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North Carolina has won two of the previous six NCAA tournaments, so you'd think the Heels would come barreling into their opener today against Long Island U.

Instead, UNC comes in a little nervous and a little unsure. And limping, to boot.

This isn't the team we saw roaring down the stretch of the ACC.

So what happened to that team? Duke happened to that team. In one long afternoon in Greensboro, the surging Tar Heels were flattened by a senior-led team that looked far more comfortable in the bright lights of postseason and far more capable of making a run through Charlotte and deep into the NCAA tournament.

Carolina looked young and wounded, which it is.

The two freshmen, who make things go for the Tar Heels, weren't ready for a team they thought they were prepared for. What they saw was the difference between a national program playing in the regular season and a national program playing for real. For all the talk of regular-season titles, we were reminded once again that they are meaningless.

Tournament titles define champions. Carolina must dig deep now to see if it has that capability inside it.

Roy Williams agreed last Sunday that the freshmen weren't ready. He revealed this week in Chapel Hill that Dexter Strickland has been playing hurt. With freshman Reggie Bullock already on crutches, Carolina might be in some trouble here.

These are not excuses. Kendall Marshall and Harrison Barnes really weren't very good on Sunday. Strickland really is that hurt.

"Most people wouldn't even be playing," Williams said.

You really have to wonder how long North Carolina will be playing in the NCAA tournament. The 29-8 Heels got a brutal draw. After the assumed win over LIU today, Carolina is looking at a potential run through Washington, Syracuse and Ohio State. Almost no one expects the Heels to survive that. And if truth be told, if the team we see this weekend is the one we saw last weekend, they won't survive Sunday.

Carolina enters the tournament with a freshman point guard who is down on himself. He actually apologized to Tar Heel fans on his Twitter account. In the postgame press conference last week, Williams said he told Marshall the story of Bobby Hurley, the Duke guard who recovered from a 30-point loss to UNLV in 1990 only to come back the following year to lead Duke over UNLV and onto the first of two national titles.

"I told Kendall that I expected him to do the same," Williams said.

Of course, that would suggest that Marshall is the young Hurley now, the one who got scalded in his first Final Four then had nightmares about sharks chasing him in a pool. Williams probably didn't tell Marshall that part of the legend.

If there are any Duke stories to tell Barnes, the Carolina coaches might want to first make sure this isn't the only NCAA tournament he'll ever play in.

The suddenly troubled Heels have two players no one else in the tournament will match up with -- Tyler Zeller and John Henson. They carry the inside game and make life miserable for opposing big men. But can they carry the Heels?

Down the stretch this year, it was Marshall and Barnes who carried UNC. The freshmen were great at times, breaking down opposing defenses in a sustained run from the first week of February through the first Sunday in March.

The ACC tournament pushed the freshmen a weekend too far. They were exposed on their biggest stage of the year, and Williams went into repair mode, something he's used to after the past two seasons of turmoil. Maybe that's Carolina's best hope now. Maybe the key to the Tar Heels is Williams. Maybe he gets his team back in Charlotte and makes another run for the ages.

If so, the run will start with a slight limp and a lot of uncertainty. The national tournament starts today for Carolina, and almost no one is paying any attention to the Heels. That seems odd considering where we were just a week ago.

Carolina comes to Charlotte with last weekend's Duke celebration still ringing in its ears.

"That could've been us," Barnes said.

Will we see Carolina rise again in the NCAA tournament? Or did we see the beginning of the end last week in Greensboro?

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