UNC looks capable of winning a national title. The win over Michigan State proved the point

Now that is a UNC team that could win the national championship.

Down 26-14 after the first 11 minutes to Michigan State, the Tar Heels got the Carolina blue train rolling in Charlotte on Saturday, to the delight of a crowd that made it feel very much like a home game.

By halftime, UNC led by nine points. By the end, the Tar Heels had blasted the Spartans, 85-69, in an entertaining contest that was closer than the score indicated.

The Tar Heels needed a test in Charlotte, and they got it Saturday night. Michigan State “punched first,” as UNC coach Hubert Davis said.

Said Davis of Michigan State: “Their physicality, their will, their want-to in the first 10 minutes just overwhelmed us. ... They were playing better than us. And we came into the huddle and said, ‘Look, we can’t talk about any basketball stuff until we join the fight.’”

And join the fight UNC did. By the end of this test, the Tar Heels had prevailed with brutality and beauty, matching push for push but also spreading all their feathers like a peacock to show just how much there actually is to this UNC team. There was the first-half run — UNC outscored Michigan State 26-5 — and then another one in the second half when Michigan State pulled to within two points.

The Tar Heels have just about everything — a star big man (Armando Bacot), a shooter who was the ACC Player of the Year (RJ Davis), an energetic combo scorer/rebounder (Harrison Ingram) and a supporting cast that includes a player who scored 31 points against Duke (Cormac Ryan) and a guard who had two huge blocks in 90 seconds Saturday (Seth Trimble). They can be beaten, of course, but they won’t be if they can play with the energy and style they had against Michigan State for the game’s last 29 minutes.

UNC (29-7) advanced to the Sweet 16 in Los Angeles, where it will go in as the favorite and the No. 1 seed in the West next weekend. Win two games there and the Tar Heels will make it to the Final Four for the second time in coach Hubert Davis’ three-year tenure.

And in a delicious subplot, if both UNC and No. 2 seed Arizona win one more game apiece, the Tar Heels will face friend-turned-foe Caleb Love in the Elite Eight in L.A.

This Charlotte regional needed some drama, and UNC supplied it. The first four games were decided by an average of 23 points on Thursday, but then No. 9 seed Michigan State had that early 12-point lead on No. 1 UNC Saturday. The sellout crowd at Spectrum Center was murmuring and nervous. UNC hadn’t successfully come back in an NCAA tournament game from a deficit that large since the Tar Heels trailed Southern Cal by 16 points in 2007 and won.

But then it began, with an Elliot Cadeau old-fashioned three-point play (Cadeau’s first points of the NCAA Tournament; his three-point shot is still missing in action).

And suddenly UNC got good and the building got loud — really loud. I was in the Spectrum Center exactly a week ago, watching the Eagles, and when the first bars of “Hotel California” sounded — it was like that. For the rest of the game.

There were contributions from somewhat unusual sources. Trimble had the two blocks (“Seth is the best defender in the ACC,” RJ Davis said).

Paxson Wojcik led a fast break and gave up a layup to throw the ball outside to RJ Davis for an open corner three. “Like something the Golden State Warriors would do,” Bacot said, and of course Davis’ shot went in.

The Tar Heels also were the beneficiary of a little luck in this game, in which they improved to 14-1 all-time in NCAA tourney games in Charlotte and 36-2 in the state of North Carolina. Davis (20 points) banked in a three-pointer with the shot clock winding down in the second half. Ingram, who went 5 for 7 from three-point range, saw one of those threes circle the rim like a child wondering if she should jump into a wading pool before dropping in.

“When that one went in,” Ingram said, “I knew it was our night.”

The Tar Heels will face stiffer tests than Michigan State soon, when they play the winner of Sunday’s Grand Canyon-Alabama game on Thursday in L.A. and then, possibly, Arizona on Saturday. But for a couple of days they can savor this Michigan State victory, when they had to come up with the goods or go home and did so.

By the end, the chant of “Tar! Heels! Tar! Heels!” was ringing out in Spectrum Center, which held a sellout crowd of more than 18,000 fans, and this UNC team looked very much like it had all the ingredients for a national title — if they get stirred together correctly.