Filed under: Maryland, ACC, North Carolina

CHAPEL HILL, N.C. — Harrison Barnes said he did not even stay up Saturday night to watch the Duke-Virginia Tech game. Roy Williams did stay up, though. “I’m sitting at home, so I’m comfortable,” he said Sunday night after his North Carolina team had played Maryland. “I didn’t have to coach it.”

Williams and his players will see Duke soon enough — six days later, in the same building, the Smith Center. And because of the results of the games Saturday and Sunday, the chances are excellent that the game will decide the Atlantic Coast Conference regular-season champ, as well as the usual bragging rights on Tobacco Road. Both Duke — ranked first in the nation going into the weekend — and 19th-ranked North Carolina have to get past one more conference game before meeting in prime time to decide it all.

Of course, after Virginia Tech beat Duke, North Carolina had to handle another opponent immediately, and it did, decisively. Maryland needed this game as much as, or more than, the Tar Heels thanks to its precarious NCAA bubble positioning — and the Terps got simultaneously run over and swatted away, 87-76. No getting caught up in the moment or overlooking opponents for this group, not this season and not lately.

“We all woke up this morning and we were told about the game,” said Barnes, the freshman, who set the tone by knocking down three three-pointers in the game’s first four minutes. “And that was great and all, but we knew we had to come out here today and play our game. Because if (Duke) lost and we lost, then we’re in the same position we were in. We knew this was a big game for us, and we had to come out and win.”

The Heels have been winning just fine lately. They lost the week before Christmas to Texas, and since then they’ve won 15 of 17. Their last lost was at Duke, but they’ve won five straight since. Their previous loss was early in the ACC season, a 20-point throttling at home to Georgia Tech that still defies logic. It also raised the questions about whether this team really was past last year, the 17-loss disaster.

“You lose a couple of games in November and December, and people kind of stop talking about you,” Maryland coach Gary Williams pointed out, before calling North Carolina, sure to move up in the polls this week, “a top-12, top-15 team.”

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Filed under: Maryland, ACC, North Carolina

CHAPEL HILL, N.C. — It wasn’t the extreme opposites of the Atlantic Coast Conference facing off Sunday night, but it was the opposites of the NCAA tournament equation.

North Carolina polished off Maryland 87-76 at the Smith Center, holding up the first part of its end of the bargain with Duke. Combined with the then-top-ranked Blue Devils‘ loss at Virginia Tech the night before, the 19th-ranked Tar Heels (22-6, 12-2) climbed into a tie for first place in the conference. Each has two regular-season games left — and, of course, one of them, the last one, is against each other, in the same building Saturday night.

Maryland, however, missed its last chance in the regular season to get a signature victory, against a highly-ranked opponent. The Terps are now theoretically behind ACC foe Virginia Tech in the tournament-bid pecking order; besides having lost twice to the Hokies, they were not able to knock off a marquee opponent as Virginia Tech just had. Maryland (18-11) also lost to Duke twice, and Sunday was its only game this season against North Carolina.

It was a complete, tipoff-to-buzzer performance for North Carolina, from Harrison Barnes’ three three-pointers in the first four minutes, to Tyler Zeller’s nine points in four minutes in a critical first-half stretch to break an early tie, to John Henson’s shotblocking at one end and offensive board work at the other. Through it all, freshman point guard Kendall Marshall played another unselfish game, continuing his rise since becoming the starting point guard in mid-January. At one point midway through the second half, he had picked up 16 assists without having scored a point.

Zeller (photo right) finished with 25 points and Barnes 21. Maryland — now needing nothing less than a long run in the ACC tournament in two weeks to reach the NCAAs — was led by guard Terrell Stoglin with a career-high 28 points.

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