Field of Dreams: Tar Heels Advance to Sweet 16 in Iowa

Twelve minutes into the North Carolina women's basketball team's 72-69 win against Minnesota in the second round of the NCAA tournament Monday, disaster suddenly struck for fourth-seeded UNC.

Teasley, the team's senior All-American guard, jammed her right index finger going up for a loose ball and, after an official timeout, walked over to the bench at Carmichael Auditorium.

UNC coach Sylvia Hatchell precariously approached her playmaker at the end of the bench.

"Well, how is it?" Hatchell asked.

"Broke," Teasley deadpanned.

Before Hatchell fainted on the spot, Teasley, as is her wont, saved the day.

"Naw, I'm just kidding," she said smiling.

Her team trailing the fifth-seeded Golden Gophers 21-11, it hardly seemed an appropriate time for such horseplay. But Teasley claimed she had a rationale behind her levity.

"If I get out of whack, then this team gets out of whack," said Teasley, who scored 17 points and dished out nine assists in her home finale. "Everybody looks to me for leadership, and I thought me keeping my composure was real, real big for this game.

"We were down, everybody was getting rattled. I was just like, we're fine. It's not a big thing."

Though she would miss almost three minutes of the second half when she jammed the finger again, Teasley, it turned out, was right.

Overcoming a rocky start, the Tar Heels (26-8) clawed their way back into the game against the Gophers (22-8) by dumping the ball inside to Candace Sutton (18 points), hitting perimeter shots and clamping down on defense.

In the end, it was just enough to earn the Tar Heels a trip to the Midwest Regional semifinals in Ames, Iowa, where they will play No. 1 seed Vanderbilt on Saturday.

It will be eighth trip to the Sweet 16 in the past 10 years for the Tar Heels, who missed out on the NCAA tournament last season.

"We're tremendously happy to be here," Hatchell said. "But we're not satisfied. Because we can play a whole lot better than we did tonight."

After shooting a subpar 15 of 42 in the first half, the Tar Heels recovered to hit 13 of 31 attempts in the second half, including 7 of 13 from downtown.

With the Gophers' 6-foot-2, 207-pound granite block of a center, Janel McCarville, picking up her third foul with 4:18 to go in the first half and fourth with 13:06 left in the second, Sutton was able to dominate inside.

Struggling mightily with her touch, Sutton missed a number of follows and shots in the paint but still created mayhem down-low and opened up the perimeter for her teammates.

Her lay-in off a touch pass from Teasley with 1:49 left in the game gave UNC a 70-69 lead and ended up being the game-winning bucket.

On defense, UNC forced Minnesota, making only its second appearance in the NCAA tournament, into 20 turnovers. All-American guard Lindsay Whalen led all scorers with 31 points but airballed a 3-pointer as the clock wound down, thanks to harassing defense by Coretta Brown and Teasley.

"We stepped it up on our defense, and it kept us in the game," said Brown, who scored a team-high 19 points. "It won it for us really. A couple of the shots weren't falling, but our defense kept us in it."

The Sports Editor can be reached at sports@unc.edu.