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CHAPEL HIL — Love him or loathe him, this much is certain:

Tyler Hansbrough is good for college basketball. And now the senior's time is drawing to a close.

North Carolina's four-time All-American power forward has at least one and possibly two games left in his college career.

Hansbrough and the Tar Heels (32-4) take on Villanova (30-7) in the NCAA semifinals at 8:47 p.m. Saturday at Detroit's Ford Field.

Win that one, and Hansbrough's Heels play for a national championship Monday night.

After that?

"I'm sure going to miss it when I'm done," Hansbrough said. "I guess I've prepared myself mentally to leave. I still think when you're gone, you're going to miss the silly things, being a part of this team, the locker room life and things like that. We've done a lot here, and I'm going to miss it a lot."

Regardless of what happens in the coming days, Hansbrough will finish with nearly every significant individual record at North Carolina. He's Carolina's all-time leading rebounder, the ACC's all-time leading scorer and the nation's all-time leader in free throws made.

In an era when the best players regularly leave college early for the NBA, those records will likely stand for a long, long time.

"For Tyler to come back (for his senior year) because of his love for college basketball, every basketball coach in America should've wanted Tyler Hansbrough to never miss a shot and have the greatest year of any player in the history of the world," North Carolina coach Roy Williams said. "Because every time he missed a shot, an agent is getting ready to tell some kid, 'Hey, you saw what happened to him. You shouldn't come back.'

"His whole deal about coming back was because he loved to play, and he loved college. It was not about trying to improve his game to get ready for the NBA. He did what he wanted to do."

One motivating factor was the chance to return to the Final Four, where the Tar Heels got blown out in the semifinals against Kansas last season.

But even that quest has been bittersweet.

"Before the year even started, people were talking about, 'Would this be a failure if we didn't win a national championship?' " Hansbrough said. "To me, how are you going to look at that before we even play our first game? Seems like we've had expectations this whole year. Then when we started off rough in ACC play everyone jumped off our ship and started criticizing us. Now we've proven ourselves, getting to this point, and it feels like a lot of pressure has been released."

Hansbrough heads into Saturday's game averaging 20.9 points and 8.1 rebounds per game, nearly dead on his career averages of 20.3 and 8.6.

Even so, he's faced criticism. Hansbrough missed four games with injuries, and he was held to single-digit scoring in three other games. He didn't repeat as ACC player of the year, an honor that went to teammate Ty Lawson.

"I feel like there's been more criticism this year on me and my game than at any other time in my career," Hansbrough said. "But I'm not worried about that. If anything, I've learned more this year than I have any other year. And that's how to stay within this team and do my part. Whatever helps. When other guys are stepping up and playing well and scoring ... sometimes you have to spread the ball and do your part. And my part is to get some rebounds and play some defense."

Now Hansbrough gets to play his part one or two more times.

Contact Jeff Mills at 373-7024 or jeff.mills@news-record.com