Count Roy Williams among the people who don’t necessary believe in the “hard to beat a team three times” axiom. “With the close games we’ve had, those things don’t mean anything,” the head coach said. “In college basketball, it’s different…I’m not telling my guys it’s difficult. I’m telling them it had nothing to do with it.”
The Tar Heels, of course, won at Syracuse earlier this year, and then beat them again at the Smith Center on senior night. Syracuse coach Jim Boeheim also wasn’t particularly impressed with the relevance of those games.
“We played pretty well in both games, and we still couldn’t win,” Boeheim said.