CHAPEL HILL, N.C. _ There were about four minutes left in North Carolina's game against Ohio State when Roy Williams finally looked into the stands.
What he saw didn't shock him. He saw Tar Heels fans leaving the Dean Smith Center in lines like school kids exiting a building during a fire drill. They had seen enough.
"I didn't blame them," Williams said. "I wasn't mad at them. We didn't do what we should do to provide a little bit more toughness."
The seventh-ranked Tar Heels (6-2, 1-0 ACC) were historically bad on Wednesday. They lost to the sixth-ranked Buckeyes 74-49. It was their worst home loss since Williams became head coach in 2003. And no matter what he tried, including going deep _ no, really deep _ into his bench late in the second half, nothing worked.
Williams said he wasn't trying to send a message to his team by putting in two non-scholarship players and three reserves. He said the starters just weren't good.
"If you were watching us play, what were those guys doing that were in the game?" Williams said. "It's a pretty easy thing; if you suck out there, somebody should come in for you."
"No. Seriously," he continued, "if they didn't have a message by looking at the scoreboard _ I put those five guys in there because I didn't like the guys that were playing."
The Tar Heels trailed by 14 points with about 10 minutes left before Williams replaced his starters with guards K.J. Smith, Shea Rush, Christian Keeling, and forwards Justin Pierce and Walker Miller.
That lineup was actually decent. But when the starters returned with 6:37 left in the game, the same mistakes continued. The Tar Heels allowed 16 second-chance points, and 11 fast-break points. The Buckeyes also dominated the Tar Heels on the boards, 48-32.
