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ATLANTA – North Carolina forward John Henson was in uniform but did not play in the Tar Heels’ ACC tournament championship loss after testing his sore left wrist in pregame warm-ups.

The Tar Heels said before Sunday’s 85-82 loss to Florida State that Henson would only play in an emergency.

Roy Williams said after the game his defensive standout didn’t feel confident and then the coach explained what would have constituted an emergency.

“If we had a one-point lead, the ball was underneath their basket with three seconds to play, I would have put him in to guard the guy taking the ball out of bounds,” Williams said.

“That would have been it. If we had four guys foul out, maybe I would have put him in the middle of the zone and told him just to stand still.”

Henson missed the No. 4 Tar Heels’ win over North Carolina State in Saturday’s semifinals after hurting his wrist in the first half of Friday’s win over Maryland.

“We expect John will be fine next weekend,” Williams said when asked about Henson’s status for the NCAA tournament.

“Basically he felt better today but he wasn’t confident and it didn’t even have to get to the level of I had to decide if he would be effective or he wouldn’t be effective,” Williams said. “If he wasn’t confident with it then in my opinion there was no need to put him out there.”

The last two games of the Atlantic Coast Conference tournament were the first two Henson has missed in his three-year career.

The 6-foot-11 Henson, a junior, is averaging 13.8 points and a team-leading 10.1 rebounds per game.

Follow the latest college basketball news and rumors with the CBB News Digest. Our editors select top college basketball news online as well as provide independent articles. This article was distributed by Syndicated Sports news wire and aggregation service, For more NCAA basketball news see: Tar Heels’ Henson sits out loss to Florida State (Yahoo! Sports).

Related Posts:

• Florida St. Wins 1st ACC Crown 85-82 Over UNC (Yahoo! Sports)
• Tar Heels’ Marshall Breaks Bone in Right Wrist (Yahoo! Sports)
• VCU Defeats Wichita State 62-59 to Advance (Yahoo! Sports)
• Top-Seeded Syracuse Beats Kansas State 75-59 (Yahoo! Sports)
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North Carolina has two questions entering the Midwest Regional:

How is star forward John Henson’s wrist?

And why might the No. 1 Tar Heels have to play second-seeded Kansas so close to Kansas’ campus?

The second question could prove to be irrelevant, seeing how the Tar Heels and Jayhawks have to win three games each to set up a 1 vs. 2 matchup in the regional final. But if they win those three games — and both teams will be favored in those games, duh — North Carolina would face Kansas in a game within a four-drive the campus of the higher-seeded Jayhawks.

And Kansas fans travel.

In other words, if Kansas and UNC meet in the region final, UNC fans will have the tickets allotted to their program … and Kansas fans will pretty much have the rest.

Meanwhile, North Carolina will have to answer a series of John Henson questions: Does he play with the wrist injury that knocked him out of the final two games of the ACC tournament? If so, how well? If he doesn’t play, is freshman backup James Michael McAdoo ready for such pressure? And if Henson doesn’t play, and the Tar Heels win three games to reach the region final, do they risk rocking the boat by reintroducing him to the lineup for the Elite Eight?

Five main storylines

1. Alabama got tough, and it worked: Alabama coach Anthony Grant kicked his second-best player off the team in February, and the Crimson Tide responded by winning six of their final 10 games to earn an NCAA bid without Tony Mitchell. They also played four of those games without star JaMychal Green, and one without key guards Trevor Releford and Andrew Steele.

2. But what’s for Father’s Day, huh? For his father’s 51st birthday, Detroit guard Ray McCallum Jr. scored 21 points to lead the Titans past Valparaiso for the Horizon League championship and a berth in the NCAA field. Ray Jr. was one of the top guards in the country coming out of high school, but he turned down bigger schools to play for his father at Detroit. So he’s the gift that gives the whole year ’round. Like the Jelly of the Month Club, only better.

3. The “other” father-son story … : … might be even better than the one at Detroit. At Creighton, Greg McDermott has rediscovered his Missouri Valley Conference comfort zone after four trying years at Iowa State, where his teams went 59-68. McDermott, who won big at Northern Iowa from 2001-06, returned to the Valley at Creighton, and is led by his son, Doug — who is at Creighton only because coaches at bigger schools, including his father at Iowa State — weren’t convinced he could play at that level. Weird.

