. That’s what I know.’’

What to watch: Josh Harrellson's magical senior season continued against Ohio State, where he handled Jared Sullinger well enough to get Kentucky into the Elite Eight.

Now he’s got another tall order, this one times two. Harrellson will have to handle both Tyler Zeller and John Henson, two guys who may lack the bulk of Sullinger but make up for it with their height.

The Tar Heels lead the nation in rebounding, averaging 42.5 boards per game and Zeller and Henson are responsible for much of that. Henson averages 10 boards a game to Zeller’s 7.1.

“Zeller is a 7-footer, so I have to just try and play big,’’ Harrellson said. “Like keep my hands high without fouling, keep him away from the basket, make him make hard catches and not get easy looks.’’

North Carolina’s first order of business will be containing the Kentucky backcourt. The Wildcats have players who are terrific at creating their own shots and can beat teams off the dribble. When the two teams met earlier this season, Larry Drew II handled Knight but he has since left the program.

Knight had 15 in that game.

“The truth is, we don’t know who we’re going to match up on him,’’ Williams said. “In the past, if the point guard was quicker, more of a penetrating point guard, we’ve made some switches and put Dexter [Strickland] on him and Kendall on the 2-man.’’

Who to watch: The Wildcats are going to need Harrellson to play big against the Carolina big men. They’re going to need Doron Lamb to knock down 3-pointers. But what they’re really going to need is for Knight to shepherd this team through what could be a quick-paced game.

The point guard has been terrific in keeping his team focused even when his own shots haven’t fallen -- a la Friday’s game against Ohio State. He’ll need to be all that, plus perhaps a scorer against the high-octane Heels.

Zeller was the difference when the two teams met earlier this season (he had a career-high 27) and needs to be again. The Tar Heels need to exploit their inside advantage with Zeller and Henson. Zeller has been sensational in this NCAA tournament and has averaged 27 points and 8.6 rebounds per game.

Validation: Like a quarterback without a Super Bowl ring, a college coach without an NCAA championship is often viewed as lacking. For years Bill Self was known as the man who couldn’t get to the Final Four and Jim Boeheim was known as the coach who couldn’t win it all.

And now that both coaches have accomplished those feats, somehow all the questions and worries have disappeared.

Calipari will be coaching in his fifth regional final in the past six years Sunday night. Yet his resume lacks that final exclamation point.

Which means what, exactly?

“You can’t put that label on someone in my opinion,’’ said Roy Williams, who has two national title rings in his pocket. “I coached against a couple of guys that I thought were great coaches. Norm Stewart at Missouri never even made a Final Four and I thought he was a great coach. Gene Keady at Purdue, a great coach, never made the Final Four.’’

The difference now for Calipari, of course, is location, location, location.

At Memphis, he engineered a program back into national prominence. Now he’s at a university where there is but one standard of excellence -- a national title -- and anything less is failure.

“You put that ‘Kentucky’ on front and it changes things,’’ he said. “It makes it a little bit harder, a little more pressure-packed. Buildings are a little fuller. The kids are playing harder, jumping higher, making more shots than they normally make and you better be ready to ball. Coming to Kentucky is a man’s decision. You can’t be a boy here.’’

Of note: It’s a busy weekend for the Zeller family. Tyler Zeller scored 27 in the Tar Heels’ win against Marquette on Friday. Younger brother, Cody, played Saturday evening in Indiana’s 3A state championship. Tyler will be back in action on Sunday in the regional final and on Wednesday, it’s back to Cody, who is part of the McDonald’s All-American Game. … Knight and Marshall went against one another in the 2010 McDonald’s All-American Game. Knight drained a 3-pointer late in the game when Marshall tried to get a charge call. “I don’t know what I was thinking, trying to get a charge call in an all-star game,’’ Marshall said.

What they’re doing: It’s not easy to kill time when you’re not a starter or someone the media is clamoring to interview. Inside the Kentucky locker room, players curled up on the benches to catch a nap. The walk-ons in the Carolina locker room enjoyed a heated game of Catchphrase.

What they’re saying: “The one thing is we will not change anything on how we prepare for a team. Our players will not watch tape of North Carolina until the pregame meal. They will not get a scouting report. There will be a meeting in my room tonight, which will last 15 or 20 minutes. We’ll have an hour on the basketball court, where I will go through some of their stuff. I want them worrying about us. Let’s play our best. If that’s not good enough, it’s been a heckuva year.’’ -- Calipari on his team’s preparation.

