GREENSBORO There was the sense, when North Carolina led Georgia Tech by 10 at halftime, that the natural order had been restored.

A bottom-feeder all season, appearing in the ACC tournament's bottom-feeder bracket Thursday for the first time, the Tar Heels finally remembered who they were. Fans who had hidden from them for months allowed themselves to believe.

And then the natural order was restored. The Yellow Jackets opened the second half as if they were on the court by themselves and needed only 2 1/2 minutes to tie the score.

The teams took turns leading until the final minutes. All evening they had traded mistakes. Who would play with the most poise?

OK, neither of these teams plays with any semblance of poise. But the Yellow Jackets were less un-poised than North Carolina. As a result, they won 62-58. They sent the Tar Heels out of the tournament and into whatever comes next.

North Carolina is less a team than a collection of parts. When the Tar Heels are running and rebounding, as they did in the first half, they're all right. And then they slow down, and they're terrible.

When point guard Larry Drew II handles the ball, nobody knows where it will go. It could go to a teammate, to an opponent or to Section 231, row 8.

Senior Marcus Ginyard has always been a superior complementary player. But this season he complimented opponents.

But the most offensive player is junior Will Graves. When something goes wrong he gives the world a dirty look. He looks at his teammates as if they aren't worthy. Why don't they play to his level?

Graves took 12 shots Thursday and made two, and severely missed a late three-pointer. If his teammates played to his level, they wouldn't have enough victories to make the National Invitation Tournament.

The evening was strange. The game was played at Greensboro Coliseum, the epicenter of ACC country. When the Tar Heels roll into town their bus usually drives across a red carpet and is washed, dried and detailed at halftime. But on this night, I'm not even sure they got a police escort.

In the first half, the vast majority of sections, lower and upper, featured empty seats.

This changed in the second half. This changed because fans of N.C. State and Clemson arrived. Interestingly, they invested little energy booing the Tar Heels. It was as if they knew.

The absence of North Carolina fans was striking. So quiet were they that when the Yellow Jackets began to softly chant "Tech! Tech! Tech!" fans of the Tar Heels countered with a single sound - fingers tapping the keys of their BlackBerrys.

When the Tar Heels went bad this season, their fans got going. They left.

It was as if they all suffered from a bad back.

North Carolina coach Roy Williams recruited his players intentionally. He coached them all season. He knows what they can't do.

Yet, as the game wound down, all he could do was fold his arms, not quite believing what he saw.

You'd think he'd be accustomed to it by now.