4. Watch the birdie: San Diego State sophomore guard Jamaal Franklin was the Mountain West Player of the Year this season, but he made his biggest headlines in the conference title game when he appeared — according to reporters courtside — to flip off a referee after being called for a foul. Franklin denied it afterward.

5. The obligatory “that sneaky committee” stuff: Michigan vs. Ohio in the first round? That’s cute. Michigan in the same region as former Michigan coach Steve Fisher? That’s cool. But the idea that North Carolina and Kansas could meet on the region final, almost 55 years to the day after UNC and Kansas played their memorable three-overtime national title game, is just too much. (Sarcasm!)

Midwest Regional Picks Who will win: I’m not sure about John Henson’s wrist. The Tar Heels act like he’ll play in the NCAA tourney, and maybe he will. But I’m not sure. And because I’m not sure, I’m going with Kansas — which is good enough to win whether Henson is there or not. So it says right here that Kansas, with the best player in this regional in Thomas Robinson, advances to New Orleans.

Dark horse pick: I don’t like any of the true “dark horses” in this regional — Belmont, Creighton, St. Mary’s … not for me. So I’m going with the palest dark horse pick of all time, the 11th-seeded Wolfpack from, um, North Carolina State. From the ACC. With two national titles in its history. But they’re the only double-digit seed I see advancing to the Round of 16, so shaddup!

Most likely upset: N.C. State over San Diego State is so easy, it’s a shame. The Aztecs manhandled their conference, but I’m not a huge believer in the X-and-O ability of Steve Fisher (or whoever’s coaching that team, behind the scenes). So if you want an easy pick, pencil in North Carolina State as the winner of this game in the Round of 64. But if it doesn’t work, don’t come crying to me. Next time, think for yourself. Ahem.

Best mascot: Gotta go with St. Mary’s, if only because I love the song Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald by Gordon Lightfoot, and this haunting lyric: “That good ship and crew was a bone to be chewed, when the gaels of November came early.” That said, a Titan (from Detroit) is kind of cool too. I also like the Lamar mascot, whatever it is.

Best point guard: Easiest category here. Kendall Marshall is a throwback point guard, back to the days when the point guard looked to set up his teammates even if he could score 20 himself. And Marshall can score 20 himself. But with all those great options, he’d be a fool not to share the ball, and he does. His assist-turnover ratio of nearly 3.6 to 1 was best in the country — by a lot. But he has topped 20 points twice in the last six games, and had 15 in the ACC title game against Florida State.

Best post player: OK, I take that back. This is the easiest category in the regional. Kansas’ Thomas Robinson is the second-best player, any position, in the country (behind only Kentucky’s Anthony Davis … don’t get mad, Kansas fans; I called T-Rob second best in the whole damn country!). Robinson is second nationally in rebounding, by the way, at 11.8 boards per game.

Best coach: Roy Williams and Bill Self have national titles, and so does Steve Fisher (kind of), but if I needed one coach in this regional to draw up one play to win one game, the guy holding the grease board would be Michigan’s John Beilein. And I wouldn’t think twice about it.

Best reputation: Troll alert! Whatever I say, someone gets angry. North Carolina, or Kansas. Kansas, or North Carolina. Well, I probably should use Wilt Chamberlain as the trump card, and so I will: Since North Carolina managed to beat Kansas in 1957 even though Kansas had Wilt Chamberlain, the edge goes to the Tar Heels. But barely.

Five stars on display

1. Thomas Robinson: He averages 17.9 ppg, 11.8 rpg and one block per game, and even pitches in 1.9 assists. What a guy! He shoots 53.1 percent from the floor, which is good but not great, and 68.3 percent from the foul line. Which isn’t all that good. Still, he’s a monster.

2. Doug McDermott: He might be the best shooter in the college game since, um, ever? He shoots 61 percent from the floor … and he’s a wing player! A big wing player — who also hits 49.5 percent on 3-pointers. McDermott was third nationally at 23.2 ppg, and added 8.2 rpg.