“Last year was a horrible year, in my opinion, for my career, for my basketball livelihood. But I think what it’s done is made me realize that the things we had done previously were pretty doggone good. And I think it really made me appreciate how this team handled adversity. So it just made me appreciate this group of kids in a wonderful manner.’’ -- Williams on the challenges of last season.

Line of the day: “Does the NCAA only have two microphones? A $10 billion contract and they only have two microphones and no cookies back here." -- Williams during the team’s news conferences, where, yes, there were only two microphones to handle reporters’ questions. And no cookies.

NEWARK, N.J. -- Because they are creatures of habit and habitual studiers, UNC's Roy Williams and Kentucky's John Calipari will rewind the tape to Dec. 4.

They will watch intensely at film from the previous time their two teams played. They will look for tendencies and search for weaknesses to try to find any little edge that might give them an advantage.

But that tape might as well be a college basketball Zapruder film -- filled with unsatisfactory and inconclusive evidence.

Save one.

The same players who donned Kentucky and North Carolina uniforms three months ago will slip into their jerseys for the late afternoon tip in Sunday’s East Regional final. They will lace up their sneakers the same, go through their pregame rituals like always, and dance or chest bump their way through player introductions just like they did on that December afternoon.

And then the ball will go up and nothing will be the same.

The news has come this basketball season in rapid-fire staccato -- from Jimmer to Kemba to Butler, we’ve been inundated with the improbable. It makes it easy to overlook the subtle, to ignore the slow and steady transformation of two of the game’s name-brand programs.

Yet what Kentucky and North Carolina have done in a span of three months is no less remarkable and every bit as unlikely.

“Both teams are drastically different,’’ Williams said.

I was there for that first game in Chapel Hill. I saw Tyler Zeller's late-game heroics and came away thinking that, with a 75-73 victory, the Tar Heels had finally cured what ailed them. A team that looked so disjointed in both an NIT season a year before and a lackluster start to this season played great defense, stood tough and most importantly, played together.

I, like a lot of people, figured that it was the start of a season’s worth of good things for North Carolina.

Instead the nadir laid in wait, looming and lurking on a January day in Atlanta. It was there that the Tar Heels lost by 20 points to a lousy Georgia Tech team, their dysfunction laid bare for all to see.

“If you asked me then if I thought we’d have a chance at the Final Four, I would have told you I didn’t think we were getting in the tournament,’’ Zeller said.

I left Chapel Hill that same snowy afternoon impressed with Kentucky, even in defeat. Here was a team, with a median age barely old enough to vote, hanging tough in a hostile road environment.

That, too, ended up being little more than false hope. The Wildcats would win their final seven nonconference games before being hit with a serious case of road-a-phobia, losing six of their first seven road games in the SEC in the midst of a mediocre 7-6 start.

“We weren’t tough enough,’’ UK senior big man Josh Harrellson said. “We let a lot of games slip away from us in the late-game situation.’’

What has changed since that game and what happened to make the teams better?

Calipari will glean nothing from that December game tape as he tries to prepare for what makes the Tar Heels tick now.

Carolina’s most important player barely got on the floor in that first game.

Kendall Marshall logged only 10 minutes, stuck behind Larry Drew II as a backup point guard at the time. The 10 minutes weren’t exactly stellar, either. Marshall had zero points, three turnovers and two fouls.

It took another month-plus before Williams would make the most critical personnel move of the season: inserting Marshall into the starting lineup. The decision would cost Williams his original starter -- Drew transferred out not long after -- but he managed to salvage the season.

North Carolina is 17-2 with Marshall as its starting point guard, losing only to Duke.

“I don’t think it was me that made some magical change for this team,’’ Marshall said. “I think it was all of us. We all bought in.’’

Kentucky’s changes were more subtle. The players remain the same. The rotation hasn’t changed. But there is a new sense of self and purpose.

In December, Calipari spent more time teaching his team how to box than to play basketball. Convinced they weren’t tough enough -- and worse, they didn’t know what tough was -- he laced them into boxing gloves and hung heavy bags for them to punch. He tried to teach them what sort of ferocity they sorely lacked.

