COLLEGE BASKETBALL / NCAA TOURNAMENT : EAST REGIONAL : Tar Heels Have a Sunday Drive

EAST RUTHERFORD, N.J. — The road to the Final Four has opened up like an autobahn in front of North Carolina, providing unobstructed cruising through the NCAA tournament’s East Regional.

The top-seeded Tar Heels have yet to play a team seeded higher than ninth.

North Carolina (28-5) won’t start today, playing 10th-seeded Temple (24-9) in the regional final at the Meadowlands.

“We have no control, obviously, over whom we play,” said Tar Heel Coach Dean Smith, who hopes to become the first to take a team to the Final Four in four decades. “(These things) sometimes happen. But, who knows, if we’d played the others, we might have beaten them worse.”

Perhaps, but not likely.

In the opening round, the Tar Heels beat 16th-seeded Northeastern, 101-66, scoring the most lopsided NCAA tournament victory in their rich history. Then, after beating ninth-seeded Villanova, 84-69, they buried 12th-seeded Eastern Michigan, 93-67, Friday night in the regional semifinal, recording their most lopsided victory in the round of 16.

Second-seeded Syracuse, fourth-seeded UCLA and fifth-seeded Mississippi State were upset in the first round, and third-seeded Oklahoma State fell in overtime Friday night to Temple, 72-63.

Smith isn’t about to offer any apologies.

His teams have reached the round of 16 in 11 consecutive seasons but haven’t been to the Final Four since 1982, when North Carolina won its only national title in 30 seasons under Smith. They have lost four times in the regional finals since, most recently in 1988.

In 1985, when North Carolina lost to Villanova, and again the next season, when the Tar Heels lost to Louisville in a regional semifinal, the Tar Heels lost to teams that went on to win the national championship.

“We line up with whomever they tell us,” said Smith, whose 46 NCAA tournament victories are one shy of John Wooden’s record.

The Tar Heels, attempting to reach the Final Four for the eighth time under Smith, will line up today against a team that wasn’t sure it would make the tournament until the pairings were announced two weeks ago. The Owls finished second to Rutgers in the Atlantic 10 Conference, then lost to Penn State in the semifinals of the conference tournament.

Since the NCAA started seeding teams in 1979, only two schools seeded lower than 10th have advanced this far in the tournament--11th-seeded Louisiana State in 1986 and 11th-seeded Loyola Marymount last season.

Both lost in the regional finals, as did four other 10th-seeded teams that reached the round of eight, including Texas last season.

Still, at a news conference Saturday, Smith fretted about playing the Owls, whose matchup zone defense limited Oklahoma State to 41% shooting and has caused problems for the Tar Heels.

“Last time we played, they blew us out,” Smith said.

That was three seasons ago, when Temple was ranked No. 1. The Owls won, 83-66, at Chapel Hill, N.C.

“It was really embarrassing,” said King Rice, a freshman then and a senior now. He is one of only four upperclassmen on a deep and talented Tar Heel team that counts 11 freshmen and sophomores among its 15 players.

Temple that season was led by freshman guard Mark Macon, who also is a senior and is still the Owls’ leading scorer. He scored 26 points against Oklahoma State, including eight in overtime.

He may have to score even more against the Tar Heels.

“The thing that we are most concerned about is that they live in the paint,” Temple Coach John Chaney said of the Tar Heels, who pulled away from Eastern Michigan in the second half by scoring on several rebound baskets when the Hurons slowly ran out of gas. “They live off of second shots. And they have such great talent and depth. They run you down, so they can keep up the same pace both on offense and defense.”

It’s a unique North Carolina team in that it includes no All-Americans, no North Carolinians and two players in the starting lineup, forward Rick Fox and guard Hubert Davis, who weren’t high school All-Americans.

The Tar Heel leaders are seniors Fox, Rice and center Pete Chilcutt. Fox is averaging 16.9 points, but nobody else is averaging more than 12.8.

Four starters carry double-figure averages, including Davis (12.8), Chilcutt (12.4) and sophomore forward George Lynch (12.5), who leads in rebounds with an average of 7.4.

“I thought we wouldn’t be as good as we were last year,” said Smith, whose team was 21-13, losing to Arkansas, 96-73, in the semifinals of the Midwest Regional.

But the Tar Heels have peaked at the right time, rolling over Duke two weeks ago, 96-74, to win the Atlantic Coast Conference tournament and faithfully and steadfastly following the wide path that has been laid out for them since the start of the NCAA tournament.

East Regional Notes

Coach Dean Smith, on parity in college basketball and his team’s draw in the NCAA tournament: “What’s the difference between playing Eastern Michigan and UCLA? Very little.” . . . Temple Coach John Chaney, on his team’s role as the lowest remaining seed in the NCAA tournament: “The only thing that hurts you now is sticks and stones. Whatever names you call us don’t mean much.”