3. North Carolina’s Tyler Zeller: This guy has gotten markedly better each year, and as a senior is averaging 16.4 ppg and 9.2 rpg. Plus he shoots 55.4 percent from the floor and 80.8 percent from the line.

4. Purdue’s Robbie Hummel: He missed the 2010-11 season with a torn ACL, but he came back better than ever, statistically. Hummel averaged a career-best 16.3 ppg, 7.1 rpg and 1.2 bpg, and while his shooting percentages dipped, he’s still an 83-percent shooter from the line, and 37 percent on 3-pointers.

5. St. Mary’s Rob Jones: You have to love an undersized junkyard dog like Jones, who goes 6-foot-6, 240 pounds — and averages 14.8 ppg, 10.7 rpg, 2.3 apg and 1.6 steals.

Six random notes

1. Since excoriating his seniors in a memorably cruel rant, Lamar coach Pat Knight has seen his team win its past six games, including three in the Southland Conference tournament.

2. After posting only one double-double in the regular season, Georgetown center Henry Sims (11.7 ppg., 6.2 rpg) put up point-rebound monsters of 20 and 13 against Pittsburgh and 22 and 15 against Cincinnati in the Big East tournament.

3. The stats say N.C. State had some of the best players in the ACC. Point guard Lorenzo Brown led the league in steals (1.8 per game) and was second in assists (6.4). Scott Wood led in 3-point shooting (41.1 percent). And C.J. Leslie was in the top 10 in scoring (14.6 ppg, ninth) and rebounding (7.5, seventh).

4. Typical of a John Beilein team, Michigan has players all over the court who can hit the 3-pointer. Five Wolverines made at least 38 shots behind the arc this season, led by Trey Burke with 55, Zack Novack with 52 and Tim Hardaway Jr. with 51.

5. The Cal Bears don’t have any one player whose numbers will knock your socks off, but man are they balanced. Four different guys score in double figures, and five average at least five rebounds. But that includes Richard Solomon, who was declared ineligible at midseason.

6. Temple wins with the high-scoring, three-guard backcourt of Ramone Moore (17.7 ppg), Khalif Wyatt (17.1 ppg) and Juan Fernandez (11.4 ppg). All three average between three and four assists per game and shoot at least 38.6 percent on 3-pointers, too.

Follow the latest college basketball news and rumors with the CBB News Digest. Our editors select top college basketball news online as well as provide independent articles. This article was distributed by Syndicated Sports news wire and aggregation service, For more college basketball news see: Midwest Regional: UNC, Kansas figure to lock horns in KU’s back yard.

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ATLANTA – Leonard Hamilton walked off the court with a net draped around his neck. Deividas Dulkys posed for pictures with a small flag from his native Lithuania stuck in his cap, holding a sign that said it all:

“2012 ACC Champions.”

Not bad for a football school.

Striking a blow against Tobacco Road and carving their own niche at a place best known for its gridiron success, 17th-ranked Florida State won its first Atlantic Coast Conference basketball championship Sunday by holding off storied North Carolina 85-82 in the title game.

“It means a lot to the program to be able to crack into the upper echelon of such a rich tradition,” said Hamilton, the Seminoles 10TH-year coach. “We want to keep building the program so we can contend on a regular basis.”

Tournament MVP Michael Snaer scored 18 points and Florida State (24-9) used a barrage of 3-pointers to hold off No. 4 North Carolina.

The Seminoles, who joined the ACC in 1991, showed its 33-point blowout of the Tar Heels during the regular season was no fluke, though this one went to the wire. North Carolina (29-5) nearly came all the way back from a 16-point deficit in the first half.

P.J. Hairston missed a tying 3 at the buzzer.

It was the first time since Maryland’s title in 2004 that a team outside the state of North Carolina won the tournament. The Seminoles sure earned this one, knocking off the ACC’s two most hallowed programs- sixth-ranked Duke in the semifinals, the Tar Heels in the final- on back-to-back days.

“It’s a great accomplishment just because their history is so rich,” Seminoles guard Luke Loucks said. “Not only to beat them, but to have an opportunity to play those teams on this stage and in this game was really important to us.”