“I liked this team from the beginning, but there was a time where I believed in the guys more than they believed in themselves,’’ Calipari said.

If there is a personnel change worth noting, it is the one in the middle. When Kentucky played North Carolina that first time, it was less than a month after the NCAA ruled big man Enes Kanter permanently ineligible.

Kanter never played a minute for the Wildcats and so his stature only grew to mythical proportions around the commonwealth, making it impossible for Harrellson to live up to the task.

Today, the Missouri native is a steady presence for the Wildcats, a player so beloved he has made the unforgivable fashion faux pas of jorts-wearing somehow acceptable.

In that early game film, he’s a vampire. He doesn’t show up. Saddled with foul trouble, he played only 21 minutes, scoring just four points while Zeller and Henson went wild.

Two nights ago, he notched 17 points and snagged 10 rebounds against Ohio State and Jared Sullinger.

“He did this,’’ Calipari said. “It’s not what I have done. It’s not about me coaching him up. He did it. He changed.’’

And along the way, he brought Kentucky with him. This is a team that has grown up. They have turned their inability to win close games into an art form of gut-check game winners.

These aren’t your December Wildcats any more than they are your December Tar Heels.

Don’t believe it?

Just check the game film.

Andy Katz with a first look at all four of this weekend's Elite Eight matchups.

NEWARK, N.J. -- The whippersnappers steal the limelight. It’s what kids do. They come in all shiny and pretty like a new penny, and everybody pays attention to them.

Even here, they surrounded the freshman after the game, the whiz kid who struggled again all night only to make the impossible shot, the game winner.

It’s not that Brandon Knight didn’t deserve the attention. His leaner, a rise-out-of-the-ashes, over-a-defender shot that deserved extra points for difficulty, once again saved the day for Kentucky.

Twice now in the tournament he has struggled for 39 minutes only to make up for it in a flick of a wrist, beating Princeton on a drive to the hoop in the opening game and now ousting No. 1 seed Ohio State 62-60 on a jumper with five seconds remaining.

“Brandon does that on purpose,’’ teammate Doron Lamb deadpanned. “He misses them all in the first half and the second, and then makes it at the end. We call it the okie-doke.’’

The okie-doke technically decided the game, but this game wasn’t really won by Knight.

It was won by three upperclassmen, a commodity as rare as “I Love Louisville” T-shirts in the city of Lexington.

Josh Harrellson, DeAndre Liggins and Darius Miller put Kentucky into an Elite Eight blue-blood battle against North Carolina.

Ohio State brought five seniors to the floor to the Wildcats’ one (Harrellson). The powerful Buckeyes, with longtime starters William Buford, David Lighty, Dallas Lauderdale and Jon Diebler, owned a depth and breadth of experience Kentucky simply doesn’t have.

Sure, the UK players have logged plenty of time on campus, but not quite so much on the floor.

Yet together the trio scored 39 of the Cats’ 62 points and had 19 of their 32 rebounds.

And as good as those statistics are, they alone don’t tell all of what those three did. It was their ferociousness, their attitude that changed this game in Kentucky’s favor.

“Our freshmen were OK today,’’ coach John Calipari said. “Our veteran players who were not significant a year ago, who have now taken over this team, that’s why we’re still playing. It’s because of those guys.’’

Frankly, Ohio State is not playing anymore because its guys didn’t deliver. The Buckeyes, a team that looked absolutely unstoppable a weekend ago against George Mason, looked overwhelmed.

OSU shot just 33 percent for the game and was 7-of-27 outside the paint. Buford, who missed a jumper as the buzzer sounded, was only 2-of-16; Diebler drained four 3-pointers, but besides the final one, which would have sent it to overtime were it not for Knight, they were largely unimportant; Lauderdale didn’t take a single shot; and Lighty was only 5-of-12 from the floor.

“It hurts because we felt like we could make a run at the championship,’’ Diebler said. “Obviously every team wants to finish in Houston. You can’t take away what we did this year in the regular season, but it does kind of hurt to end like this.’’

Kentucky knows the pain of finishing before you’re supposed to. A year ago, the Wildcats -- with more NBA talent than the current Cleveland Cavaliers roster -- were predestined to a weekend in Indianapolis. West Virginia halted those plans a game early, upsetting UK in the Elite Eight.

