Tierra Ruffin-Pratt scored a game-high 22 points, Xylina McDaniel had her second double-double in four games and North Carolina won the Preseason WNIT for the second time, beating Iowa in convincing fashion, 77-64, Sunday afternoon at Carver-Hawkeye Arena.

McDaniel finished with 15 points and 14 rebounds and her three-point play with 3:24 to go snuffed out Iowa’s final threat of the day. Iowa (3-1) was led by Morgan Johnson, who finished with 20 points and 11 boards.

Ruffin-Pratt’s three-quarter-court bank shot to beat the halftime buzzer capped a dominant 20 minutes for the Tar Heels. The Hawkeyes led 8-5 after five minutes but an 18-5 run by Carolina put the visitors ahead to stay.

UNC (4-0) was 18 of 36 from the field and 7 of 14 from beyond the arc in the first half, an impressive output from a team that shot just 37 percent in its first three games and came in averaging 65 points per contest.

The Hawkeyes outscored Carolina 39-30 in the second half but never got closer than 12 points.

Krista Gross added 13 points and eight rebounds, while Waltiea Rolle chipped in 11 points, five boards and three blocks. The Tar Heels won the rebounding battle 45-43 and forced 25 Iowa turnovers.

Ruffin-Pratt was named the tournament’s most valuable player, while McDaniel also earned all-tournament team honors.

Carolina will have five days before taking the court on consecutive days next weekend. The Tar Heels host La Salle Nov. 24 at noon and then welcome UNC Asheville Nov. 25 at 6 p.m.

The North Carolina field hockey team reached the NCAA Championship game for the fourth year in a row but came away with the same result for the third year in a row, falling 3-2 to Princeton on Sunday afternoon at Old Dominion’s Powhatan Sports Complex. Top-ranked UNC finished 23-2 as the national runner-up while No. 2 Princeton (21-1) claimed its first national title.

It marked the third year in a row that UNC has finished as the runner-up by a 3-2 score. Carolina won the 2009 title over Maryland 3-2, then lost to the Terrapins in overtime 3-2 in 2010 and 2011.

“I want to congratulate Princeton on a stellar year,” UNC coach Karen Shelton said. “It was a typical national championship game – there were some ebbs and flows to it. I thought both teams fought incredibly hard. We were pleased to get an early goal, but Princeton fought back – it was a game of turns.

“But I’m incredibly proud of our kids and our effort. I told the team this morning that I didn’t want how I felt about our effort and our season to get lost in whether we won or lost (today). We had a really good year.

“I’m proud of the group. I’m disappointed with the loss, but that’s sport – you win some and you lose some, and that’s the way it goes.”

UNC scored first, on a corner in the 12th minute of play. On the team’s fourth corner of the game, sophomore Charlotte Craddock sent a shot past Princeton goalkeeper Christina Maida. Seniors Katie Ardrey and Kelsey Kolojejchick, both of whom rank in UNC’s top four for career assists, assisted on the play.

Princeton answered in the 18th minute, on its first corner of the game. Senior Kathleen Sharkey, who leads the nation in scoring, took the shot, which bounced off a UNC defender and into the goal. Assists went to Katie Reinprecht and Julia Reinprecht.

UNC had five shots and six corners in the 1-1 first half, while Princeton had six shots and five corners.

Carolina moved ahead again in the 47th minute. With UNC playing man-up while a Princeton player was sidelined by a yellow card, Craddock launched a shot and senior Katie Plyler, positioned right beside the Princeton keeper, deflected it in from the left side of the cage to put the Tar Heels up 2-1.

Princeton tied the game in the 57th minute. Ammer saved the Tigers’ first shot, by Sharkey, but Allison Evans gathered the rebound on the other side and scored from the left post to make the score 2-2.

The Tigers took their first lead of the game on a penalty stroke called with 10:06 to play. On the first stroke by a Tar Heel opponent this season, Amanda Bird sent her shot past Ammer to put Princeton up 3-2.

Shelton called a timeout at 8:04 and pulled Ammer in favor of an extra field player, which is how UNC played the rest of the game. With four forwards – Craddock, Jaclyn Gaudioso Radvany, Loren Shealy and Sinead Loughran – in the game, UNC quickly drew two corners but was unable to score on either.

The Tar Heels finished with 13 shots, eight of them in the second half, but weren’t able to get the equalizer and fell short of gaining the seventh crown in program history.

Craddock, senior Caitlin Van Sickle and freshman Emily Wold were named to the NCAA All-Tournament Team.

