CHAPEL HILL, N.C. _ North Carolina has long controlled its basketball rivalry against N.C. State, and the Tar Heels entered their game against the Wolfpack on Sunday with victories in 19 of the previous 21 meetings, and 42 of the past 52.
Even considering the one-sided nature of a once-competitive rivalry, though, UNC delivered the kind of authoritative beating rarely seen when the Tar Heels and Wolfpack get together. At one point on Sunday, UNC junior Justin Jackson made a long 3-pointer, bringing the crowd to its feet.
The people stood cheering the Tar Heels' 33-point lead. But it was only halftime, still 20 minutes to go in the Tar Heels' eventual 107-56 victory, which was among the most one-sided in a bitter series that's more than 100 years old.
The game on Sunday, which was originally scheduled for Saturday night and postponed 17 hours after a winter storm blew through the area late Friday night and early Saturday morning, was expected to be competitive. It was an anticipated match-up between teams with high aspirations.
There were the Tar Heels, who came close to winning the national championship a season ago, with their hopes of playing again on the final Monday night of the season. There was the Wolfpack, with point guard Dennis Smith Jr., who's considered N.C. State's most talented player in decades.
Whatever was expected to happen between these teams on Sunday, this wasn't it. UNC needed less than four minutes to take a 10-point lead, and the Tar Heels led by double digits the rest of the way. That, though, doesn't exactly describe the carnage that took place inside the Smith Center.
This might: The only question in the final minutes on Sunday was whether UNC's margin of victory would be the widest in the long history of the UNC-N.C. State basketball rivalry, which began in 1913. Sunday was the 231st time these schools have played.
Among the 230 that came before Sunday, none of them were more one-sided than UNC's 62-10 victory in 1921 at Bynum Gym, on UNC's campus. The Tar Heels on Sunday nearly matched that 52-point margin of victory and might have topped it if not for simply running out the clock on their final possession.
It was one of the few letdowns, if it could be called such a thing, for UNC. Imagine a game in which just about everything goes right for one team and everything goes wrong for the other and that, pretty much, was N.C. State at UNC on Sunday.
Smith picked up his second foul less than four minutes into the game, and he picked up his third midway through the half. N.C. State coach Mark Gottfried expressed disagreement in the call, and was called for a technical foul in the process.
It was just one of the lowlights for the Wolfpack, which shot 36.5 percent and never trailed by fewer than 26 points in the second half. With Smith in foul trouble _ he finished with 11 points and six turnovers in 26 minutes _ the Wolfpack had difficulty running even the most basic elements of its offense.
N.C. State finished with 26 turnovers, and the Tar Heels, led by Justin Jackson's 21 points, turned those into 21 points. They never relented, either, until the very last possession, when they ran out the clock instead of going for a score that would have made this the most one-sided game in the history of the rivalry.