Most of that roster pocketed that bad memory in their suitcases on the way to the NBA, leaving only Harrellson, Miller and Liggins to remember it.

“You can’t rely on freshmen in games like this,’’ Liggins said. “This was on us. We were the guys who knew what it felt like to play in a game like this and lose.’’

Still, these three aren’t supposed to do this. Harrellson dominated the conversation at the start of the season because of who he is not -- namely Enes Kanter. When the Turkish player was declared ineligible by the NCAA, it was practically a statewide day of mourning in Kentucky.

There is no longer mourning. Instead, Harrellson has more than ably filled the void, bolstering his numbers from 1.3 points per game last season to 7.3 this season.

Against Ohio State, in a matchup in which he was supposed to lose his lunch, he stood toe to toe with Jared Sullinger, putting up 17 points and 10 rebounds to Sullinger’s 21 and 16. It was the big man’s third double-double in his past five games.

And then there is Liggins.

When Calipari took the job at Kentucky, he said, everyone told him to get rid of Liggins, that he wasn’t good enough or worth the effort to keep around. Instead, Calipari elected to keep him, reaping the rewards for the decision Friday night.

Liggins spent the night before the game unable to sleep. He was anxious, not anxious as in nervous, but anxious as in ready -- ready to silence the doubters and ready to prove that this Kentucky team, far more a work in progress than the last, was every bit as good as the last.

“I knew everybody was picking us to lose,’’ Liggins said.

And probably even those picking UK to win didn’t figure Liggins for the hero. He had 11 points combined in the first two games of the NCAA tournament and had been good defensively but forgettable offensively for much of the past few weeks.

Against the Buckeyes, he either scored or assisted on 12 of the Wildcats’ final 18 points.

“DeAndre carried us,’’ Miller said. “If he wasn’t scoring, he was creating for someone else. We would have gotten blown out if it wasn’t for him.’’

Instead, the Wildcats stayed neck and neck with a team that looked like an offensive juggernaut only a weekend ago. Kentucky completely forced Ohio State out of its comfort zone, using its speed to fly to the ball and its length to contest every shot. By halftime, virtually the entire UK roster had two fouls, yet the Wildcats kept coming, blocking 11 shots and forcing OSU into just 6-of-17 shooting from beyond the arc.

Which was why when Diebler drained a 3-pointer with 21 seconds to play, there was a momentary sense of dread.

“I was so down on myself,’’ said Liggins, who was defending Diebler.

And then along came the kid, the one who doesn’t know any better, doesn’t realize how rare it is to make a game-winning shot in the NCAA tournament, let alone two -- who doesn’t understand that when you’re two of your previous nine, the likelihood that you end up the hero is rare.

“It was like in the Princeton game; Coach just had faith in me,’’ Knight said. “I had a lot of confidence. It felt good when it left my hands.’’

The ignorance of innocence and the value of experience.

Perhaps Kentucky has found the combination to success.

John Calipari and Brandon Knight on Kentucky's 62-60 win over Ohio State.

Dick Vitale, Digger Phelps and Jay Bilas on Kentucky's win over Ohio State.

NEWARK, N.J. -- A quick take on Kentucky's thrilling 62-60 win over Ohio State on Friday night at the Prudential Center:

What It Means: Kentucky (28-8), the No. 4 seed, stuns No. 1 Ohio State (34-3) in the semifinals of the NCAA tournament's East Regional. It's the sixth time these two teams have faced each other in the Big Dance -- and the first time the Wildcats have won. It's Kentucky's second consecutive Elite Eight appearance, as it attempts to make its first Final Four since 1998.

The Buckeyes -- the top seed in the entire tournament -- are eliminated in the Sweet 16 for the second straight year, after winning their first two games in this tournament by a combined 61 points.

The Final Sequence: In as tight a second half as you'll ever see, Kentucky led Ohio State 60-57 in the final minute, when Jon Diebler drained a clutch 3-pointer from beyond the top of the key with 21.2 seconds remaining, to tie it up. But then UK's freshman point guard, Brandon Knight -- who also hit a winner in the first round against Princeton -- nailed a jumper with 5.4 seconds remaining for another winner. Ohio State's last-gasp jumper was off the mark.

