CHAPEL HILL, N.C. -- Roy Williams spent the past few days running his North Carolina players hard during practice. Once the game started Saturday, it was UC Santa Barbara's turn to run.
Tyler Hansbrough scored 21 points and No. 1 North Carolina bounced back from a lackluster performance by dominating the Gauchos 105-70.
"Our plan all the time is to push the ball, push the tempo, play as fast as we can," Williams said. "If we're going up and down the court so blessed fast, I don't have time to have negative thoughts."
Marcus Ginyard added a career-high 17 points, Wayne Ellington also had 17 and Ty Lawson finished with 15 for the Tar Heels (11-0), who shot 57 percent in continuing their best start since the 1997-98 team won its first 17 games.
But Williams was less than satisfied after the Tar Heels' most recent outing, a sleepy 10-point victory three days earlier against Nicholls State. After that game, the Hall of Fame coach said his goal for the next day's practice was to run his team hard enough to "see how many guys I can make throw up."
North Carolina responded with just the kind of focused defensive performance the coach was after, with his team pressuring the passing lanes, forcing 17 turnovers and regularly generating easy baskets.
"They had no choice (to play hard) this time. Either that, or get on the track team," Williams said.
The Tar Heels never trailed, led by 20 points at halftime and made it a 30-point game just four minutes into the second half.
"We didn't seem to have any answers to slow them down," UC Santa Barbara coach Bob Williams said.
The only question was whether they would crack the 100-point mark for the fourth time this season. Football player Greg Little, making his debut on in a basketball game, took care of that by hitting a 3 from the right corner with 53 seconds left to make it 101-70 and send the crowd into delirium.
"Nobody wants to see Coach that mad again, so everybody's picked up their play," Lawson said. "When we've got a team down 20, get it to 30, make the game out of reach. We're trying to do everything to please (Williams)."
James Powell and Alex Harris scored 17 points apiece and Nedim Pajevic had 12 for the Gauchos (10-2), who were denied in their bid to match the best 12-game start in school history. UC Santa Barbara's eight-game winning streak -- its longest since opening 1988-89 with 11 straight victories -- also was snapped in its first meeting with a No. 1 team since knocking off eventual national champion UNLV in 1990.
"When you play someone of that athletic ability, that physical talent, it exposes areas that you're not very disciplined or committed to," Bob Williams said. "And so when that gets exposed (you go) one of two ways -- either you learn from that, clean it up, or you're never going to play against somebody of this level and be successful."
Danny Green had 11 points and Deon Thompson had a career-high 12 rebounds for North Carolina.
Hansbrough -- who has four straight games with at least 20 points, and eight on the season -- had his second overwhelming performance against the Gauchos. He had the first double-double of his career two seasons ago in the only previous meeting between the schools.
"The difference was that we got out to a better start defensively, got some stops, didn't let the other team get any confidence built up, and it really helped us," Hansbrough said.
The only blemish on North Carolina's latest dominating performance was a severe drought from long distance.
The Tar Heels scored 52 points in the first half despite missing all five of their attempts from 3-point range. They misfired on their first eight shots from that distance before Bobby Frasor finally knocked down a 3 from the right wing with 12½ minutes left, and they finished 3-of-16 from behind the arc.
"Wayne, I told him to make layups because he wasn't making anything else," Roy Williams said of Ellington, who missed all four of his 3-point attempts.
