Tar Heels get No.2 seed in NCAA Tournament, will play in Charlotte

There’s been a lot made of where North Carolina plays neutral court games.

Any floor in the state is easily accessible for Tar Heel fans, and Charlotte is right down the road.

UNC received a No. 2 seed in the East Region of the NCAA Tournament and will play Long Island at the Time Warner Cable Arena on Friday.

“It’s not neutral. Everybody knows that,” Clemson coach Brad Brownell said Saturday after his team lost to UNC in the ACC semifinals at the Greensboro Coliseum. “When you’ve got a crowd like that pulling for you and giving you positive momentum, I think that helps. It makes it doubly difficult for a team on the road trying to grind out a win.”

Miami’s Durand Scott would agree with Brownell. The Hurricanes lost a 19-point lead to the Tar Heels on Friday in the quarterfinals of the ACC Tournament as UNC hit its shots and the crowd stayed behind the “home” team.

“All our guys knew that from the get-go,” Scott said. “We knew all we had was just us.”

Long Island will know that going into the match, too. The Blackbirds earned an automatic berth into the NCAA Tournament by virtue of their overtime victory against Robert Morris in the Northeastern Conference championship.

The Blackbirds are riding a 13-game winning streak and boast a 27-5 overall record. It’s the first time since 1997 that LIU has made it to the tournament.

Duke coach Mike Krzyzewski and his Blue Devils are the No. 1 seed in the West Region but will also play in Charlotte for the first and second round.

Krzyzewski reiterated a comment from last week after his team won the ACC Tournament Championship on Sunday that both teams deserved to play close to home to start the tournament.

“The way it is, if you’re one of the top four seeds, you should go to the closest pod,” Krzyzewski said.

But UNC coach Roy Williams knows the home crowd won’t carry the Tar Heels to a sure victory. His team has holes to fill before the Friday match, including, but not limited to, breaking a zone defense and not starting slowly.

“What we have do is we have to learn from this,” Williams said after the Duke loss. “And we have to take those things and we’re going to show them the tape and show the mistakes and say, ‘Now if you want to keep playing, we have to get rid of these mistakes before (the NCAA Tournament) happens.’”

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