Michigan St. vs. North Carolina: The rematch, re-imagined

Common sense says North Carolina will win tonight’s national title game at Ford Field.

Common man is pulling for Michigan State.

Cold, hard facts say North Carolina hangs its fifth championship flag.

Soft, warm and fuzzy wants the banner hung in East Lansing.

Clear, independent analysis has declared this game won’t be close.

Rational thought computed the box score from Dec. 3, when North Carolina came to Detroit for a site-inspection dissection of Michigan State.

The final score was 98-63.

North Carolina, though, is a different team now.

“I think we’re better,” North Carolina Coach Roy Williams said.

Better than 98-63?

“I think we’re better defensively,” he said.

Today, somewhere in Chapel Hill, somebody is unfolding rented chairs and drawing up parade routes.

The Tar Heels have won five games in the NCAA tournament by 12 points or more with a roster of NBA draft picks who put off professional paychecks for one last, glorious stab at amateurism.

Senior forward Tyler Hansbrough didn’t want to leave after last year’s loss to Kansas in the national semifinals, a game North Carolina trailed by 40-12 before losing by 18.

“Any team who gets in this position wants to finish,” Hansbrough said. “It is not just because we had all these people coming back.”

Hansbrough, a four-time All-American, with a win tonight can eliminate his name from conversations about all-time greatest players who left without rings.

Does Virginia’s Ralph Sampson ring a bell?

Tar Heels guard Ty Lawson returned this season too, affording him the chance to supplant Hansbrough as the Atlantic Coast Conference player of the year.

North Carolina craves national titles for the same reason sharks are drawn to blood. The pursuit of crowns is in Carolina’s DNA.

Williams doesn’t like being in the black-hat position of possibly hoisting a trophy against a backdrop of partisan Michiganders, many mired in economic misery.

“I do realize they have a cause,” Williams said Sunday. “Well, we also have a cause. We want to win a national championship, period, the end. And if you would tell me that if Michigan State wins, it’s going to satisfy the nation’s economy, then I’d say, ‘Hell, let’s stay poor for a little while longer.’ ”

Clear and rational thinking, however, doesn’t always get it right -- especially in sports.

It whiffed as recently as the New York Giants versus New England in the 2008 Super Bowl.

Passion and purpose, time and again, have overridden conventional wisdom.

Remember 1990?

Nevada Las Vegas, coached by Jerry Tarkanian, crushed Duke by 30 points in the national title game. The NCAA’s theme that year could have been: The Road Kill Ends Here.

The next year, in the national semifinals, with both teams returning essentially the same players, Duke pulled off a two-point upset en route to its first national title.

Michigan State, thank goodness, isn’t the same team it was on Dec. 3.

The Spartans had just returned home from Orlando, Fla., after playing three games in a four-day stretch at the Old Spice Classic.

North Carolina led by 14 at the half.

“In the second half, the wheels came off the cart,” Michigan State Coach Tom Izzo recalled. “We looked poor, we ran poor, we shot poor.”

Izzo, though, is wisely working the psychological game, building up North Carolina into an unbeatable monster.

“If we play good and they play good, we’re losing,” Izzo said.

Izzo said he didn’t show his team tape of the Dec. 3 wipeout. He didn’t need to.

Williams jokingly acknowledged that Izzo’s team didn’t get a free pass into the title game.

“I mean, they’re not exactly Charlie’s doughnut team,” Williams said. “They’re pretty damn good.”

Michigan State knows what happened Dec. 3 is not likely to be repeated. The Spartans played without center Goran Suton, who sat out the game because of an injury.

After Michigan State defeated USC in the second round two weeks ago, Suton broke the rule against looking ahead when he said, “. . . Down the road I would like to play the North Carolina game.”

Payback, at this age, is a tremendous motivator.

“You want some revenge,” said junior forward Raymar Morgan, who led Michigan State with 21 points in the Dec. 3 game. “It’s in our competitive nature that we want to play them again and get another shot.”

Michigan State doesn’t have a roster stocked with NBA stars, but it is getting another shot at North Carolina.

Izzo says it’s unfair to think his team can carry the plight of Michigan “like we’re trying to save the world.”

Michigan State is hungry, though, for victory.

“I mean, the state, this city is very important to me,” Izzo said. “But the cause right now is for Michigan State players to win a championship, and hopefully the repercussions from that will help a lot of people.”

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chris.dufresne@latimes.com