He remembered a talk Hamilton gave his team a couple of seasons ago, when this now-veteran team was just coming together, a sort of anti-Kentucky that relied on experience and maturity.

“He said, `You can really change the culture of Florida State basketball,”‘ Loucks said. “We’re stepping in the right direction of doing that and making our mark. We’re not just some random team from Florida. We’re in the thick of things every year.”

Florida State hit 11 of 22 from 3-point range, which turned out to be the difference. North Carolina went 5 of 20 from beyond the arc, including Kendall Marshall’s miss on a potential game-winning shot with 5 seconds to go.

Harrison Barnes led North Carolina with 23 points, while Tyler Zeller had 19 points and 12 rebounds.

It was only the second time in the last 16 years that a team other than North Carolina or Duke has won the ACC tournament. This one went to a school known for its haunting chant, which came through loud and clear as the Seminoles hopped around in the middle of the court, hugging in a raucous celebration as streamers and confetti fell from the ceiling. The majority of the crowd, wearing Tar Heel blue, filed silently out of Philips Arena.

“I have no problem with the way my team competed, particularly in the last 12 minutes,” North Carolina coach Roy Williams said. “It was a big-time basketball game and we gave ourselves a chance.”

Marshall hit a 3-pointer with 30.1 seconds remaining to pull North Carolina within 83-82, and the Tar Heels went for the win after Okaro White’s 1-and-1 free throw clanked off the side of the rim.

Instead of pounding the ball inside, a wide-open Marshall elected to put up another trey with five seconds left. This one missed, the Seminoles rebounded and North Carolina quickly fouled. Marshall, who nearly had his third straight double-double of the tournament with 15 points and nine assists, tugged at his jersey with head down as he headed back down the court.

“We executed the play perfectly,” said Marshall, who was joined on the all-tournament team by Snaer, Loucks, Zeller and North Carolina State’s C.J. Leslie. “I might have rushed it a little bit. It would have been nice if it went down, but that’s the way the ball goes sometimes.”

Marshall appeared to try a bit of gamesmanship when Dulkys went to the line for another 1-and-1 with 3.9 seconds to go. The guard ran in to scream instructions to his teammates just as the Florida State player was buckling his knees to put up the first attempt. No problem. Nothing but net. Dulkys made the second one, too, but the Tar Heels had one more chance.

Zeller inbounded to Hairston at midcourt, and he quickly called a timeout. Only six-tenths of a second went off the clock, and North Carolina inbounded again from a more favorable position.

“That’s why they call it March Madness,” official Roger Ayers said as he held the ball near press row, waiting for the Tar Heels to throw it in again.

Hairston got a decent look at the tying shot, a long, straight-on 3. But it bounced off the side of the rim.

Snaer made all but one of his five 3-pointers, while Dulkys finished 4 of 9 outside the arc in a 16-point performance. Loucks and Ian Miller added 10 points apiece for the Seminoles.

Hairston had 13 points and was North Carolina’s most effective 3-point weapon, going 3 of 7 from long range. The Tar Heels played their second straight game without ACC defensive player of the year John Henson, who was in uniform but couldn’t go because of an injured left wrist.

Florida State lit it up from the outside, especially in the opening half. Snaer made all three of his attempts from beyond the arc and Dulkys knocked down 3 of 7 from long range.

Dulkys and Snaer swished back-to-back three-pointers to give the Seminoles their largest lead, 47-31- about halfway to the margin of a 90-57 blowout in Tallahassee, with still just three minutes left in the opening half. North Carolina burned a timeout and managed to turn things around, closing the period on a 9-2 spurt that made the score more manageable at the break.

Barnes finally connected on the Tar Heels’ first 3 of the half and scored seven points in the run. But North Carolina still went to the locker room racing its largest halftime deficit of the season, 49-40. The Tar Heels were only down by 8 midway through that debacle at Florida State, the worst loss of the Williams era.

This one didn’t turn out like that.

Actually, this one might have hurt even worse for the Tar Heels, who lost in the ACC championship game for the second year in a row.