The game marked the end of the Carolina careers of nine seniors: Ardrey, Gaudioso Radvany, Emily Kole, Kolojejchick, Meghan Lyons, Kate Nealon, Plyler, Caitlin Powers and Van Sickle.

Playing late night in a game that started at 11 p.m. Eastern time, the North Carolina Tar Heels weren’t seen by as many people nationally as usual. In fact, because of a technical snafu and a long football game, a lot of people missed the entire first half.

ESPNU was showing a Florida Atlantic-Florida International game that ran long. There was a 35-minute power delay and a slew of injuries and touchdowns, making for a slow game. Announcers put Tar Heel and Long Beach State fans at ease by announcing that ESPNU in those markets would switch away from the football game to the basketball game in time for the tip off.

Unfortunately, those with DirecTV did not get the switch, only Time Warner Cable customers did. That means that not only did most of the country miss the entire first half of the game but anyone in North Carolina with satellite service rather than cable also missed the first half.

Tech savvy people with a good enough Internet connection could watch the first half on the computer on ESPN3. Of course anyone recording the game off TV for viewing later or posterity was out of luck, unless they had cable.

The announcers did not clarify that you had to have cable to see the entire game. In fact, there seems to have been a disconnect between ESPN and satellite officials. You’d think they’d have it worked out before the season and, if not, they’d have a hotline contact to fix such things immediately.

North Carolina led just 33-32 at the half but wound up winning 78-63.

The top-ranked North Carolina field hockey team advanced to its 15th NCAA Championship game with a 6-1 win over No. 5 Syracuse Friday afternoon at Powhatan Sports Complex. The Tar Heels will play Sunday afternoon for the program’s seventh national title, facing Princeton at 1 p.m.

Sophomore Charlotte Craddock scored three goals in the win for her fourth hat trick of the year. Senior Jaclyn Gaudioso Radvany scored two and junior Sinead Loughran added one as the Tar Heels, the No. 1 overall seed in tournament, improved to 23-1 with a win over the only team to have beaten them this season.

“Congratulations to Syracuse,” UNC coach Karen Shelton said. “I admire the way they play and I’m proud of my kids for advancing. I feel like we had an explosion at the end of the first half that was impressive and something we haven’t see all season. I was very pleased with that offensive output. Syracuse required our intensity and total effort. It brought the best out of our kids.”

Syracuse won the teams’ first matchup, 1-0 in overtime in Syracuse on Sept. 1, and the Orange held the first lead in this one. In the eighth minute of play on a penalty corner, UNC goalkeeper Sassi Ammer saved Syracuse’s initial shot but Lauren Brooks grabbed the rebound and put it back in from the left post.

The Orange lead lasted 63 seconds before UNC used a fast break off a restart to score a goal of its own. Craddock fed the ball to Gaudioso Radvany, who had just come into the game. The forward from Lawrence, N.J., deflected the ball behind SU keeper Leann Stiver from the left side to tie the game at 1-1.

The teams were even until the 32nd minute. On a penalty corner, senior Katie Ardrey inserted the ball straight to Craddock, who sent a rocket past Stiver and started an impressive stretch of offense for the Tar Heels. UNC scored three times in 1:02 to take a 4-1 lead into halftime. Just 24 seconds after Craddock’s goal, sophomore Loren Shealy sent a ball across the cage, where it bounced off the SU goalkeeper. Loughran, a forward from Dublin, Ireland, grabbed it and sent it back in for a score. Thirty-four seconds after that, freshman Emily Wold connected with Craddock, who sent a hard shot past Stivers to put UNC up by three.

“I want to give a shout-out to our goalkeeper, Sassi Ammer,” Shelton said. “I thought she had a critical save for us in the first half. Syracuse scored first and we answered right away, but then we had to make a critical save and she was there.”

The Tar Heels added two more in the second half. In the 44th minute, Craddock’s cross set up a play for Gaudioso Radvany, who scored her 12th goal of the season. And in the 56th minute, after Syracuse had pulled Stivers to try to gain an advantage with another field player, Craddock gathered a loose ball following a blocked shot and scored to make the game 6-1.

“Syracuse brought out the best in us,” Shelton said. “You get to a final four and you want to play well. We knew we had to be focused, we knew we had to work hard, we knew we had to play as a team. We have firepower, but we haven’t really seen it explode quite like that. But that was great. We want to be peaking at this time.”

Craddock , a forward from Wolverhampton, England, set a school record for goals by a sophomore with 25 this season.

This marks the fourth consecutive year UNC has played in the NCAA title game. The Tar Heels won in 2009 and fell in overtime to Maryland in 2010 and 2011.

– News release