Tar Heels Require Outside Help : East: Williams’ two three-pointers in overtime lead North Carolina over Cincinnati, 75-68, after Reese misses dunk at end of regulation.

Alleviating a teammate’s embarrassment at missing what would have been a game-winning dunk, Donald Williams made two much longer shots in overtime so that North Carolina could overcome Cincinnati, 75-68, for the championship of the NCAA East Regional Sunday.

North Carolina will play Kansas in the semifinals Saturday at New Orleans. Kansas Coach Roy Williams was an assistant to Dean Smith when the Tar Heels last won a national championship--in 1982 on a last-minute shot by Michael Jordan. When the two teams met in the 1991 semifinals, Kansas and Williams won and Smith was ejected late in the game.

Living and dying by the three-point shot, Cincinnati attempted a regional-record 24 of them, making nine in a game that it once led by 15 points. Given a temporary reprieve when Brian Reese bungled a dunk at the end of regulation play, the Bearcats were unable to stop consecutive three-pointers by Williams in overtime and did not score in the last 4 1/2 minutes of the extra period.

“To be honest, we just got tired,” said Erik Martin, Cincinnati’s senior forward from Covina.

Martin fouled out in overtime with 16 points, joining valuable reserve Curtis Bostic, who committed his fifth foul with 10 1/2 minutes to play. With center Corie Blount also coping with foul trouble and with others gasping for breath because of the game’s fast pace, Coach Bob Huggins concluded: “We just ran out of people.”

A year after reaching the Final Four, the Bearcats went home with a record of 27-5.

The game was all theirs for the first 15 minutes, when guard Nick Van Exel, firing at will, had the crowd of 19,761 at Brendan Byrne Arena wondering whether he could make three-pointers blindfolded, as well as wondering whether he would ever pass the ball. He had 21 points at halftime.

Van Exel marked the spot. He attempted 10 three-pointers by halftime, sinking six. But he was something less than excellent thereafter, making one of 10 shots. Playing all but one minute, he scored only two points in the second half and was shut out in overtime.

Once North Carolina changed assignments and put Derrick Phelps on him, Van Exel vanished.

“I switched with about four minutes left in the first half,” Phelps said. “Coach called some special defenses, and I got on him. I think he wore down. He was real tired and couldn’t get anything behind his shots.”

Van Exel, cocky to the end, said: “His defense didn’t bother me. Nobody’s defense bothers me.”

The same player who had shouted “Shut up!” to Virginia fans during Friday night’s regional game, Van Exel put his marksmanship where his mouth was as Cincinnati sped to a 29-14 lead. At one point he even gave a Jordan-like “I can’t miss” shrug to the scorer’s table and Bearcat bench as he ran by.

By then he had made five three-pointers, and there were still seven minutes remaining until halftime.

But that’s about the time North Carolina woke up. Ten turnovers having turned the Tar Heels inside-out by then, they began to make a run with a dunk by 7-foot Eric Montross.

Forward George Lynch, a candidate for best-kept secret in college basketball, led his team on a 16-2 charge that not only wiped out Cincinnati’s 15-point advantage, but gave North Carolina a brief lead before halftime.

Lynch led the winners (32-4) with 21 points, 14 rebounds and six steals.

The game was practically a carbon copy of UCLA vs. Michigan, in which a smaller team, shooting superbly from outside, could not sustain such accuracy throughout 40 minutes. The game even had a similar ending, Reese’s dunk attempt at the finish coming so close to the expiration of time that a controversy would have erupted had he made it.

Here’s what happened: No more than five points separated the teams during the second half, and Cincinnati, ahead 57-52, watched North Carolina run off nine points using its bench strength, 7-foot reserve Kevin Salvadori punctuating the rally with a four-foot swooping hook.

Still down by four points with half a minute to play, Cincinnati got two free throws by Martin to make it 66-64. Martin then made a huge block of a shot by the huge Montross and Tarrance Gibson’s breakaway layup tied the score, 66-66.

North Carolina played for a last shot. One went in and out, then out of bounds to the Tar Heels with 0.8 seconds on the clock. Each coach took a timeout to map strategy, and Smith changed his to call for an inbounds pass to Reese.

“I hadn’t planned that play until Bob Huggins called his timeout,” Smith said. “Originally, our play was to be run for Montross. Then we used Eric as the decoy. Brian was supposed to just touch it and score.

“I love drawing up plays. Some work and some don’t.”

This one should have gotten the coach to his ninth Final Four without further adieu. Reese accepted a perfect pass from Phelps several feet from the basket and decided he had time to dunk rather than shoot. Evidently he did--although doubt remained afterward--but it didn’t matter because Reese blew the slam.

Thereafter it was up to Williams to take over, as he did in the previous game, when he scored North Carolina’s final nine points. This time the sophomore guard scored 20 points and saved some of them for overtime, when, after spotting the Bearcats their only points of the extra period on a 10-footer by Blount, Williams took over.

His two three-pointers from the top of the key gave the Tar Heels a 74-68 lead.

“If I thought he could take over the game all the time, I’d let him, but I don’t think the other guys would be happy,” Smith joked. “When he’s open, I do want him to shoot the ball. I tell him: ‘Knock it down.’ ”

He did, easy as dunking.