Still, North Carolina hoped to land a top seed when the NCAA field was announced later Sunday. Florida State claimed the ACC’s automatic bid and surely helped its seeding with a second win over the Tar Heels.

“Seeding really doesn’t matter too much,” Hairston said. “As long as you get in the dance, it’s an equal opportunity to get to the Final Four.”

- – –

Follow Paul Newberry on Twitter at www.twitter.com/pnewberry1963

Follow the latest college basketball news and rumors with the CBB News Digest. Our editors select top college basketball news online as well as provide independent articles. This article was distributed by Syndicated Sports news wire and aggregation service, For more NCAA basketball news see: Florida St. wins 1st ACC crown 85-82 over UNC (Yahoo! Sports).

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Kentucky, Syracuse and North Carolina tried to manufacture some chaos before the brackets came out. Like a group of 7-foot forwards roaming the middle, the members of the NCAA selection committee simply swatted all that noise away.

Even though they lost over the weekend, the Wildcats, Orange and Tar Heels turned out to be what they thought they were: top seeds- all armed with a well-timed bit of humble pie as they gear up for a run through the NCAA tournament they hope will end at the Final Four in New Orleans.

“It’s done now,” Kentucky coach John Calipari said of the 24-game winning streak that ended Sunday with a surprising loss to Vanderbilt in the SEC tournament final. “Now let’s just go onto these three weekends. We’ve got a weekend in front of us. It’s going to be a bear. Know what? Good. Throw anything you want to at us.”

Michigan State earned the last No. 1 seed and was the only one of the four top-billed teams to win its conference tournament. The Spartans defeated Ohio State 68-64 in the Big Ten title game Sunday- a contest widely viewed as the game for the last No. 1 seed, even if selection committee chairman Jeff Hathaway wouldn’t quite go there.

“As it turned out, this game put the No. 1 seed into the field,” he said.

While No. 2 seeds Kansas, Duke, Missouri and Ohio State wonder whether they could have been rated higher, teams such as Drexel, Seton Hall, Mississippi State and Pac-12 regular-season champion Washington curse what might have been. Those bubble teams were left out, and all will be wondering how Iona, California and South Florida made it.

The Big East led all conferences with nine teams, including defending national champion Connecticut, a dangerous No. 9 seed, conference tournament winner Louisville and, of course, Syracuse, which cruised through most of the season with only one loss.

“I think it’s going to help us a little bit,” coach Jim Boeheim said of the second defeat, Friday to Cincinnati in the Big East tournament. “I think players, when they’re winning, they kind of excuse their mistakes. I think we finally got their attention. I think they’ll be a better team going forward than they were last week.”

There were 11 at-large teams from the so-called mid-major conferences, four more than last year and the most since 2004 when 12 made it. Though the committee claims not to consider a team’s conference when it picks the bracket, this was nonetheless a nod to the free-for-all this tournament can be. Last year, 4,000-student Butler finished as national runner-up for the second straight season, while VCU, of the Colonial Athletic Conference, went from one of the last teams in the newly expanded, 68-team draw, all the way to the Final Four.

Who might this year’s VCU be?

It’s the question being asked across the country, as those $ 10 and $ 20-a-pop brackets start getting inked in at spring training sites, corporate board rooms and everywhere else across America. The tournament starts Tuesday with first-round games and gets into full swing Thursday and Friday, with 64 teams in action.

“There were 112 teams with more than 20 wins,” Hathaway said. “We talked a lot about parity at the high end of the field and about quality throughout the field. Bottom line, it was about who did you play, where’d you play them and how did you do?”

Some results, though, were less important than others, and apparently, losing in the conference tournament didn’t cost Syracuse, Kentucky or North Carolina. Those losses could have created chaos in the bracket, but the committee had the teams more or less cemented into top spots.

“Seeding really doesn’t matter too much,” Tar Heels guard P.J. Hairston said after Carolina’s loss to Florida State in the ACC title game Sunday, but before he knew his team would have a `1′ by its name. “As long as you get in the dance, it’s an equal opportunity to get to the Final Four.”

