CHAPEL HILL, N.C. _ Duke is playing with fire and Virginia got out of the first round and Gonzaga is cruising and once again North Carolina is the best team no one's talking about.
Which is how it was all year, when Duke and Virginia and Gonzaga shared time in the No. 1 spot in the polls and it took the Tar Heels all season _ and a piece of the ACC regular-season title _ to get into the top five.
Even in the NCAA Tournament, everything's coming up North Carolina. The bracket put the Tar Heels in a difficult spot, potentially facing Kansas in its backyard (for the third time in eight years) with Kentucky possibly waiting. But Auburn took care of that, turning what would have been a de facto Jayhawks home game back into a neutral site.
"Somebody said, 'Are you glad you're not playing Kansas?' " North Carolina coach Roy Williams said. "I said, 'Really!' You want to play somebody in their backyard? If I was going to Lexington, I'd rather be playing Slippery Rock than Kentucky. That kind of thing."
Meanwhile, the Tar Heels were taking care of things themselves, catching a fast-paced team in Iona (you can't run with Roy), a zone team in Washington (you can't zone Roy), and a team in Auburn that doesn't play at a particularly fast tempo overall but likes to press and move quickly on offense (you can't ... you know). Kenny Williams said he and Brandon Robinson already noted on the film that Auburn will even pass up layups for 3-pointers in transition.
Which may or may not lead to up a rematch with Kentucky and yet another regional final against Kentucky _ for the third time in nine years; Tuesday was the two-year anniversary of Luke Maye's shot _ but certainly seems to bode well for the Tar Heels in general.
"To play that game again would be very special, but we've got to focus on Auburn," Maye said.
Roy Williams said he doesn't think this team, unlike the 2016 group that followed a similar trajectory to this point in the season before coming within a play or two of a national title, has been overlooked. Even if it has, he understands why.
"I did have that feeling (in 2016), that nobody's really giving us much credit," Williams said. "This year, for some reason, I've never even had that thought. I really haven't. Somebody asked me at the radio show last night something about Zion and what he's done at Duke. It's remarkable what he's done. There haven't been many guys like that to come down the road. And so the attention he's gotten, I think he's deserved. ...
"It's not your usual North Carolina or Duke or Virginia thing. He's driven a different ship. I think that's part of it right there, but again, he deserves it."
That's been true to an extent in the tournament as well, with North Carolina's wins more comfortable than Duke's survival, but without any additional credit extended. The Blue Devils' rocky first half against North Dakota State and emotional escape against Central Florida got more attention than easy wins would have, but the Tar Heels have quietly continued to tick along.
Even their injury scares _ Garrison Brooks' rearranged teeth and Kenny Williams' balky hamstring _ appear to be reasonably surmountable, unlike the catastrophic postseason injuries that have slowed or even derailed the Tar Heels so often in the past.
Nine of the past 12 and four of the past five times North Carolina has been a No. 1 seed, it made the Final Four � the recent exception being 2012, when the combination of Kendall Marshall's injured wrist and a Kansas home game in St. Louis was too much to overcome. Meanwhile, in the last six weeks, the Tar Heels have lost twice, to teams that both ended up being No. 1 seeds.
What if everything's quietly coming up UNC, and everyone has been too distracted by events elsewhere to notice?
"I don't really say too much of anything about what other people are saying or other people are doing," Roy Williams said. "It's corny as all get out, but we just try to stay in our own little nest area and do what we do."
