Well, that was a bit of a letdown

You knew that if UNC brought their A-game and Michigan State brought their A game that UNC was going to win comfortably. Well, for the first half, UNC brought their A+ game, and MSU brought their D- game, which resulted in 55 points and a 21 point advantage for North Carolina at halftime (both title game records).

Now, no matter what Michigan State did in that first half, they were going to be lucky to stay within 10 points of Carolina. But, that was some of the worst basketball I have ever seen out of a Michigan State team. Not only did they turn the ball over 13 times, many of those turnovers were (cue Bill Walton) TERRR-IBLE decisionmaking. With that many turnovers, MSU had to be doing something else very well, and neither their 3-point shooting nor their offensive rebounding showed up in that first half. It really looked like Carolina's size really bothered the Spartans, especially their guards.

Some of it too was Michigan State looked overwhelmed by the moment. Surprisingly, I'd include Tom Izzo in that statement. He said to his team before the game that he didn't want to use many timeouts early to stop runs. I understand this, when I coach, I loathe using timeouts early. Better to have them later in case the game is close. Well, that occasionally results in my team going down big and us having lots of timeouts in hand with the game out of hand. I do fault Izzo for not using a timeout 5-6 minutes into the game. Not because he needed to stop UNC's run, but because it was obvious that Michigan State was playing way too fast. The analysts saud MSU wanted to run selectively. It looked like they were trying to outrun North Carolina, and that is a recipe for failure. 5-6 minutes in the game was early enough to change up and slow the game down to cut down on the turnovers, but by halftime, MSU had no choice but to keep running due to being down by 21.

As I expected, UNC could not string 40 minutes of focus together, as they went 6 minutes early in the second half with 1 field goal. The thing is, it didn't matter thanks to the huge cushion they built up in the first half, and Michigan State's inability to hit a 3-pointer (7 for 23).

I admit, I thought MSU had a good chance to knock off UNC. I was impressed with their defense and thoroughly underwhelmed with UNC's win over Villanova. It turns out I didn't give enough credit to UNC's defense (their length at every position but center really altered a lot of shots) or the offensive skills of Lawson, Ellington, and Hansbrough. North Carolina was the odds on favorite all year to win the tournament (even though they weren't the #1 overall seed in the bracket, Vegas gave them the best odds), and Monday night was a perfect example of why.