DETROIT " Wayne Ellington broke Jay Wright's heart again.
First the kid from the Philadelphia suburbs with the smooth jump shot chose to play for North Carolina over Wright's Villanova program.
Now he's a big reason the Wildcats' surprising Final Four run is over and the Tar Heels have moved on to play for the national championship most everyone expected them to win in the preseason.
Ellington scored 13 of his 20 points in the first half to help the Tar Heels beat the Wildcats 83-69 on Saturday night. His fast start was a big reason why the Tar Heels controlled the game from tip-off, helping them push out to a double-digit lead and keeping the Wildcats playing catch-up the rest of the night.
And while he had a relatively quiet second half, he came through with a pair of key 3-pointers that helped the Tar Heels (33-4) finally put the game away.
"It's a stage," Ellington said. "When you're a basketball player, this is where you want to be. You want to be in front of everybody and everybody's watching, and you want to perform."
Ellington finished 7-for-14 from the floor and hit five 3-pointers, his second strong shooting performance of the season on the raised court of the cavernous Ford Field. In December, he had 17 points on 8-for-14 shooting here in the 98-63 rout of Michigan State, now the last team standing between the Tar Heels and their season-long pursuit of the title that got away last season.
"You've just got to focus on the rim," Ellington said. "A lot of people say you see everything behind it, but you've got to zero in on the rim " and you don't see anything except that."
It was exactly the type of performance that North Carolina coach Roy Williams had envisioned when he recruited the 6-foot-4 guard out of Wynnewood, Pa. Unfortunately, the same could be said of Wright " who playfully said this week that Ellington's decision to head south "broke my heart, man."
This time, Ellington probably made him feel far worse.
He was a key piece of North Carolina's overwhelming attack that was just far too much for the same defense that had locked down on North Carolina's Atlantic Coast Conference rival Duke in the NCAA tournament's round of 16. He was the perfect complement to Tyler Hansbrough inside, finding frequent open looks on kickouts or on Ty Lawson's penetration from the point.
In an unusual statistic, North Carolina improved to 48-0 in Ellington's three-year career when he shoots at least 50 percent.
"If we have somebody scoring from the outside, they can't jam down and double-team and triple-team Tyler," Williams said. "I've said for years since I became a head coach that I love balance, that offensively you can score inside and outside. ... We do need Wayne and Danny (Green) to make shots."
Ellington made it look easy, too. He scored North Carolina's first basket on a soft, high-arcing shot in the first 90 seconds that left senior teammate Bobby Frasor a bit bewildered.
"I'm like, 'What are you doing?' when he shot it and it drops perfectly through the net," Frasor said. "And that's just a typical Wayne Ellington shot right there."
Then he came through with a 3 from the right corner off a feed from Lawson for an 8-6 lead about 3 minutes in, a shot that turned out to be the go-ahead basket. North Carolina leading comfortably for most of the game, with Villanova getting as close as five points early in the second half before the Tar Heels pushed the lead right back to double digits.
Then, with the Wildcats hanging around, Ellington took a feed from Lawson in transition and knocked down a 3-pointer in front of the North Carolina bench to push the gap to 70-55 with 6:53 to play. He struck again a few minutes later, making a 3 from the opposite side to give North Carolina its largest lead at 75-57 with 4:46 left.
It was a strong bounceback performance from an off game (nine points on 3-for-9 shooting) against Oklahoma in the regional finals. And he also had nine rebounds and four assists in 35 minutes, the kind of steady all-around play that can only help his goal of being known as more than just a shooter.
Now, with one more strong performance Monday night, he can help the Tar Heels accomplish a lot more.