Atlantic 10 Conference Basketball - NIT Tournament

NIT Semifinals Recap - Rhode Island vs North Carolina

NIT Semifinal Preview: North Carolina- Rhode Island

Tuesday, 30 minutes after the end of Semifinal No. 1 (Approx. 9:35 p.m. ET), ESPN2

It's so natural to see the North Carolina Tar Heels playing basketball on March 30 as part of a final four event.

Just not the one in New York.

It's been a twilight zone season for head coach Roy Williams, whose team - while not expected to reach the 2010 Final Four in Indianapolis - was certainly expected to make the NCAA Tournament and win at least a game. November and December were perfectly decent (though not spectacular) months for the Tar Heels, but beginning in January, the boys from Chapel Hill, N.C., descended into a funk they never overcame.

A bad road loss at the College of Charleston initiated a tailspin and a crisis of confidence that Carolina couldn't conquer. One poor defensive outing after another buried this team near the bottom of the ACC, and lousy guard play - particularly by Larry Drew - ensured that UNC didn't climb upward in the conference standings as the regular season concluded. A tenth-place finish in the 12-team ACC is unheard of at the Dean Dome, so it's safe to say that this 2010 season sent waves of alarm and shock cascading through the Tar Heel hoops community.

Yet, for all their struggles, the kids from Carolina should count themselves fortunate to be playing while almost everyone else in college basketball is sitting at home.

For one thing, North Carolina shouldn't have been given a charitable No. 4 seed in the NIT. The Tar Heels entered the event with a 16-16 record, which should have put them at the bottom of the pile. Instead, UNC was able to get a home game against fifth-seeded William & Mary in the first round. The game was close for 39 minutes, but Carolina used home-court advantage to pull out an 80-72 triumph that loosened the team up and paved the way for even more confident performances on the road.

In the second round, a newly-liberated bunch of Tar Heels tipped top-seeded Mississippi State, as the much-maligned Drew made his best play of the entire season. Drew found the courage to attempt a ballsy high-arcing layup at the end of regulation against MSU shot blocker Jarvis Varnado. The shot barely eluded Varnado's fingertips and dropped softly through the net after kissing the window, giving UNC an exhilarating 76-74 win and a fuller tank of self belief.

That tank was hardly exhausted in a quarterfinal scrap at Alabama-Birmingham. UNC displayed lock-down defense for 40 minutes, and rail-thin freshman John Henson scored a career-high 14 points, as Williams's lineup topped UAB, 60-55. This team hasn't solved all its problems, but it has indeed figured out how to win games after coming up short during the ACC season. For a team that was .500 entering the NIT, it's a minor miracle that Carolina has yet another game to play (and quite possibly two).

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For Rhode Island, the outlook is decidedly mixed. The Rams have never been to the NIT semifinals during the tenure of head coach Jim Baron. Playing this late in the season is a distinct rarity for a program that has regularly lost steam in late February and early March, and did nothing to change that perception the first months of 2010.

The Rams had a very good shot at the NCAAs as they entered the final weekend of February, but an 81-74 loss to lowly Saint Bonaventure severely dented the Baron Boys in their pursuit of a tourney ticket. A loss the following Saturday to an even less credentialed Massachusetts team only cemented URI's place in the NIT field. The Rams needed to win the A-10 tournament on the second weekend of March, but when they got whacked by Temple in a non-competitive semifinal, the kids from Kingston, R.I., knew that they'd be playing for New York - and not Indianapolis - in the 2010 postseason.

So far, the New Englanders have made the most of their opportunity. They handled Northwestern without too much trouble in round one, and beat Nevada in round two by an 85-83 score that was deceptively decisive. ( Nevada hit a late three to make the score appear much closer than the game actually was.) Eventually forced to play one road game en route to New York, the second-seeded Rams played one of their very best games of the season in a 79-72 win at top-seeded Virginia Tech.

Down 60-48 midway through the second half, the Rams reeled off 13 straight points and won a majority of 50-50 balls down the stretch, rallying for a seven-point triumph that didn't mesh with URI's normal habits at this time of year. For once, a Rhode Island basketball team displayed resilience and willpower in the crucible of postseason play, giving a fan base reason to hope that future seasons won't witness similar early-March meltdowns.

North Carolina - given its postseason history over the past seven years under Roy Williams - is used to being a high seed and therefore the team that wears the home whites in this tournament. Tuesday night, it's Rhode Island that will wear white, and if the Rams meet Dayton in what would be an all-A-10 final, they'd wear white as well. (An Ole Miss-URI final would be up in the air, given the same No. 2 seed for both teams.)

Can URI handle the role of favorite on a neutral court? Can North Carolina continue its end-of-season surge? It's a final four involving North Carolina and a newbie. This game - like the NIT itself - is a lot more attractive than you might initially think.

By: Matt Zemek
A10-fans.com Senior Staff Writer