Led by freshmen Anthony Davis and Michael Kidd-Gilchrist, either of whom could be one-and-done in Calipari’s turnover-heavy program, the Wildcats are the No. 1 overall seed. Kentucky was placed in the South region and potentially could play six games without having to leave the Southeast.

Kentucky will open its 52nd NCAA tournament appearance in Louisville against the winner of a first-round game between Mississippi Valley State and Western Kentucky, but it gets tougher from there. A possible second-round opponent is UConn, with No. 4 Indiana possibly waiting beyond that. Before Sunday, the Hoosiers- who return to the tournament after a four-year drought- were the only team to beat Kentucky this season.

“The win streak? That’s done now. The fact that we were invincible? That’s done now,” Calipari said. “We’re going to be in a dogfight. That’s how you have to approach this.”

Second-seeded Duke got serious consideration for moving up to a No. 1, but an 18-point loss to North Carolina in the regular-season finale and a loss to Florida State in the ACC tournament certainly hurt. The Blue Devils are on the same side of the bracket with 11th-seeded Colorado, a team that got snubbed last year but won its way into the bracket this time by taking the Pac-12 tournament

The Pac-12 was woefully weak this year, placing only two teams and leaving Washington on the outside. This marked the first time the regular-season champion of a power conference got left out.

“Our guys are very, very disappointed, because I don’t think after winning the conference outright they couldn’t see any way we would not be in this tournament in their minds,” Huskies coach Lorenzo Romar said.

In the West, Michigan State will begin its quest for its seventh Final Four since 1999 against No. 16 LIU. The bottom of the West draw features No. 2 Missouri, which won the Big 12 tournament but got penalized for a weak nonconference schedule.

“That hasn’t changed at all over the years,” Hathaway said, when asked whether the committee rewards programs that beef up their schedules.

In the East region, Syracuse opens against UNC Asheville with a possible third-round matchup against Jared Sullinger and Ohio State. Other games include No. 3 Florida State, which went 4-1 against Duke and North Carolina this year, against No. 14 St. Bonaventure, which was a surprise winner of the A-10 conference tournament and took a bubble spot away.

Maybe Drexel’s?

“There must be a lot of people on the basketball committee that don’t know too much about basketball,” said Dragons coach Bruiser Flint, whose team went 27-6.

Others left out included Miami, Northwestern, Nevada and Oral Roberts. All had flaws, as did Iona, though the Gaels’ strength of schedule appeared to carry them through.

“We tried to play teams or conferences ranked above ours, and most of those games we really had to play on the road to get those games,” Iona coach Tim Cluess said. “We spent seven, eight weeks in a row on the road this year, but those were the teams we had to play to give ourselves a chance.”

Hathaway said the committee gave Kansas heavy consideration as a No. 1 team. The Jayhawks, however, lost to Baylor in the Big 12 semifinals.

“We’re fine with it,” coach Bill Self said. “I don’t think we deserve to be better than a 2. We may have been if we’d played well in (the Big 12 tournament), but we didn’t. I think after everyone gets through talking about the seeds, it’s about matchups anyway.”

Among the most intriguing would be a Midwest regional final pitting No. 1 North Carolina and former Jayhawks coach Roy Williams against those very Jayhawks- a game that would be played in St. Louis.

Follow the latest college basketball news and rumors with the CBB News Digest. Our editors select top college basketball news online as well as provide independent articles. This article was distributed by Syndicated Sports news wire and aggregation service, For more NCAA basketball news see: Kentucky, Syracuse, N. Carolina, MSU get top seeds (Yahoo! Sports).

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DURHAM, N.C. – Duke forward Ryan Kelly will miss this week’s Atlantic Coast Conference tournament after spraining his right foot Tuesday during practice.

Team officials say Kelly will be monitored over the weekend and re-evaluated March 12.

The injury certainly will further test the focus of a team already trying to bounce back from a disheartening loss to North Carolina over the weekend that cost the Blue Devils the league’s regular-season championship and the No. 1 seed in the tournament.

The pursuit of a fourth straight ACC tournament title for No. 6 Duke becomes much more challenging.

Kelly, a 6-foot-11 junior, averages 11.8 points and 5.4 rebounds while creating matchup problems because he is a scoring threat both on the perimeter and in the paint.

