Consistency Is an Illini Advantage

There’s a reason it’s called March Madness. April means assuredness. After all the crazy twists and turns through the first four rounds of the NCAA tournament what do we have for the championship? Chalk city, baby.

North Carolina’s 87-71 victory over Michigan State in the national semifinals, coming on the (tar) heels of Illinois’ victory over Louisville earlier Saturday night, sends two top-seeded teams on to the final game Monday.

The beauty of the tournament is it can entertain the “Cinderelluh storee” (as nouveau Illinois fan Bill Murray would say) for a while and still end up with this dream matchup of the best players against the best team.

Not even North Carolina’s own mental lapses or the sudden Big Ten alliance between Illinois and Michigan State fans could prevent it from happening.

How inevitable was Illinois-Carolina? Even my busted-up bracket had this part right.

“It’s probably the way it’s supposed to be,” Michigan State Coach Tom Izzo conceded.

Just the presence of Michigan State, seeded No. 5, and Louisville, seeded No. 4, constituted the surprise portion of this weekend. It’s the first time two teams seeded lower than third made the Final Four since 2000.

The drama comes wondering which North Carolina team will show up Monday night.

Will it be the guys who settled for three-point shots and one-on-one play in the first half Saturday? Or the team that used stifling defense, alley-oops and Raymond Felton’s personal fast breaks to outscore the Spartans 54-33 in the second half?

Not even North Carolina Coach Roy Williams knows for sure.

“A lot of times, when you get to the Final Four as a coach, you think you know your team,” Williams said. “Who knows what goes through the mind of 18-, 19-, 20-, 21-year-olds at the stage we have at this point, the attention that we have. It was un-North Carolina-like in the first half.”

That’s why I like Illinois to win it. You know what you’ll get from them. Deron Williams will run the offense, they’ll be patient and work for good shots and they will D-up the Tar Heels. They’re so clinical that when Roy Williams wanted to demonstrate proper basketball to his team earlier this season he popped in a tape of the Illini and said, “Watch this.”

In the clip, the ball moved 15 times without one dribble before a shot went up.

Illinois’ weakness is its lack of strength inside. Watching Louisville’s Ellis Myles work his way to 17 points in the first game, I wondered what North Carolina’s Sean May would do to the Illini.

It took seven minutes just to find out what he could do against Michigan State. That’s how long it was before North Carolina passed him the ball in the low post. May’s the best big man in the Final Four, and among the best in the country. But North Carolina, which shoots 18.6 three-pointers a game, shot 12 in the first half.

And because the game was so-fast paced, May looked worn out in the latter stages of the first half. He missed his last three shots and six of eight in the half.

Will Illinois attempt to run with the highest-scoring team in the country to help negate May’s advantage? It’s an intriguing question, especially because North Carolina has more depth.

Michigan State played fast ball and led by five at halftime.

That made three consecutive games in which North Carolina was trailing or tied at halftime. That’s not the sign of a No. 1-seeded team playing to its potential.

“The first half, I didn’t think it was North Carolina out there,” Roy Williams said. “We didn’t compete the way we have all year long. We didn’t rebound the ball, we didn’t dive on the floor, we didn’t take charges, we didn’t do all those little things that make a difference, especially when you’re a talented team, which we are.”

The also had to fight against the crowd. Michigan State had the added benefit of the strong Illinois contingent, which made up the bulk of the 47,754 fans in the Edward Jones Dome.

As unions go it wasn’t as bizarre as, say, the romance between Flavor Flav and Brigitte Nielsen. Michigan State and Illinois have no real bad blood between them, so they bonded in a show of Big Ten unity.

During a timeout with 3:11 left in the Illinois-Louisville game, the Illini band played Michigan State’s fight song. After the game some of the orange-clad Illinois fans donned green Michigan State T-shirts.

“Go Green!” the Illinois fans shouted. “Go White!” the Michigan State fans responded.

They didn’t do much yelling in the second half. North Carolina scored the first six points of the second half to take the lead, and went up by 10 points 7 1/2 minutes in. The Tar Heels outshot Michigan State 57% to 29% in the second half, accented by a 24-10 scoring advantage in the paint. They found May, who scored 14 of his 22 points.

So which team will it be Monday?

“If we compete like we did in the second half, we’ll be fine,” May said. “If we play like we did in the first half, like coach said, we have no chance.”

The compelling battle between talent and teamwork gives this game a chance to be one of the all-time greats.

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J.A. Adande can be reached at j.a.adande@latimes.com. To read more columns by Adande, go to latimes.com/adande.