With a ticket to last season's Final Four there for the punching, North Carolina's perimeter shooters went so cold late in the East Regional championship game against Georgetown that the Hoyas were able to win by 12 points in overtime.

A week earlier, Maryland flamed out of the tournament in virtually the same manner against Butler. A perimeter drought tripped Georgia Tech right away in a 67-63 first-round loss to UNLV.

Virginia Tech, seeded fifth in the West Regional, couldn't crack the 50-point barrier in its second-round loss to Southern Illinois.

One by one, all seven ACC teams in the NCAA were eliminated by opponents who found a way to exploit the league's relatively short supply of mid-range marksmen.

The conference that produced J.J. Redick, Rodney Monroe and Walter Davis among many others gradually has undergone an offensive personality change.

"It's basically an inside league," Virginia Tech coach Seth Greenberg said. "There are exceptions, obviously. Virginia has an awesome outside game. Duke, over the years, has been better than anybody. But more teams than not are trying to get the ball inside first."

With good reason. Inside-oriented teams generally get off higher percentage shots and tend to go the free-throw line a lot. But something else has happened, too. It's the first thing UNC coach Roy Williams notices when he goes back and reviews game films from the '80s and '90s.

"It's doggone hard to even get off a shot on the wings," Williams said. "That's how much defensive pressure has changed. You look at some of those older games and what you see are a lot of skinny guys firing away without anyone right there in their face a lot of times.

"What you see now is exactly the opposite. Almost every player on the court is bulked up, and the offensive player has to fight to move an inch, whether he's 3 feet from the goal or 20 feet. There's a lot more defensive pressure, and it's physical defensive pressure. It's bumping and banging, jersey grabbing."

Just launching a somewhat painless jumper against quality opposition requires elaborate scheming and constant movement by offensive players.

Short of radical changes in officiating, teams with strong commitments to outside shooting are forced to swap favorable offensive rebounding positioning to set screens for shooters.

"It's a lot of work," Virginia sharpshooter Sean Singletary said. "Guys who can set those screens outside probably have to work harder than anyone else on the court."

Singletary converted 79 times on 3-point attempts last season. The league leader in 3-pointers made per game was Miami guard Jack McClinton, who had 91 for an average of 2.9 per game. But nationally, McClinton's rank was a fairly modest 33rd. No other ACC player finished among the top 100.

Among teams, only Virginia, at No. 40 with an average eight 3s per-game, cracked the national top 125. UNC ranked No. 247 with 5.7 per game, Duke ranked No. 214 (6.0 per game) and N.C. State No. 221 (5.9 per game).

En route to 31 wins, the Tar Heels ranked second nationally in scoring (85.7 points per game) and fourth in overall field-goal shooting percentage (49.9). The argument can be made that the Heels got by just fine without a lot of outside gunning. But when they needed just one midrange jumper to put away Georgetown in regulation, it wasn't in the cards.