Second-seeded Duke (26-5) begins play Friday night in Atlanta against the Clemson-Virginia Tech winner.

“I think we’ve got a lot of incentive to go in there and win this one,” guard Seth Curry said Tuesday, a few hours before Kelly’s injury was made public.

“Hopefully, we’ll win our first two games, and I hope we see Carolina again,” Curry added. “Go in there and try to win the championship. You want to put a banner up. That’s your goal coming into the season, and we didn’t do that in the regular season, so hopefully we can do that in the postseason.”

Five times since 2003- including last year- the Blue Devils (26-5) lost the regular-season finale to the rival Tar Heels and then went on to win the ACC tournament.

Mike Krzyzewski’s Duke teams have won the tournament in 10 of the last 13 years- including three in a row- to give the school an ACC-record 19 titles.

No player on Duke’s roster knows what it’s like to lose a league tournament game; their last such loss came to Clemson in 2008, when the oldest player- senior Miles Plumlee- was still a senior in high school.

“Throughout the year, the main goal for a team is to land a spot in the NCAA tournament,” Krzyzewski said. “And then, if you have an opportunity as a result of pursuing that goal to win your regular season, then it’s there. And we had that, and then we lost the game against North Carolina.

“So, it’s easy to get on to the next thing, because that’s not an ultimate goal,” he added. “The main goal is to make the tournament and be as high a seed as you possibly can, and then whatever happens as a result of pursuing, to me, that’s a higher goal. … But it’s really very easy to get on to the next thing.”

Besides, the players say, there’s no sense dwelling on one loss to the Tar Heels when- if the seeds hold- they’ll meet again a few days later with another type of title on the line.

Curry says the feeling is “real similar, honestly” to last year when North Carolina won the season-ending matchup in Chapel Hill, only to lose to Duke in the tournament championship game.

North Carolina beat the Blue Devils in the 2009 finale before Duke took advantage of some bracket chaos- the Tar Heels were knocked out early after point guard Ty Lawson hurt his toe- to begin its run of consecutive league titles.

“I wouldn’t say one’s more important than the other, but … you want to be peaking at the right time, going into the (NCAA) tournament,” big man Mason Plumlee said. “You want to go there and if you can win, get some momentum, get some confidence going into the (NCAA) tournament, it’s a really good thing.”

Follow the latest college basketball news and rumors with the CBB News Digest. Our editors select top college basketball news online as well as provide independent articles. This article was distributed by Syndicated Sports news wire and aggregation service, For more NCAA basketball news see: Kelly sprains foot, to miss ACCs for No. 6 Duke (Yahoo! Sports).

Related Posts:

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• Kentucky, Syracuse, N. Carolina, MSU Get Top Seeds (Yahoo! Sports)
• Snaer, Seminoles Beat Duke, 62-59, Reach ACC Final (Yahoo! Sports)
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DURHAM, N.C. – Kendall Marshall felt dissed by Duke. The Blue Devils played the highlights of their last-second win over North Carolina on the video scoreboard and Marshall didn’t like it, so he brought his Tar Heels into a quick huddle.

“I told my teammates I thought that was disrespectful, and we need to go out here and prove a point,” Marshall said.

Did they ever.

North Carolina never trailed in an 88-70 rout of No. 4 Duke on Saturday night, claiming the Atlantic Coast Conference regular-season title behind 20 points and 10 assists from its motivated point guard.

“It left a bad taste in our mouths,” Marshall said, “and we wanted to be able to come out and play well today.”

Tyler Zeller had 19 points and 10 rebounds, and Harrison Barnes added 16 points for the Tar Heels (27-4, 14-2). For the second straight year, they rolled in a winner-take-all season finale with the ACC tournament’s top seed- and possibly one in the NCAA tournament, too- on the line.

“My team’s had some bounce-back to them all year long,” North Carolina coach Roy Williams said. “We go down to Florida State and lose by 3 million and everybody’s jumping off the bandwagon … but our team kept playing. We lose to Duke and everybody’s got a great opinion of how stupid we are … (and) my team kept playing.”

