Louisville men's basketball coach Rick Pitino bumps into Louisville women's basketball coach Jeff Walz. "Why the long face, Jeff?"

"Oh, we just lost to North Carolina in the NCAA Tournament, and our season is over."

"That's too, bad."

"You don't look so happy yourself, Rick."

"Yeah, well, we just lost to North Carolina in the NCAA Tournament, and now our season is over."

"Sorry to hear that, Coach."

"You too."

The ink hasn't yet dried on the Tar Heels' victory over Louisville, but the men's basketball team is headed to the Final Four in San Antonio next weekend. And the Tar Heel women's basketball, thanks to LaToya Pringle, came back from an 18-point deficit to get past Louisville and into the Elite Eight.

"The big fella" has a very nice jumper. I love the fact that Tyler Hansbrough can hit from 18 feet now. Twenty-eight and 13 for the national player of the year, when the Tar Heels needed him. Didn't get a lot of scoring help in the second half from the backcourt (save a big three from Lawson), so Hansbrough took the game into his own hands, and the Tar Heels move on to face the Davidson/Kansas winner. Funny that all of us that cheered for Davidson in Raleigh could see them on Saturday night. Funny thing: I just saw Jonas Sahratian blow kisses to the crowd from the podium and saying, "We love you!"

LaToya Pringle, the quiet one, the one that's always there, but you don't realize it until she's got 27 and 11, willed the Tar Heels into the Elite Eight past Angel McCoughtry (35 and 13) and Louisville. I thought the ride was over for Coach Hatchell's crew, but the Tar Heels regrouped, made a run, and held off a furious rally. They'll play LSU Monday in New Orleans for a Final Four berth. The #1 seed plays the #2 seed 65 miles from LSU's home floor. Right . . .

68-47. Good, quality win over a good, quality team. Tyler got off to a slow start but Danny Green provided the offensive spark he'd been missing in the first two games. Also . . . Alex Stepheson did a yeoman's job defensively and had two highlight-reel blocks in two straight possessions. . . Ty's ankle continues to look better - he's getting back that blow-by speed we'd missed. . . Deon had a solid contribution . . . Wayne did a nice job on both ends of the floor, and I love his confidence in his jumper.

Between ESPN, ESPN2, ESPNU and ESPNews, the four-letter network has 96 hours of programming daily. Let's say they have 16 minutes of commercials per hour (I don't know, I'm just estimating). That's about 26 hours. So now we're down to about 70 hours of programming. So let's take those 70 hours and parcel it out thusly for this time of year:

40 percent NCAA Tournament
30 percent Baseball opening day
20 percent NBA
10 percent other stories (football off-season, hockey, etc.)

40 percent of 70 hours is 28 hours of NCAA tournament talk per day. There are now 16 teams remaining in the NCAA Tournament. If all teams are talked about equally (they aren't - when's the last time you heard the talking heads prat on about Western Kentucky), then each team is talked about for an hour and 45 minutes. That's a lot of talk time. If you include Washington State's talk time because that's the matchup, it's 3 and a half hours. If your team is going to be talked about for 105 minutes every day on one of these networks, crap like this is going to happen.

The Tar Heels ran up the score? Really? I don't have the stats on this, but I'd wager that Carolina is the only school still standing that can say every single dressed player has scored in the first two games of the tournament. And it's incumbent upon Arkansas to play defense. Show some pride. To his credit, I don't remember John Pelphrey complaining. It's just people trying to fill their 105 minutes.

If Skip Bayless is talking to himself, is he still wrong?

Well, that was good, right? The Tar Heels took care of Mount St. Mary's in Raleigh Friday, 113-74. It was a game this team needed, I think. After playing without Ty Lawson for several weeks, and a less-than-100 percent Ty Lawson for the last two, it was nice to see the regular rotation healthy and gunning. Lawson had 21 tonight, to go with Tyler Hansbrough's 21! It was great to see this team get up and down the floor like it did. I'm not going to go crazy about a win over a 16-seed, but the team looked good. Legs were fresh, and shots were falling (save for Danny Green). Some other thoughts:

•It certainly appears that Ty Lawson worked on his jumper during his injury time. It looks great.
•Love Tyler's range extending to 18 feet or so.
•The alley oop to Surry Wood was beautiful, and it felt like one that thousands of suburban North Carolina kids have dreamed about in their driveways for years. I know one that played that out, complete with Woody's call, on Pine Needles road in Goldsboro.
•Danny Green's shot was off, but he'll play through it.
•Ellington's shots were pretty, weren't they?
•Will Graves is expanding his game, from the arc in.

Don't know who's next, but the Tar Heels have hit the dance running.

Recently, Tyler Hansbrough has been (unfairly) maligned by two particular columnists (and I'm sure thousands of ABC fans nationwide). It all stems from this 'Beasley vs. Hansbrough' National Player of the Year debate. Who's the NPOY? Who deserves it? Who's more valuable to his team? And that's about all the relevant questions in that debate. It doesn't matter who plays the game prettier, or who you think is going to be a better pro. It's about who has meant the absolute most to his team in college basketball this season. I think you see where I stand.

But I digress . . .

