ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1997, Roanoke Times
DATE: Sunday, March 30, 1997 TAG: 9703310149
SECTION: SPORTS PAGE: C-1 EDITION: METRO
COLUMN: JACK BOGACZYK
DATELINE: INDIANAPOLIS
SOURCE: JACK BOGACZYK
Lute Olson had been so wrong, but it felt so right.
On the eve of the Final Four, Arizona's dapper coach said he was worried his inside players couldn't stop North Carolina's power and screening game.
"We're going to play three against two,'' Olson joked of his semifinal strategy.
Actually, two players - on the outside - were enough Saturday to send the upsetting Wildcats, and Olson, into a first NCAA championship game Monday night.
The Wildcats were too quick inside and too fluid out front for a UNC team that suddenly couldn't find the basket. That noise in the RCA Dome was an iron-clanging end to the Tar Heels' 16-game winning streak and season, in a 66-58 loss.
Carolina hit a season-low 31.1 percent - the same team that had been above
Forced to run its halfcourt offense when Arizona shut off the alley - ooping - UNC struggled offensively. Guard Shammond Williams' atrocious 1-for-13 night was only one example. He made the Heels' first basket.
"We thought if we could just get back and defend, and make them run their halfcourt offense, we thought we'd be OK,'' said Olson, who improved to 5-0 all-time against ACC teams in the NCAA Tournament.
The Wildcats made only 33 percent - a season low for them, too - but guards Mike Bibby and Miles Simon were a combined 16-of-37. Bibby, the freshman point guard, made six 3-pointers.
Finally.
"My mentality is to shoot the rock,'' Bibby said. "If I have an open shot, I'm not going to pass it up. That's the way our offense is set up. I was glad they finally started to go in.''
He hit four 3s in a span of less than five minutes. In an 18-minute span of the second half - subtracting Arizona's first and last two points of the period - the two guards combined for 26 of their team's 28 points.
"Our guys are fighters, they don't give in,'' Olson said. "Even in our losses, we've been right there, down to the wire. They just won't go away.''
Arizona, with no seniors in the lineup, impressively sent its second No. 1 seed home. Last week it was Smith's alma mater, Kansas, and his protege, coach Roy Williams, in the Southeast Regional semifinals.
"Our defense was good enough to win,'' Smith said. "Our rebounding was good enough. Our offense wasn't.''
Smith was so impressed, in his postgame comments he predicted Arizona against Duke in the NCAA final - next year.
"It was very, very big the way our interior players played,'' Olson said. "The same could be said of when we played Kansas.
"It was an advantage in this game to have played Kansas first, because North Carolina does a lot of the same things. It definitely helped.''
Carolina had ridden its way to more than an ACC tournament championship on improved shooting and precision offense and powering past teams down low.
"Arizona's interior defense was great,'' Smith said.
Against the 15th-ranked Wildcats (24-10), Carolina had little of its recent game, and Heels scoring leader Antawn Jamison was doubled often down low.
Even with 6-foot-8 Bennett Davison in foul trouble, Arizona had far too much quickness inside for UNC's Serge Zwikker and Ademola Okulaja - a combined 5-of-20 from the floor.
"They definitely were a quicker team than we normally play,'' said Zwikker.
"The thing that surprised me was the shot-blocking inside,'' Smith said of Arizona's eight rejections.
Arizona had started the season with an 83-72 triumph over Carolina in the Hall of Fame Tipoff at Springfield, Mass. The Tar Heels (28-7), in their streak that began with February, had avenged each of their other defeats, in ACC play.
Not this time. UNC fell for the fifth time in an NCAA semifinal in Smith's 11 trips to the Final Four. Olson's team played just the kind of game it needed.
In the November meeting- truly ancient history - Olson said he thought Arizona's victory "wasn't so much a case of outplaying North Carolina as it was outshooting them.''
The result was the same, but the reason wasn't.
LENGTH: Medium: 82 lines ILLUSTRATION: PHOTO: (headshot) Olson. color.by CNB