HOUSTON — North Carolina’s latest step on the way to a title was shaping up as strictly an inside job.

Out of nowhere, Marcus Paige figured out how to hit from 3-point land and the Tar Heels put an end to any hopes of another Syracuse comeback.

Using layups, floaters and putbacks – then, finally, three very timely 3s from Paige – the Tar Heels outmuscled Syracuse 83-66 on Saturday night to move a win away from the program’s sixth national title.

Paige finished with 13 points, and Brice Johnson and Justin Jackson led North Carolina (33-6) with 16 apiece as the Tar Heels, the lone No. 1 seed in the Final Four, beat Jim Boeheim’s 10th-seeded Orange (23-14) for the third time this season and advanced to Monday night’s title game against Villanova.

Earlier, the Wildcats made 11 of 18 shots from behind the 3-point line, debunking the theory, first advanced at the cold-shooting Final Four in 2011, that nobody could shoot in Houston’s cavernous stadium.

Then the Tar Heels, ranked 284th in the country this season from long range, reversed that one-game trend. They bricked up 3 after 3, going 0 of 10 in the first half and barely drawing iron on some of them. Paige opened the second half with North Carolina’s 11th straight miss, and for the next 10 minutes the Tar Heels (33-6) basically ignored the 3-point line.

Only when Trevor Cooney and Malachi Richardson triggered a 10-0 Syracuse run to trim a 17-point deficit to seven did the Tar Heels start thinking long range again.

Paige made three 3s and Theo Pinson hit another to stifle the rally and make Carolina almost respectable from the 3-point line: 4 of 17 for the game.

Meeks finished with 15 points and eight rebounds, including a paddy-cake putback after batting a second offensive rebound to himself off the glass. That gave the Heels a 67-53 lead.

Before Paige found his range, that was how North Carolina built its lead.

It was a reminder of the days before the 3-point shot was invented when the way to really beat a zone – and Boeheim’s 2-3 is the best in the game – was to make blink-of-an-eye passes in and around the paint and crash the offensive glass to take advantage of a defense that doesn’t put bodies on bodies when the ball goes up.

That plan still works these days.

North Carolina proved it.

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