The Skinny: It was a see-saw first half, with OSU jumping out to a 16-9 lead. Kentucky returned the favor and led by as many as three, 23-20. Overall there were five ties and seven lead changes in the first 20 minutes -- and at the end of it all, we were all tied up at 30. Senior Josh Harrellson led the Wildcats with 12 points and seven rebounds before intermission; Jared Sullinger had 10 points and seven rebounds for the Buckeyes. Ohio State shot just 8-for-26 (30.8 percent) in the first half, but was 12-for-15 from the foul line. Kentucky had five first-half blocked shots.

In the second half, Ohio State's biggest lead was four, 36-32 less than two minutes in. Kentucky's biggest lead was three. And they won it by two, on Knight's second "one shining moment" of this tournament.

Star Watch: Kentucky's trio of top-notch freshman struggled, but Harrellson (17 points, 10 rebounds) and reserve junior DeAndre Liggins (15 points) came up huge for John Calipari. Ohio State super-frosh Sullinger finished his freshman year, and likely his college career, with 21 points and 16 rebounds.

Number Crunch: Ohio State came in No. 2 in the country in field-goal shooting (49.9 percent) -- but the Buckeyes shot just 32.8 percent on Friday night (19-for-58), thanks at least in part to UK's swarming defense. Kentucky, third in the nation in blocked shots (6.3 per game) had 11 against Ohio State.

What's Next: Kentucky will play No. 2 seed North Carolina on Sunday at 5:05 p.m. ET, with a trip to the Final Four on the line. It'll be a battle of the two programs with the most Elite Eight appearances (UNC 18, UK 17). Meanwhile, Ohio State flies home to Columbus -- its season is over.

North Carolina coach Roy Williams following his team's rout of Marquette, 81-63.

NEWARK, N.J. -- One minute into a second half that he thought couldn’t possibly go any worse than the first, Buzz Williams called a timeout.

His Marquette team -- walked over, stomped on, chewed up and spit out in the first half -- had already given up two easy buckets to North Carolina, so the coach rallied the troops 60 ticks in.

And after the break, Dexter Strickland easily swiped the lazy inbounds pass and went coast to coast for the easy layup.

If college basketball had a mercy rule, it would have been called for here.

Instead, the Tar Heels, rebuilt and remodeled two months ago, showed absolutely no mercy, waltzing into the regional final with an 81-63 win that was more suited for a first-round game.

“This is just another phase of our development,’’ said UNC’s John Henson, who added an exclamation point to the win with a monstrous dunk following a Jae Crowder jumper that landed somewhere in Manhattan. “This is the kind of team we always knew we could be.’’

The UNC win means the Big East’s last hope rides on the Sherpa shoulders of Kemba Walker. Connecticut, the team everyone figured would have no legs left after five games in as many nights in New York, instead is the only one with any staying power.

The other 10 now are home.

Marquette might have bigger worries than shirking its duties as conference-pride carrier pigeon. Williams’ name has been attached to other jobs, most prominently at Oklahoma. And with the season officially in the books, the coach’s future is officially on the clock.

If this was his last game on the sideline for MU, at least the coach went down swinging. His team regained a modicum of respect in the second half, playing hard and, if not ever making this a game, at least making it respectable -- cutting a 33-point lead to 14 at one point.

But ultimately, the Golden Eagles’ first half of ineptitude, a 25-point deficit in which they put up only 15 points (their fewest in the first half in 11 years), was just too wide a chasm to overcome.

“I thought in the first half we were pitiful,’’ said Williams, summing up the Golden Eagles in nine simple words. “I thought that once I used our fourth timeout after their two layups to start the second half, I thought from that point forward, we were OK. And I thought we were much better. But to beat a team like that, you have to be that way from start to finish.’’

The caveat here is that North Carolina had a little something to do with Marquette’s woes.

The Tar Heels aren’t in the Elite Eight by accident, nor did they win this game simply because Marquette lost it.

Since a disastrous and humbling 20-point loss to Georgia Tech in January, the Tar Heels are a different team. Loaded with individual talent, they are finally playing like a team, something that was missing last season when they limped into the NIT and this season during a helter-skelter 9-4 start.

“I always knew we had a great team, even when we were 4-3, we had a team meeting and we told each other that,’’ said Tyler Zeller, who led Carolina with 27 points and 12 boards. “But I will admit, at that point in time, when you get beat by 20 by anybody, you start to question how good you are.’’

