Two of college basketball’s most prestigious programs will meet tonight for the NCAA Division I Men’s Basketball National Championship. The No.1 seed Kansas Jayhawks and No.8 seed North Carolina Tar Heels will meet for the title at Caesars Superdome in New Orleans, LA.
The Tar Heels (29-9) have won six championships, most recently in 2017. They are third on the all-time wins list and first for total Final Four appearances with 21. The Jayhawks (33-6) have more wins than any Division I team in history with 2,356, have won three National Championships, most recently in 2008, and have made 16 Final Four appearances.
Kansas and North Carolina have met once before in a national championship game. In 1957, the Tar Heels won a 54-53 triple-overtime classic over the Jayhawks and the legendary Wilt Chamberlain. The Jayhawks will hope to avenge that loss and their 2012 title game loss to Kentucky. Kansas has not been back to a championship game since.
The Jayhawks entered the National Championship with an 81-65 victory over the Villanova Wildcats in the first national semifinal Saturday night. Kansas hit 13-of-24 from three-point range and outscored the Wildcats by 16 points in the paint. Jayhawks center David McCormack had 25 points and nine rebounds, while first-team All-American guard Ochai Agbaji hit six of seven three-pointers to finish with 21 points.
Kansas players know reaching the National Championship game is not enough for their historic program. They are also hoping to give their Hall-of-Fame coach Bill Self his second championship win and cement his place among the greatest coaches of all time.
“We want to go out there and fight for him,” Jayhawks’ reserve center Mitch Lightfoot said of Self. “He means the world to us, and we want to go fight for him.”
“You come to Kansas for big games, but you don’t come to Kansas to play in the Elite Eight,” said Jayhawks guard Christian Braun, who had 10 points against Villanova. “You don’t come to Kansas to play in the Final Four. You come to play for a championship.”
The No.8 seed North Carolina is hoping to match the 1985 eight-seeded Villanova national championship team as the lowest seed ever to win a title.
The Tar Heels will have to beat a Hall-of-Fame coach for the second consecutive game. They sent legendary Duke coach Mike Krzyzewski, “Coach K,” into retirement with a thrilling 81-77 victory in the second national semifinal of Saturday night. The game featured 18 lead changes and 12 ties.
Guard Caleb Love led the Tar Heels with 28 points and hit a dagger three-point shot with 25 seconds remaining. Their center Armando Bacot had 11 points and was tremendous on the boards as he pulled down 21 rebounds.
With around two minutes remaining, the teams traded three consecutive three-pointers. Duke’s Wendell Moore Jr.’s three-pointer with 1:19 left ended the sequence and gave Duke a 74-73 lead.
The Tar Heels hit two free throws, and then Love hit one of the all-time biggest shots in Tar Heel history with his three-pointer to take a 78-74 lead. Love made three more free throws down the stretch to complete their upset victory.
“I don’t know if it was belief or it was just us being delusional. I mean, at every point of the season, we knew if we came together as a team that we could get to the championship,” said Bacot. “And that’s what we did.”
North Carolina is led by first-year head coach Hubert Davis, who will have to hope his Tar Heels can turn the page quickly after the emotional victory over their arch-rival in the semifinal.
The Tar Heels got off to a shaky start under their rookie head coach, which included a handful of lopsided losses early in the season. North Carolina was not a lock as a tournament team until the last month of the regular season. They now come into the National Championship game hot, having won 10 of their previous 11 games.
Both teams will hope to cap their magical seasons with a National Championship win to add to their program’s storied legacies.