COLLEGE PARK -- It may have been impolitic for Calvin Hill, the father of former Duke basketball star Grant Hill, to be seen openly rooting for a North Carolina Tar Heel, as he did last night for Charlotte Smith, but then Smith is no ordinary Tar Heel.
Smith did just about anything she wanted to last night, powering 12th- ranked North Carolina to an 86-70 win over Maryland before 1,778 at Cole Field House.
Smith, a 6-foot-senior from Shelby, N.C., scored 28 points and pulled down 16 rebounds -- both game highs -- looking like a leading candidate for Atlantic Coast Conference, and perhaps national, Player of the Year honors.
"It looks incredible to the media and the public, but we see Charlotte every day in practice and in the games," said guard Marion Jones. "Game in and game out, she's strong and she's consistent."
Smith's double double was her 16th such effort of the season, and her eighth in a row. About the only flaw in her game was seven turnovers.
"I almost had a triple double," said Smith, who met Calvin Hill in New York last week when she won two ESPY awards for her game-winning shot in the national championship game last year and as the top women's player of last season.
Jones, a sophomore guard who had 22 points in only 19 minutes, was no small factor in the Tar Heels' domination, which was much more thorough than the 16-point victory margin would indicate.
The two combined to score North Carolina's first 13 points and to shoot a blistering 23-for-30 from the field.
"We've seen that of them before," said coach Chris Weller, whose Terps have lost seven in a row. "They're great players. They ran at us. They gambled in their defense. They have the physical ability to gamble."
The Terps (10-16, 2-13 in the Atlantic Coast Conference) actually stayed with the physically superior Tar Heels (24-4, 11-4) for a good stretch of the first half, capitalizing on sloppy North Carolina play to trail 32-27 with 2:57 left in the half.
Maryland senior Kesha Camper scored a team-high 14 points in her final home game. The Terps close the regular season Sunday at Virginia.