Few teams have had dominant Tournament runs like what North Carolina did this year.
Seriously, when you consider the dominance, it’s extremely hard to argue.
Carolina wasn’t even contested in any of its games. The team trailed for a total of, what, about 10 minutes in 240 minutes of play. In fact, its toughest challenge, you could argue, was LSU in the second round. Here’s how the Heels harassed teams in the first half of their final four games.
—MSU: 34-11.
—Villanova: 26-12
—Oklahoma: 13-2
—Gonzaga: 29-18
Combine that with a 20.2 margin of victory, the best in 26 years (Duke’s stacked team had a 16.7 margin in 2001 and the 2000 MSU team beat teams by an average of 15.3), and it’s all the more evident that North Carolina’s six-game stretch was one of the best ever, and certainly the best in recent history.
Now, we’re not talking teams. In my opinion, the 2005 team would’ve beaten this one, but not by much.
But UNC was outrunning, outshooting and overwhelming teams every time. UNC didn’t have a bad four-minute stretch, let alone a bad 10 minutes. Let alone a bad half! Even Michigan State, the title-game foe who had most of a nation and a 75,000-biased crowd on its side was punched across the face in the opening minutes of the title game.
Not judging this team based on its regular season performance, just the Tournament alone, few have had the kind of dominance the Tar Heels put on display. Kentucky in 1996 is certainly nice; team went through Tim Duncan (player of the year in 1997) and Marcus Camby (player of the year in 1996). Carolina waxed Blake Griffin and Oklahoma, but never faced another huge impact player.
Vegas in 1990 also qualifies. Everyone remembers the beatdown of Duke in the title game, and it also clocked Arkansas in the national semis. But UNLV almost fell to Ball State in the Sweet 16, only winning 69-67.
The 2005 team had too many single-digit wins and was given a fight by Illinois in the title game. 1991 and ‘92 Duke were solid clubs, but did not quite have the gamut of gargantuan wins this team did. Given North Carolina had to live up to the hype of preseason expectations, overcame injuries and was never even threatened later than three minutes into a game, it’s safe to see we just witnessed the kind of run we may not see again for more than a decade.
And it went so quickly and without such flash that it’s almost hard to believe UNC was that good. But they were. We just won’t realize it for a few years.
