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NEW ORLEANS — It all depends on one final game.
North Carolina and Kansas—two blue bloods in men’s college basketball—will meet for the Division I national championship Monday night at the Superdome.
The Tar Heels (29-9) are seeking the program’s seventh NCAA title, winning championships in 1957, 1982, 1993, 2005, 2009, and 2017. 6-5 in title matches. North Carolina’s most recent championship game loss came to Villanova in 2016. The Tar Heels, coached by Roy Williams, returned to the finals a year later to beat Gonzaga. With just 13, UCLA has played more titles than North Carolina. The Bruins are 11-2 in such games.
The Jayhawks (33-6) are 3-6 in the championship games, having won the title in 1952, 1988 and 2008. 2012. Four years ago, Self’s team defeated Calipari’s Memphis team, which includes Derrick Rose, in the championship game.
Here’s what you need to watch for Monday’s game, which is expected to kick off at 9:20 PM ET on TNT and TBS on Monday:
Hubert Davis can do something no other coach can.
Hubert Davis of North Carolina is one victory away to become the first person to win a Division I men’s basketball championship in his first full season as coach.
In 1989, Steve Fisher became Michigan’s interim head coach just before the NCAA tournament and went 6-0 towards the championship. Jim Calhoun was in his 27th season as head coach when he won. first title, the same goes for Jim Boeheim in Syracuse. Roy Williams was in his 17th season as head coach when he won his first championship with North Carolina in 2005. Mike Krzyzewski won the first of five titles in his 11th season at Duke and 16th as head coach.
Davis, 51, spent 12 years playing in the NBA and nine years as Williams’ assistant before replacing him last April. led the Tar Heels to a victory over reigning champion Baylor; beloved of the tournament, St. Peter’s; and their most hated rival, Duke=, in Krzyzewski’s last match.
Nine other freshmen coaches have led a team to the Final Four, most recently Bill Guthridge with North Carolina in 1998. sThe fourth Tar Heels coach has reached the Final Four.
“I’m tired of being thankful,” Davis said after the national semifinals. “I think about the experiences I might have had. I always dreamed of being a part of the program. And thinking that I should play for them, that I should come back and be the assistant coach, and now I’m head coach of North Carolina and we’re in the national championship game.”
“Looking back, everything that mattered in my life happened because they gave me this opportunity and the chance to be a part of this program. My wife and I fell in love there. We got married there. We came back after playing in the NBA, we raised our three kids there. Now I’m the head coach there. It’s just a pretty cool deal.”
Davis was asked if Michael Jordan, who played for North Carolina in the 1980s, is expected to be in New Orleans on Monday. Jordan attended the 2017 Final Four in Glendale, Arizona, where the Tar Heels won.
“That would be great,” he said. “I just don’t want it to show up. I want it to play.”
David McCormack will be a big factor for Kansas.
At 6 feet 10 inches and 250 pounds, David McCormack, a Kansas veteran, has a lot to deal with.
Against Villanova’s weak front line, he had 25 points and 9 rebounds on 12 on 10 shooting. This was followed by a 15-point, 4-rebound game against Miami.
McCormack thinks he will play a critical role on Monday, especially if North Carolina’s Armando Bacot isn’t completely healthy after he stepped on the toe of teammate Leaky Black on Saturday.
North Carolina coach Hubert Davis said on Sunday that X-rays of Bacot’s ankle came back negative, but he was “a little sore”.
“He’s obviously a great match for this task,” Davis said. “In the end, the factor that determines who will win the championship may be the winner of this matchup,” he said.
Bacot played 21 rebounds against Duke and averaged 16.8 per game in the tournament.
“I always said he was the only guy on our team to get a 15 and a 10 just by being there,” Kansas coach Bill Self said of McCormack after the Villanova game. “She was amazing.”
Caleb Love made a difference for North Carolina.
Duke, St. It was the dream school of Caleb Love, who graduated from Christian Brothers College High School in St. His father, The St. Louis told Post-Dispatch in 2019.
But North Carolina guard Love didn’t want to hear it after scoring 22 of the 28-highest points in the second half of the Tar Heels’ 81-77 win over Duke in the national semifinals. “This is wrong,” he said.
North Carolina Coach Hubert Davis said, “His dream school was North Carolina. He’s living his dream.”
The Tar Heels are playing for their first title since 2017, largely thanks to the amazing performance of Love, a second-rate guard. After scoring just 6 points in the first half, he helped the Tar Heels control the pace alongside sophomore guard RJ Davis.
It was not the first debut match in the tournament. Against UCLA in the round of 16, Love recorded 27 of the 30 best points of the match In the second half of the 73-66 win. After missing his first seven attempts, he did 6 out of 13 deep.
If North Carolina is to beat Kansas, it will likely need another performance from Love, who is considered a potential second-round NBA draft pick.
“This means everything to me,” Love said of taking his team to the championship game. “I couldn’t have done it without my guys and my coaches. I give them all the credit. They put me in the position and it was a team effort. Just one game away from a national championship, what else can you say?”
Kansas Coach Bill Self could join an elite club.
Bill Self can join an elite club by winning his second NCAA title.
While Mike Krzyzewski (five titles) and Roy Williams (three) are out of coaching, Villanova’s Jay Wright is the only active men’s basketball coach to have at least two NCAA titles to have won titles in 2016 and 2018. With Kansas’ victory over Villanova, Self is in a position to match Wright.
Iona Coach Rick Pitino won championships in Kentucky (1996) and Louisville (2013), but the latter was vacated. Active coaches who have had one championship include Kentucky’s John Calipari, Syracuse’s Jim Boeheim, Michigan State’s Tom Izzo, Virginia’s Tony Bennett and Baylor’s Scott Drew.
“I think that adds value to me and the players because there are no guarantees in this tournament,” said Self, 59, whose team was the last #1 seeded in the tournament. “Of course the favorites don’t win most of the time.”
He noted that the 2020 team was “equipped to run”, but the pandemic forced him to cancel that year’s tournament.
We were very good defensively,” he said. “And we scored enough goals. I thought this was a team that was probably as prepared to do well in the tournament as any team we’ve ever had.”
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