HOUSTON — North Carolina likes to run, and Syracuse prefers to walk.
These two teams that do things very differently are also very familiar with each other, having already played twice this season.
Except this isn’t another ACC game. The conference rivals, with their veteran coaches who have both been here multiple times before, are playing each other in the Final Four.
While the stage and the stadium are much bigger, with a spot in the national championship game on the line, don’t expect Roy Williams’ Tar Heels (32-6) or Jim Boeheim’s Orange (23-13) to start altering what they do in the national semifinal game Saturday night.
“We just try to do what we do better. That’s all,” said Boeheim, whose team and its 2-3 zone made it to Houston as a No. 10 seed. “It’s a little too late in the year to be experimenting.”
North Carolina, the only No. 1 seed in this Final Four and the ACC’s highest-scoring team at 83 points a game, won both earlier matchups against the Orange this season.
Williams isn’t sure he agrees with the old premise brought up constantly this week about the challenge of beating the same team three times in the same season.
“If you’re better than me, you can probably beat me 20 times,” Williams said, before adding a caveat about playing the Orange again. “The Syracuse games, the games went right down to the wire.”
Then Williams reminded everyone of 1985 when Villanova, a No. 8 seed, beat defending national champion Georgetown in the title game after the Wildcats lost twice against their Big East rivals in the regular season — 57-50 and 52-50.
In the Jan. 9 game under Syracuse’s dome, the Orange were tied at halftime and led by as many as six points after that. But Isaiah Hicks scored 19 of his 21 points after the break, and the Tar Heels hit 12 of 13 from the field in the closing minutes for an 84-73 victory.
In the Feb. 29 rematch at Chapel Hill, the Orange had cut a second-half deficit of 15 points to one with 2:23 left but never went back ahead in a 75-70 loss.
“I think it gives you some confidence going into this game” said Orange guard Trevor Cooney, who had a season-high 27 points in the first game against Carolina. “I mean, we can play with these guys. … If we play the way we’ve been playing defensively, I think we’ll be fine.”
OKLAHOMA, VILLANOVA FACE TOUGH NRG STADIUM — Oklahoma is one of the nation’s best 3-point shooting teams. Villanova is no slouch, either.
Their numbers don’t lie but neither do NRG Stadium’s. That’s where the Sooners and Wildcats will play their national semifinal game on Saturday and also where a lot of 3-point shots have just not gone in the basket.
There have been six NCAA Tournament games played in the home of the NFL’s Houston Texans, but sizable crowds of 70,000-plus have seen misses at unusual rates for big-time college basketball.
In the six games — the 2011 Final Four and the 2015 South Regional — the 12 teams combined to shoot 27.6 percent (59 of 214) from 3-point range. Plenty of teams have bad games, but only three teams in all of college hoops shot 27.6 percent or worse on 3s this season: Robert Morris, Grambling State and Prairie View A&M.
Only one team playing at NRG — Duke last year — shot better than 33 percent, and that was 42.1 percent (8-19).
Oklahoma (29-7) is coming into the Final Four shooting 42.8 percent on 3s — second in the nation — and Villanova (33-5) hits at a 35.4 percent clip.
Both teams had chances to shoot in the stadium on Thursday and Friday and the ballpark’s history didn’t seem to bother the Sooners.
“It’s just 94 feet with two goals,” said Jordan Woodard, who shot 45.9 percent from behind the arc this season. “Coach, he’s going to expect us to make shots no matter where we at. We have to make shots in order to win.”
Buddy Hield, who has earned a lot of hardware this week as a national player of the year, was fourth in the nation at 46.5 percent.
“We’ve been making shots all week,” he said. “We shouldn’t have the effect of shooting in an arena. I know it’s big, but we (are) going to light it up tomorrow for sure.”
Villanova coach Jay Wright had a team in the 2009 Final Four at Detroit’s Ford Field and the Wildcats played in the Carrier Dome every year when the Orange were in the Big East.
“I thought yesterday’s practice was really vital,” Wright said Friday.
“At the beginning, you could see we were a little off. But by the end of practice, I thought everybody was comfortable,” he said. “I really think by tomorrow night, everybody’s going to be fine, I really do. Once you get in there for a while, it’s going to make you comfortable.”
Sooners coach Lon Kruger said things weren’t smooth for his team when they started practice.
“We did shoot it well,” he said Friday. “The first couple (shots) were pretty bad. I was thinking, ‘Don’t let this get in their head.’ After that, we shot it pretty normally.”