North Carolina shot 54.5 percent, built a 45-28 rebounding advantage and sent Duke to its deepest halftime deficit ever at Cameron Indoor Stadium- 24 points- while winning its seventh straight since last month’s loss to the Blue Devils.

Mason Plumlee had 17 points, and brother Miles Plumlee added 16 points and 11 rebounds in his final home game for the Blue Devils (26-5, 13-3). Freshman guard Austin Rivers- the hero of that last meeting- had 15 points.

But Duke- which erased a 10-point deficit in the final 2 1/2 minutes to win the first matchup, then rallied from 20 down in the second half to beat North Carolina State- couldn’t come up with another improbable escape and instead had its seven-game winning streak snapped.

“Throughout the year, we’ve been immature. We always want to see how little we have to do to win,” Miles Plumlee said. “You give a team like that a 20-point lead, it’s nearly impossible to win. We need to fight, like we did at times, for a whole game.”

Duke was trying for its second regular-season sweep of North Carolina in three years, after the Blue Devils won the dramatic first meeting in Chapel Hill. They hit 14 3-pointers in that game- none bigger than Rivers’ buzzer-beater that punctuated the 85-84 win.

For too long in this one, those shots didn’t fall.

The perimeter-reliant Blue Devils finished 6 of 21 from 3-point range. They missed 15 consecutive shots, including their first seven 3s, and had two 7-minute field goal droughts in the opening half. That left them down 48-24 at the break- their largest halftime deficit anywhere since the 1990 team trailed the Tar Heels by 24 in Chapel Hill.

“When you base, like we do, a lot of our offense on 3-point shooting … some will say, `Don’t.’ That’s who we are, man,” Duke coach Mike Krzyzewski said. “And if we’re not hitting them, we have a much greater chance to lose.”

The closest they got in the second half was 75-64 on Miles Plumlee’s free throw with 6:01 left. But Seth Curry missed an open 3-pointer roughly 30 seconds later that would have brought down the house.

Instead, Marshall hit a 19-footer with 4 minutes left, James Michael McAdoo added a layup and Barnes swished a deep 3 to stretch it to 82-64 with 2 minutes to play.

For Zeller, it was a welcome catharsis after his late-game struggles in the previous meeting. Back then, he accidentally batted a ball into the Duke basket and missed two free throws in the final minute before Rivers hit that last 3 over him.

Those noisy Cameron Crazies persistently reminded him of it, chanting “Tyler Zeller, MVP” at him during pregame warmups.

“Yeah, I heard it all,” Zeller said.

And the North Carolina big man got the last laugh, making his final trip to Cameron one to remember by hitting nine of his 11 shots before fouling out in the final minute. Only when he and John Henson got in foul trouble did the Tar Heels’ offense really bog down.

Henson had 13 points and 10 rebounds, giving the Tar Heels three players with double-doubles- the first time they’ve done that since 2003- while Reggie Bullock added 12 points.

Curry finished with 12 points on 3-of-13 shooting for Duke.

Among the famous faces in the crowd were NFL players Peyton Manning- who has been throwing on campus under the tutelage of his college offensive coordinator, Duke coach David Cutcliffe. Manning sat next to Cutcliffe in a courtside seat under the basket the Blue Devils defended in the first half.

Those two saw plenty of early action- all by the Tar Heels.

North Carolina once again raced out to a quick double-figure lead, this time riding an 18-1 run in which it converted nearly every shot it took in the paint. That lead grew throughout the half, with Marshall’s jumper with 3 seconds left stretching it to 48-24 at the break.

“We were just kind of overwhelmed, by them and the situation,” Krzyzewski said. “It’s like a surprise gift, you know? You open it up, and for the most part, it’s been a nice surprise. I never have any idea of what’s inside the present. And today there was nothing. It was an empty box.”

Follow the latest college basketball news and rumors with the CBB News Digest. Our editors select top college basketball news online as well as provide independent articles. This article was distributed by Syndicated Sports news wire and aggregation service, For more NCAA basketball news see: No. 6 UNC tops No. 4 Duke 88-70 for ACC title (Yahoo! Sports).

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