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GREENSBORO -- Unlikely underdog North Carolina caught a wave from the crowd and rode past upstart Clemson as the ACC women's tournament headed into the weekend amid looming uncertainty.

Seeded fourth and presumably out of the spotlight for the first time in years, the Tar Heels embraced the role and played to the fans. While the coaches fumed and fidgeted on the sideline during the 74-55 win, Carolina's players enjoyed the atmosphere of the largest crowd to see a single session in the women's tournament.

Some 13,599 fans poured in for the first game of the day, forcing the conference to remove banners covering some of the seats and creating the feel of a final Sunday in the Greensboro Coliseum. Carolina responded with a second-half rally that fueled the fans and helped carry the Heels to a 13th straight win in the tournament.

The rest of the long day unfolded with upsets in the air and bad news on the brink. Wake Forest almost took down top-seeded Maryland before the tournament favorites recovered to win dramatically. Florida State was placed on probation by the NCAA earlier in the day, the result of an investigation into an academic cheating scandal that could cost the school games, scholarships and championships in 10 sports, including women's basketball.

FSU defeated Boston College after finding out about the NCAA ruling, then Duke blew past Virginia to set up today's semifinals with the top four seeds coming through for the third straight year.

Florida State played without thinking about the possibility that it could be stripped of wins from last season if the school's appeal falls through. The Seminoles' Sue Semrau, the ACC's coach of the year, said the situation is out of her hands and not on the minds of her players as they get ready to play in the conference semifinals for the first time since 2001.

"It's in the past," Semrau said. "We've dealt with it, and we're moving forward."

Carolina is seeded outside the top two for the first time since 2001, and while that seems to have taken the pressure off the Heels, the response from the fans showed once again that a lot is riding on Carolina's hopes of reaching the championship game for a seventh straight season. The atmosphere of the 11 a.m. game was boisterous, and the numbers held somewhat steadily the rest of the day.

By the time Duke played in the last game of the night, nine hours after North Carolina's game began, the crowds had thinned, but the attendance was still impressive, a reminder of how in-state schools playing through the weekend have carried the tournament through the years. Today's games could be crucial to Sunday's attendance. A tournament that has enjoyed record crowds in its 10 years since moving to Greensboro would be capped by a Maryland-Florida State final if the seeds hold.

If the North Carolina players were thinking that Friday, you'd never know it once the big crowd made up largely of middle-school kids started the wave.

"I loved it," Carolina forward Rashanda McCants said. "I shouldn't say this, but I was distracted with the wave they were doing and all of the noise. During the game, I looked up and said, 'Oh, that's so cute.' "

Carolina coach Sylvia Hatchell, whose program has won the last four ACC women's tournament championships, said she saw a sea of future players. And coaches.

"There's nobody else in the country that has a tournament anywhere close to the tournament we have here," she said.

The unknown, however, is what happens Sunday if Carolina or Duke is not still playing. In the 10 years since the tournament came here, only one school from outside the state has even reached the final day -- Maryland in 2006. Not since Clemson in 1999 has a non-Big Four school won the title.

Hatchell's team will play Maryland today as an underdog in a tournament she's won eight times. She stood in the noise Friday and watched the kids doing the wave and dogs catching Frisbees -- "I loved that," she said -- and tried not to think about today's 1 p.m. game.

She showed her team the movie "Rudy" earlier in the week to drive home the theme and get her team thinking of overcoming odds.

"Sometimes it's just natural that you pull for the underdog," Hatchell said.

She hasn't been an underdog too many times in recent years, certainly not in a tournament at the Greensboro Coliseum. Today looms as one of the most interesting days in the tournament's history here as neither of the top seeds is from North Carolina. Friday began with the largest crowd to watch a single session of an ACC women's tournament and ended with a good crowd watching Duke win.

In between was a long, fascinating day, a near-upset, bad news from the NCAA and a lot of people watching basketball, all setting up today. Welcome to Saturday at the ACC women's tournament.

Contact Ed Hardin at 373-7069 or ed.hardin@news-record.com