By Aaron Beard
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
RALEIGH, N.C. — North Carolina played every bit like the top overall seed to start the NCAA tournament.
Tyler Hansbrough and Ty Lawson each had 21 points Friday night to help the Tar Heels cruise by Mount St. Mary’s 113-74 in the first round of the East Regional, a game that quickly turned into a crowd-pleasing romp for the thousands of blue-clad fans who filled an arena located a short drive from the Chapel Hill campus.
Wayne Ellington added 16 points for the Tar Heels (33-2), who have won 12 straight and continued their near-perfect run in NCAA games played in their home state. North Carolina improved to 22-1 in those games and advanced to Sunday’s second round to face the Arkansas-Indiana winner.
Playing a team that figured it had nothing to lose by trying to run with them, the Tar Heels scored the first seven points and never looked back. They led 60-41 at halftime, cracked the 100-point mark with more than 4 1/2 minutes remaining and finished with 29 fast-break points as they seemingly spent most of the game in transition.
North Carolina shot 61 per cent, took a 48-22 rebounding advantage and finished with 26 second-chance points against the undersized Mountaineers (19-15).
For Mount St. Mary’s, it marked the third time they had reached the tournament as a No. 16 seed and suffered a lopsided loss to one of the favourites. They lost by 46 to Kentucky in 1995 and by 23 to Michigan State in ’99, but at least this time the Mountaineers could head home knowing they at least won an NCAA game: a 69-60 victory over Coppin State in Tuesday’s play-in.
During Thursday’s pre-game news conferences, Jeremy Goode and Chris Vann took a relaxed “Why not us?” attitude when asked about the daunting task of knocking off the Tar Heels in their backyard. When coach Milan Brown arrived a few minutes later, he quipped that the Mountaineers would “show up with a rock and a slingshot.”
But the Tar Heels quickly erased all doubt in this one. Other than Marcus Ginyard blowing a breakaway dunk and landing on his tail early in the second half, the Tar Heels had little to complain about. And once Alex Stepheson hit two free throws to give North Carolina a 101-58 lead with 4:39 left, Roy Williams sent the end of his bench jogging to the scorer’s table.
Deon Thompson had 15 points and eight rebounds for North Carolina, which had its regulars spending the final minutes leading cheers from the bench, waving towels and laughing — including when they jumped up at Surry Wood’s alley-oop dunk off a feed from Marc Campbell with 1:46 left.
By the end, 14 of North Carolina’s 15 players scored. Campbell, the only player who didn’t score, finished with three assists.
Vann scored 16 points to lead Mount St. Mary’s.
With the win, the Tar Heels tied their national title-winning group from 2005 for the second-most victories in school history. They’re one win shy of tying the single-season record set by the 1993 team that won Dean Smith’s second NCAA championship and the ’98 team that reached the Final Four in San Antonio.