Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: MONDAY, March 14, 1994 TAG: 9403140052
SECTION: SPORTS PAGE: B-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Jack Bogaczyk
DATELINE: CHARLOTTE, N.C. LENGTH: Medium
The Tar Heels already are the defending NCAA champions. They have the most talent, depth and quality big men in the country. They have a coach who has won 801 games. They're likely to move to No. 1 in the polls this week, too.
And if Carolina can win its next four games, it will have a home-away-from-home-floor advantage at the Final Four in a city where the Tar Heels have a 92-10 record.
Carolina won one championship at the Charlotte Coliseum on Sunday afternoon. The Tar Heels' 13th ACC tournament title gave Dean Smith's team what it really wanted - a No. 1 East Regional seed in the NCAA's 64-team field.
After a 73-66 victory over stubborn Virginia, the Heels forgot to cut down the nets. "It's not really a big deal," said Derrick Phelps, UNC's senior point guard. "If we do come back here, that's when we want to do it."
That would be three weeks from tonight, after the NCAA championship game. Carolina's road to its 12th Final Four begins Friday in Landover, Md., against Liberty.
It's Jerry Falwell against Jerry Stackhouse. It sounds like the Flames are going to need the Lord's help. If Liberty thinks the Big South is large, wait until the Flames see Eric Montross and Rasheed Wallace.
While the Heels (27-6) finally reached their goal after another struggle, Virginia got what it wanted from the ACC tournament even before it played in its sixth title game. It got an NCAA bid.
The Cavaliers are headed west with a seventh seed after what coach Jeff Jones called "without question the best consecutive performances of the year." The question is, can UVa (17-12) continue its tournament trend?
"With this club, I don't know why, but all of a sudden we're a little better," Jones said. "Whatever we're doing, we want to keep doing it."
That means the Cavaliers will stick with the new lineup Jones used in the ACC tournament, with freshman Harold Deane joined by classmate Jamal Robinson in a backcourt that made first team all-tournament.
Deane deserved to become the first player on a losing team since Maryland's Albert King in 1980 to win the Everett Case Award that goes to the ACC tournament's most valuable player. Stackhouse got it. To the victor go the spoils.
What Deane got was newfound respect. He has become more than injured Cory Alexander's fill-in. He has become an offensive threat as well as a defensive force.
Jones said he would have been happy with one victory in the ACC tournament. "After that, I could have cared less, until we won," he said, "and then it was something else."
How far can the Cavaliers go in the NCAA Tournament? That depends on whether they perform offensively as they did in the ACC tournament. And the emergence of Deane and the arrival of Robinson have given Jones more versatility at an end of the floor where his team has struggled.
How huge was Virginia's opening-round victory over Maryland? Check the NCAA bracket. You don't see Georgia Tech, a first-round ACC loser. The Terps got a 10th seed, three slots below the Cavaliers' spot in Sacramento, Calif.
UVa starts in the West bracket at Sacramento's Arco Arena against New Mexico. That 16-team quadrant appears to be the easiest in the tournament. That's what two victories in the ACC tournament produced, besides some needed confidence.
For all of the parity in college hoops and the stunning eve of the bracketing, there were few surprises in the field. Several clubs played their way out of the field in conference tournaments during the weekend.
Seton Hall played its way in, giving the Big East a surprising six entrants, one fewer than the Big Ten and one more than the ACC. The bubble burst on Mississippi State and Brigham Young. The Metro got only champion Louisville in the field, despite being the fourth-best conference in the Ratings Percentage Index.
The College of Charleston (S.C.) made it. Wake Forest coach Dave Odom can't be thrilled about that Rupp Arena matchup. And if coach Lefty Driesell finally is going to reach a Final Four, he'll have to guide James Madison past Florida, Nebraska or Penn, then probably Connecticut and North Carolina.
Dean against Lefty wouldn't be the only high-profile coaching matchup in the tournament. In the second round - usually the most intriguing weekend of hoops all year - we could see John Chaney against Bobby Knight.
Now, there's some real March madness. How about a Duke-UNC national semifinal on Final Four Saturday? It could happen at the Charlotte Coliseum, a slice of blue heaven where they don't mind dealing with the Devils.
by CNB