Like father, like son.

Twenty-nine years ago, Scott May led Indiana to the national title with a maestro 26-point, eight-rebound performance. Last night, it was his son Sean’s turn to match it, as his 26 points and nine rebounds leading North Carolina past Illinois 75-70 in the national championship game.

Celebrating his 21st birthday (man, that’s gonna be some post-game party), May thoroughly dominated the interior at both ends, allowing the Tar Heels to overcome a poor performance from the rest of the troops. Besides May, the nation’s highest-scoring team looked very ordinary against the Illinois onslaught. His teammates shot just 17-of-42 from the floor (40.4%) and a pitiful 6-of-11 from the line.

Fortunately, May was so dominant it didn’t matter. May tried 11 shots and made 10 of them, despite getting fouled on two of the makes. He also hit six of his eight free throw attempts. Overall, that’s 26 points from 14 possessions – in other words, near perfect.

May was helped by Illinois’s defensive approach, which was to play him one-on-one and hope their big men could at least slow him down. They couldn’t. May destroyed the single coverage, calmly dribbling and spinning into position around the rim, and using his bulk to overpower a series of scrawny Illinois defenders.

It didn’t help for Illinois that starting center James Augustine got the Tim Duncan-in-Athens treatment from the refs, fouling out on five touch fouls and finishing the night scoreless. That forced Illini coach Bruce Weber, who fashioned his blazer for the game out of a leftover Home Depot smock, to use the less physical Jack Ingram for much of the game.

Despite the mismatch, the Illini only aggressively double-teamed May once. They paid for it, too. May calmly wheeled to the baseline and fired a cross-court pass to a wide-open Jawad Williams, who canned a 3-pointer. That left Weber to choose his poison: Give May two against single coverage or double-team and give somebody else a 3. He chose the former.

Illinois fans will wonder if they shouldn’t have doubled more often. North Carolina played virtually the entire game with a non-scorer on the court, alternating Jackie Manuel and David Noel. The two combined for just one point, and would have been perfect for an Illinois player to gamble off of. But Weber didn’t turn to that strategy, and it may have cost them the title.

May’s offensive excellence was obvious, but less apparent was the way he owned the interior at the defensive end. Despite May’s scoring outburst, Illinois defended well enough to win this game. Where they suffered was their inability to attack the interior when they had the ball. Illinois was so incapable of threatening UNC in the paint that they took just six free throws the entire game.

The Illini barely even tried, preferring to hoist jumper after jumper from downtown. Illinois attempted 40 3-pointers – yes, 40 – but only ventured inside the arc for 29 shots. Much of the reason was because of May’s inside dominance, symbolized by the play where Ingram went up for a shot and May simply ripped it out of his hands.

Still, Illinois would have won if more of those 3-pointer had fallen. Helped by the officials’ overlooking of some rampant illegal screening, the Illini had one open 3-pointer after another in the second half, but couldn’t convert. Illinois shot 12-for-40 (30%) from afar, well short of its 38% success rate on the season. The guard trio of Luther Head, Deron Williams, and Dee Brown carried Illinois all season, but they were the main culprits last night, shooting 10-for-34 on triples.

May wasn’t the only story yesterday. His coach, Roy Williams, got the proverbial monkey off his back by winning his first national title. Williams earned it, too, throwing in some nice wrinkles to keep his team in the game. He switched to a zone in the first half when point guard Raymond Felton picked up two quick fouls.

Throughout the rest of the night, Williams managed to hide him enough that Felton was still there to make a key steal and hit the game-clinching foul shots in the final minute. The zone also proved fairly stubborn in containing Illinois, and the screening that was set ting up so many open 3s became tougher to pull off.

Freshman Marvin Williams also played a key role after looking his age much of the game. With the score tied at 70 after Illinois rallied from a 15-point deficit, the Tar Heels took the lead for good when Williams rose up and reached out with his left hand to tip in a wild miss by Rashad McCants. It will provide a nice memory for Williams from what is certain to be his only year of college ball, and also reminded scouts why he’s so highly coveted at the next level.

And while we’re at it, hats off to the tournament in general, one of the most exciting in memory. This one had the rare combination of a heavy sprinkling of early upsets, spellbinding regional finals, and two high-quality teams meeting in the final. The latter is a less common phenomenon than one might think. This is the first time in 30 years that we’ve had no. 1 playing no. 2 in the final, because normally those upsets in the earlier rounds take one of the favorites out of the picture.

The UNC-Illinois meeting lived up to the hype. While one can quibble about strategy or spots of cold shooting, the teams showed their quality in other ways. Neither team committed a turnover in the first 12 minutes of the second half; Illinois’s first miscue didn’t come until its second-to-last possession when Felton made a key steal of Luther Head’s pass. The intensity throughout was commendable, even when the execution suffered.

But ultimately, the night belonged to May. Because of him, the Tar Heels owned the paint. Because of him, the Illini were left with the 3-pointer as their sole offensive weapon. And because of him, North Carolina is the national champion.