DETROIT -- Apparently, every local team that comes to Ford Field ends up playing like the Detroit Lions.

   How else to explain what happened to Michigan State in the men's NCAA basketball championship game Monday night?  

   That North Carolina was too good for the Spartans from the get-go, dominating from the opening tip, holding a 10-point lead within the game's first five minutes, then pouring it on from there?  

   That almost everything that worked for the hard-charging Spartans in their magical national semifinal victory Saturday night against Connecticut became a dead end Monday against the better-coached, more-talented Tar Heels? The rebounding, the transition game, the sure-handedness, all now gone?

   That North Carolina was just too prepared, too poised, too ready to win? That Michigan State's emotional run could last only so long against a team that clearly was the class of the tournament?   

   Pick any of the above. They all work. Everything worked for North Carolina Monday night. They all help to explain the Tar Heels' 89-72 drubbing of Michigan State, sapping the life out of the largest Final Four crowd in history, 72,922, almost as soon as the game began, then continually snuffing out any MSU chance for a comeback at the slightest glimmer of hope for the hometown crowd.  

   "A little bit shell-shocked, a little bit down…deer in the headlights," was the way MSU Coach Tom Izzo explained it after the game.  

    With the total domination of Izzo's Spartans, North Carolina Coach Roy Williams won his second title at UNC in the last five seasons, and in six seasons overall. The venerable Dean Smith won two titles during his entire UNC tenure, which lasted 36 years, from 1961-97.   

   So, let the debating begin. If you want to say Williams is the better coach, it would be hard to argue after what his team did Monday night. 

    He listened all weekend to the talk in this town about Michigan State's run with destiny. He and his Tar Heels endured everything this city and state threw at them: a surprising overnight spring snowstorm, the overwhelming home-court advantage for the Spartans, the sense that Michigan State might defy all odds and continue to ride the emotional wave and actually win this title as a gift for its economically devastated state.  

   Williams testily protested that his team had a cause too.  

   "We want to win a national championship, period, the end," he said. "And if you would tell me that if Michigan State wins, it's gonna satisfy the nation's economy, then I'd say, 'Hell, let's stay poor for a little while longer.' "

   Obviously, Williams had had it with all the talk of the Spartans playing to make the people of Michigan feel better. He could have chosen his words better, but then his players went out and put their coach's tough words into serious action.   

   They had been waiting a long time for this, especially Tyler Hansbrough, the 6-9 senior, who scored 18 points, and three other veterans who came back to play another year in Chapel Hill. And then they left no doubt about how badly they wanted to win. It was over by halftime, when the Tar Heels broke the record for most points scored at the half of a title game: 55, two more than Syracuse scored in 2003 -- against Kansas and its coach, a fellow named Roy Williams.

   By that point, the Tar Heels held a 21-point lead on the Spartans, and Izzo was shaking his head as he left the court, the magic gone, having watched his team go cold and flat at the worst possible time.

   But it wasn't entirely the Spartans' fault. North Carolina was relentless, becoming one of the most dominating champions in men's NCAA history. That the final margin was 17 points was a bit deceiving. It easily could have been 30.

   The horror for Michigan State is that the last time the two teams played, in December, also at Ford Field, North Carolina won by 35. No one thought anything like that could possibly happen to the Spartans again. Then it almost did.