Rick Morrissey, a guy so cool he spells his name with two 'r's and two 's's, puts Tyler at the top of his "'not-to-like' list." It's a list of one, he assures us. Why? Because he's met Tyler and Tyler was rude to him, right? Because Tyler forwarded him an urban legend email, right? Because Tyler stole his girlfriend, right? Wrong. Because Tyler is on TV too much. Because he's overexposed.

Rick, Tyler is on TV a lot because he's a damn good basketball player!

And then there's this: Mike Freeman of CBSSports.com contends that Tyler is in the running for National Player of the Year because "America loves a tough white guy." Really? Maybe it's because Tyler is a damn good basketball player! Does anyone remember Greg Oden? Kevin Durant? Michael Beasley, even? J.J. Redick? Adam Morrison? Were these players given media attention because of their race, or because they scored points and played the game well?

Gene Wojciechowski is the voice of reason here. Tyler Hansbrough is simply the latest National Player of the Year, and to bring anything other than his stats and team contributions into the conversation isn't fair to him or any other player.

Well, the Tar Heels are the ACC Tournament champions, and will carry an 11-game win streak and the No. 1 ranking into the NCAA Tournament. As of now, the field has not been announced, but look for the Heels to have the #1 overall seed, and a draw that will keep them in-state through the regional finals.

I was very impressed with the play of Wayne Ellington (thought maybe he should have won Tournament MVP) and Ty Lawson flashed his old self today against the Tigers. Ginyard's defense was terrific and Tyler was Tyler. Deon Thompson has not played to his capability for several weeks now, and that concerns me. But the Heels will roll into the big dance knowing that they have work to do.

Join the HeelsBlog Tourney Pick'em at Yahoo! Click here to join! Group ID is 74655 and password is 'tarheel1' if the link doesn't work for you.

I haven't seen much of this year's ACC Tournament (work on Thursday and Friday, visiting my dad's mom at the hospital today), so I can't tell you much about Carolina's performance so far. I did feel like (from listening to Woody and seeing some of the second half) that the Heels got outplayed on Saturday. Luckily for the Heels, Tyler Hansbrough was there to clean up a Ty Lawson miss and hit the game-winning shot. If you watch that replay, look at how far Tyler comes to get that rebound - he's near the free throw line, across the lane from that rebound. But the national player of the year goes and gets it.

I won't say I expect the Heels to lose Sunday, but I wouldn't be at all surprised. The two hardest-playing teams on Saturday were Virginia Tech and Clemson, and Clemson is still alive. The Heels beat Clemson twice this year, but they needed three total overtimes to do it.

Ty Lawson is clearly not 100 percent. He was called for an offensive foul Saturday (I think I'm remembering this correctly) on a play when normally he would simply explode past his man. And, I think a healthy Ty gets all the way to the rim on what ended up being the game-winning possession Saturday.

No matter what, I think the Heels locked up the #1 seed in the Charlotte regional today, with Duke and Tennessee both losing.

Here are some things I've noticed this week (and in the latter part of the season). You may agree or disagree with some of these, but the first one is fact.

•'Laxadaisical' is not a word, Billy Packer, so don't tell me twice in one replay that Brandon Costner is playing 'laxidaisically.' The word is 'lackadaisical.'

•Could we switch Raycom's Steve Martin with the Steve Martin? Just for one game.

•Speaking of Brandon Costner, he's got to transfer, right? He doesn't look like he's playing the game. He's just kind of out there. Costner may have had the most disappointing sophomore season of any player I can remember. Preseason All-ACC?

•How about we do one of two things to spice up the ACC Tournament:

1) Play it in November, and take away the automatic bid. Every school is excited about basketball in November. Get rid of the other preseason invitationals, and, two weeks after Midnight Madness, have your conference tournament. The national eye doesn't look at college basketball till after the Super Bowl. This will get them paying attention.

OR

2) Have the 'opening round' games (5-12, 6-11, 7-10 and 8-9) on the higher seed's floor. That will alleviate the attendance problems on Thursdays. Play those games on Tuesday night on a home floor, and make the tournament three days again.

•Please, UNC, get rid of the Blues Brothers during the second half official timeout. They've been doing the same routine for about 15 years, and they take the crowd out of the game at a crucial time. Let me guess: They're going to bounce around to the music, then one is going to get on all fours, and the other is going to step on his back to try to dunk a mini basketball. What do I win?

When the wife's right, she's right. The run came, alright, and the Blue Devils took the lead. But the Tar Heels withstood it, and had a run of their own. The Tar Heels scored the final ten points of the game and got out of Cameron with a win and the ACC regular season championship. It was beautiful.

Question, though: How does Tyler Hansbrough not get to the foul line? The boy was absolutely mauled tonight. He did keep his composure and made a key putback to help the Heels to the win.

Three stars of the game: Danny Green with 18 points, Wayne Ellington, 16, and Hansbrough, 16.

Another note: Sometime between last season and this, Greg Paulus figured out how to shoot.

Kudos to Duke and the Cameron Crazies for the moment of silence and blue ribbons in memory of Eve Carson. Eve, I hope you enjoyed tonight's game.