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RALEIGH -- Roy Williams trotted out the old coaching adage Thursday when he stated, "You've gotta dance with who brung you."

That's all well and good. But what happens if the other guy on the dance floor has a supermodel on his arm?

Welcome to Mount St. Mary's world. The Mountaineers turned around their season by moving to a more up-tempo offensive style, going 11-4 since opting to pick up the pace.

"It's absolutely been huge for us," coach Milan Brown said.

The change has brought the Mountaineers this far, but now "this far" is a first-round meeting this evening with top-seeded North Carolina in the NCAA East Regional (7:10, WFMY-2). The Tar Heels -- in case you've been living under a rock since Dean Smith started tinkering with an offensive system called the secondary break -- play up-tempo as well or better than anyone else in the country.

In other words, UNC does what Mount St. Mary's does, only better.

That's created a quandary for Brown and his staff.

"Do we continue to do what we do?" he mused. "Or do I go the other way?"

Going the other way has its perils. When the Mountaineers played a slower game this season, they straggled to an 8-10 record, including a 67-59 loss to Sacred Heart that prompted the midseason commitment to more running.

"We knew we were playing good enough defense to win games," Brown said. "We weren't playing good enough offense."

The offense has hit its stride. Brown, by his own admission, loosened his grip on the players. The biggest move was turning loose sophomore guard Jeremy Goode, a former standout at Charlotte's Providence Day School. Goode (14.5 ppg) and senior guard Chris Vann (14.3) have formed the core of a perimeter-oriented attack.

"Coach sat us down and he made us realize that he recruited us for a reason," Vann said. "To put the ball in the basket."

That's what freshman guard Jean Cajou has been doing more and more often during the Mountaineers' late-season surge. Cajou sat out last season as a non-qualifier under NCAA guidelines for freshman eligibility, and his jump shot showed the rustiness for the first half of the season. After a sit-down with the coaching staff, something clicked for Cajou.

"Four points became six points, then eight points," Brown said. "Then all of a sudden, boom!"

Boom, as in 48 points in three games in the Northeast Conference tournament, which earned Cajou MVP honors.

Clearly, it's all coming together for the Mountaineers. Do they really want to reconfigure things in an attempt to slow the Tar Heels?

"If we totally switch, it will probably throw us off," Brown said.

The trick then, is to find some sort of a middle ground. Run when it's feasible, but also walk it up if a transition opportunity isn't immediately apparent. Oh, and defend, defend, defend.

That last part of the equation will also have to be multi-faceted.

"We mix it up a lot," Vann said. "We switch it up from man-to-man, to zone, to full-court press. We've got a number of different defenses we'll try to play."

Every one of those defenses will have to be in top form if Mount St. Mary's hopes to pull off the upset. And somehow the Mountaineers will have to do what they do on offense at a peak level while also doing things they don't usually do.

Sound like an impossible task? Well, there's a reason why a No. 16 seed has yet to knock off a No. 1 seed in the NCAA tournament.

But there's also a reason why the Mountaineers have shown up in Raleigh anyway, despite the long odds they face.

"It's going to happen sooner or later," Goode said of the historic upset. "We just figure if it's going to happen, why not us?"

Contact Jim Young

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