It was all evident against Marquette. As poorly as the Golden Eagles played, North Carolina played that well. The Heels’ defense had plenty to do with Marquette’s problems. They slapped at the ball and crowded the lane, forcing 18 turnovers. And their size -- the long and lanky Henson and Zeller -- altered more than a few Eagles’ shots.

“I thought our whole defense was good,’’ UNC coach Roy Williams said. “We were so active, especially in the first half, probably more than we have been in any recent games.’’

Offensively, the Heels were far from perfect -- they swished just five of 16 3-pointers -- but played well to their strength, moving fluidly to make an athletic Marquette team look both sluggish and flat-footed.

Three players finished in double figures, a logical byproduct of such a lopsided win, but also a sign of just how many ways the Heels can hurt you.

If there is a criticism here, it is that the Heels stepped off the gas pedal in the second half. They got stagnant offensively and flat-out lazy defensively on some possessions.

Marquette never got in the ballpark of threatening -- unless you count cutting it to 14 as a threat -- but certainly UNC isn’t going to be able to let up in its next game, regardless of opponent.

There will be no mercy in that game.

And most definitely, no mercy rule.

NEWARK, N.J. -- A quick take on North Carolina's 81-63 win over Marquette on Friday night at the Prudential Center:

What It Means: The No. 2-seed Tar Heels (29-7) overpower the No. 11-seed Golden Eagles (22-15) in the NCAA tournament East Regional semifinals. After not making the Big Dance a season ago, North Carolina has secured a spot in this year's Elite Eight. UNC has now won 10 straight Sweet 16 games (dating back to 1993), the second-longest such streak in NCAA tournament history -- UCLA won 12 straight from 1964 to 1976.

Marquette fails in its bid to make the Elite Eight for the first time since 2003, when it was led by Dwyane Wade. With the Golden Eagles departing, 10 of the 11 Big East teams that qualified for this tournament have been eliminated -- only UConn remains.

The Skinny: Marquette hung with North Carolina for the first 10 minutes or so, even taking a 10-8 lead with 12:43 remaining on a Jae Crowder lay-in. But the Tar Heels launched on a 19-0 run from that point, and ended up outscoring the Golden Eagles 32-5 the rest of the half, taking a 40-15 lead at intermission. Tyler Zeller and John Henson had 12 points apiece for UNC, while Marquette shot 6-for-30 (20 percent), 0-for-8 from 3-point range, and committed 12 turnovers. Assist totals at the half? Carolina 9, Marquette 0. Enough said.

(The 15 first-half points was the second-fewest North Carolina has ever allowed in an NCAA tournament game. The fewest? Eight, versus Pittsburgh in 1941. It was also the fewest first-half points for Marquette in any game since 2000.)

The Tar Heels picked up where they left off after the break, with an 11-3 run to take their largest lead of the game, 51-18. With a margin that great, it's tough for a team to continue to go full-throttle, and North Carolina took its foot off the gas. Marquette kept plugging away -- as you'd expect a team coached by Buzz Williams would -- and got the deficit all the way down to 14 with less than five minutes remaining. But that's as close as the Golden Eagles came. Carolina was never threatened.

Star Watch: North Carolina's imposing front of line of the 7-foot Zeller, the 6-foot-10 Henson, and the 6-foot-8 Harrison Barnes certainly imposed its will on this undersized Marquette squad. Zeller had a monster game, with 27 points and 15 rebounds (the first UNC player with a 25-15 in the tourney since Brendan Haywood in 2000). Henson also had a double-double, with 14 points and 12 boards. Barnes scored 20 points, and point guard Kendall Marshall had six assists.

For Marquette, four players were in double-figures -- led by reserve forward Davante Gardner, who had 16 points.

Number Crunch: Marquette was the best shooting team in the Big East this season, and No. 33 in the country coming in, making 46.8 percent from the floor. On Friday night, the Golden Eagles shot just 36.5 percent (23-for-63). Also, Marquette was No. 23 in the country in assist-to-turnover ratio (1.3-to-1) -- on Friday night it had 18 turnovers, and only nine assists.

What's Next: North Carolina will play the winner of No. 1 Ohio State vs. No. 4 Kentucky on Sunday afternoon, with a trip to the Final Four on the line. Marquette flies home to Milwaukee -- its season is over.