HOUSTON—Let me tell you a funny story.
It’s funny because Carolina beat Syracuse, 83-66, in the Final Four, so everything is funny. After the game, the elevators at the team hotel in Houston were overloaded and stopped functioning, and even that was funny, because Carolina won the game. You can make anything funny with a win in the Final Four.
But here’s the story. Syracuse had closed to just seven points behind in the second half, and if you saw their game against Virginia in the last round, this made you very nervous. Carolina was putting on a shooting display reminiscent of past great Tar Heel teams, and by this, we’re talking about the great teams that struggled from the perimeter in domes in the Final Four (1991, 1995, 1997, 1998, 2000).