As I look down the bracket, things look up for North Carolina

RALEIGH, N.C. -- Just so you know, I'm not watching North Carolina beat the bejeezus out of ninth-seeded Arkansas. Not really. I'm sitting courtside as it happens, but I'm not watching. I'm writing this story.

Every now and then I'll look up. The crowd will make a loud noise, up I look, and there's Tyler Hansbrough hanging on the rim. Or Deon Thompson or Marcus Ginyard or another Tar Heel. This game was 9-0, North Carolina, after 2½ minutes. And it got worse.

It's almost not fair. UNC coach Roy Williams has too many toys to play with. (AP)

So I'm not watching. This has become an intra-squad scrimmage, and I didn't come to the NCAA tournament to watch an intra-squad scrimmage. From the opening tap North Carolina wasn't competing with Arkansas. North Carolina was competing with North Carolina, and that's the way it could be for another game or two. Washington State can't hang with North Carolina. Neither can any possible Elite Eight opponent not named Tennessee.

Not this North Carolina.

There has been another version of North Carolina this season, and Washington State could beat that one. So could Louisville. So could a lot of teams. That North Carolina, the one that looks around the locker room at all its star power and allows itself to play fat and contented, lost to mediocre Maryland at home and nearly lost to a bunch of other so-so teams, like Florida State and Virginia and Virginia Tech. That North Carolina would have struggled to beat Arkansas on Sunday.

This North Carolina? This North Carolina is now beating Arkansas 35-11.

This North Carolina is making me hate my bracket posted elsewhere on this website, because in that bracket, UCLA is the national champion. The Bruins will have to beat North Carolina in the final to win it all, but my bracket says it will happen.

I'm saying right here: No, it won't.

Not if this North Carolina shows up four more times.

This North Carolina is the reason the Tar Heels were the No. 1 overall NCAA tournament seed in a season with four or five other worthy candidates. This North Carolina definitely has the best starting five in college basketball and maybe the best bench and obviously the right coach to run this conglomeration of talent. Can we talk about reincarnation briefly on this Easter Sunday? Let's do that, because it occurs to me that Roy Williams might have been Ming the Merciless in another life.

Williams recruits like a starving man at a breakfast buffet, grabbing three plates of food and not caring if there's enough for anyone else. Williams brings McDonald's All-Americans off the bench and has them play as fast and as hard as they can, and as soon as they get tired he tells them to raise their hand so other McDonald's Americans can replace them and play as hard and as fast as they can.

It's sick. But it hasn't happened consistently this season. On occasion the Tar Heels have come to the arena to play, and on those occasions they have beaten Virginia Tech 92-53 or Nevada 106-70 or Kent State 90-61. They beat Mount St. Mary's 113-74 on Friday in the first round, and Mount St. Mary's actually played pretty well. During timeouts its players were coming to the bench with their chests puffed out, not caring that they trailed North Carolina by 25 because they weren't really playing North Carolina. They were playing some inhuman monster.