Wait Over: Heels finally have shot at redemption

As Final Four week unfolds, North Carolina's students of athletics have an edge on the competition.

They've been there.

Connecticut will return for the first time since winning the 2004 title. Michigan State dropped a 2005 semifinals match against the eventual champions from Chapel Hill. Villanova, Carolina's opponent Saturday night, will return for the first time since upsetting Georgetown in the 1985 championship game.

All five Carolina starters and several reserves traveled to San Antonio last season, sniffing the warm spring air and seeing the Alamo and watching the Kansas Jayhawks come over the wall.

That's the dark side of the experience for the Tar Heels: They flunked the smell test, the mental test, the energy test and the defense test. Four F's produced a deplorable GPA. The bottom line: 84-66.

Tyler Hansbrough will play his final college game at Detroit's Ford Field. He will draw on the 2008 debacle, or whatever you choose to call a showing in which Carolina fell behind 40-12 and shot 36 percent overall.

"I think when you get to the Final Four stage, you can't take anybody lightly," he said. "If you take any plays off, you're going to pay for it. We learned the hard way…. I think we definitely learned our lesson about what happens when you take some plays off in the Final Four against very tough teams."

Lesson learned

Hansbrough delivered his blistering assessment shortly after Carolina shut down Oklahoma 72-60 Sunday in the South Regional final. His sentiments were startling because various coaches -- Roy Williams, Mike Krzyzewski, Leonard Hamilton and Seth Greenberg among them -- have identified Hansbrough as the rare jewel who never takes a play off. What did he really mean?

"We definitely didn't play the way we wanted to," Hansbrough said. "Not me personally. Not necessarily taking plays off -- just not playing smart and playing hard all the time. And you pay for that against very good teams."

Only five Tar Heels scored, led by Wayne Ellington's 18 points on 8-for-21 shooting. Hansbrough scored 17 points, 5.6 below his average, and didn't clear the extraordinarily high bar of his best season.

He was national player of the year in nearly every precinct. Hansbrough spent much of that Friday collecting awards and thanking folks for their support, a whirlwind banquet tour that bordered on distraction.

"Yeah, probably, but whatever," Hansbrough said. "I was happy to get those things, and we'll see what happens."

Hansbrough's roommate, senior Bobby Frasor, summarized the painful lessons concisely: "You can't come out soft or else you'll be down 20-some pretty quickly. We'll be ready to go."

Marcus Ginyard, the defensive stopper as a junior, wears business suits while watching teammates get down to business these days. Ginyard had surgery in October for a stress fracture in his left foot, which then failed to heal fully. He decided in February to take a medical-redshirt season.

He has a message ready for the younger Heels: "Be aware you're a great team and know that if you weren't a great team, you wouldn't be there at the Final Four. I feel like we spent too much time just shocked at the whole experience -- the fans, just the whole weekend, being in the Final Four, playing in a big-time game. We never just sat down and realized, hey, we're a big-time ballclub. We just didn't come out and play like it."

Chance for redemption

The players' talking points might mean more to fellow veterans of the Final Four road. They might have greater shock value to freshman Ed Davis, the long-armed forward who helped hold Oklahoma's Blake Griffin scoreless for the first 11 minutes Sunday while Carolina built an 11-point lead.

Davis watched the 2008 regional final on television, with Coach Williams providing the on-site commentary.

"I remember when Coach called me when they made the Final Four," Davis said. "It was, like, ‘Be jealous about this team and have in your mind that's what you want to do when you get here for your freshman year.' So, I'm just glad to be here."

The burden of Final Four rejection landed on Hansbrough, much like the East Regional meltdown against Georgetown the previous season. The Kansas calamity and outrageous predictions of Carolina perfection added weight to this season.

"I felt pressure," Hansbrough said while sitting in front of his Memphis locker. He could finally exhale after a regional final in which he had greater impact as a passer and defender than as an eight-point scorer.

"I just felt a relief," he said. "There have been a lot of expectations on this team. Some people really didn't put a lot of expectations on us here. It feels good to be going back."

He had plenty of company during the Memphis net-cutting celebration. "That's what we were all saying out there on the court," Frasor reported. "We've got another chance. We live to play another day. Basically, we all have last year still on our minds.

"It's finally here. Basically, the whole year, it's ‘get to the postseason.' OK, it's here. Now we're back in the Final Four. It's just a relief now. Let's go play. We've got another chance. Let's see what we can do with it."

Maybe that's the hidden beauty of consecutive trips to the Final Four. It's like an open-textbook exam -- at least until aggressive Villanova knocks the books onto the floor and announces: Game on.

■ Lenox Rawlings can be reached at lrawlings@wsjournal.com.