An epic Saturday night at the Final Four gave us an all-time national championship game with the No. 1 seed in Kansas facing No. 8 seed North Carolina in the final game of the NCAA 2022 tournament Monday night. Kansas, the only No. 1 to qualify for the Elite Eight, took care of the work in a wire-to-wire win over No. 2 Villanova in the first race on Saturday night. The Wildcats made many runs to the Kansas lead, but a combination of Ochai Agbaji, David McCormack and Christian Braun elicited a response to every Villanova streak, leaving no doubt about the final minutes of the game. Both coaches emptied the benches and Kansas turned his attention to his first appearance in a national league since he faced Kentucky in the same New Orleans environment in 2012. The first meeting between North Carolina and Duke in the NCAA tournament brought so much publicity that you could almost blame the enthusiasm for the bad shots from both teams at the beginning of the game. But after about 10 minutes, the back-and-forth was in progress and the rubber race between Tobacco Road rivals yielded exactly what one might have hoped for. The 18 changes in the lead and the 12 draws brought all the intensity of the best college basketball rivalry on the biggest stage of the game, but it was Caleb Love’s clutch play that pushed the Tar Heels to the national championship game. Kansas and North Carolina have met many times in the past in the Final Four, including the 1957 national championship, the 1991 national semifinal, the 1993 national semifinal, and the 2008 national semifinal. See how each side faces each other. Monday night:
(1) Kansas Jahox
Midwest Regional Champion
Record: 33-6 Final Four appearances: 16 (1940, 1952, 1953, 1957, 1971, 1974, 1986, 1988, 1991, 1993, 2002, 2003, 2008, 2012, 2012) NCAA Titles: 3 (1952, 1988, 2008) NCAA Tournament Route: First Round – Def. No. 16 Texas Southern 83-56; Second round – Def. No. 9 Creighton 79-72; Sweet 16 – Def. No. 4 Providence 66-61; Elite Eight – Def. No. 10 Miami 76-50; Def. No 2 Villanova 81-65. Coach: Bill Self makes his fourth appearance in the Final Four as a coach, all along with the Jayhawks. He won it all on his first visit in 2008, finished second in Kentucky in 2012 and was eliminated from the national semifinals by future champion Villanova in 2018. With 16 Big 12 regular season titles in his 19 years with the program, Self has established a model of consistency in the regular season that has no match in the whole sport. Best player: Ochai Agbaji. The Big 12 Player of the Year does everything for this team. He can come out as one of the team’s best three-point shooters or lead the lane to play on the edge. In defense he can be an effective defender on the ball, defensive rebounder or take off at the quick break to play on the open floor when Kansas wants to push the pace. Pros: This is an experienced team that plays with a lot of confidence, surpassing four seniors, one junior and two sophomores in the seven-player rotation. Two of these seniors have the potential to be the best player on the floor, but we have yet to see them star at the same time. Agbaji was the top scorer in the Big 12, the Big 12 Player of the Year and a Pan-American, but the tournament featured transfer guard Remy Martin, who was named the most important player in the Midwest even though he came off the bench. as a sixth man and lost most of February due to injuries. Both players are not just capable scorers but key pieces in Kansas’s perimeter defense, which will be an x-factor for success in the Final Four. Weaknesses: After an amazing performance in the Big 12 Tournament, the Jayhawks were a bit stretched in the Big Dance. The single-digit victories against Creighton in the second round and Providence in Sweet 16 had some tense moments, but they allowed Miami to take a 35-29 lead at halftime that really brought these concerns to the fore. Of course, this veteran Kansas team responded by beating the Hurricanes 47-15 in the last 20 minutes. But if you are looking for weaknesses in this experienced and well-rounded team, it is that we have not yet seen a full 40 minutes of its best basketball in the tournament. Key Number: 0. Every other team in the Final Four has at least one former five-star roster and the Jayhawks have none. Themselves and experts everywhere have often begun to analyze with some version of the phrase “this may not be the most talented team in Kansas, but …” before praising the Jayhawks with 32 wins. is strange for a program that has signed many five-star prospects and has given dozens of NBA players one of the least talented teams in the Final Four, but the composition of this team – which, for the record, has 10 former prospects four stars – may be exactly what it took to get back to the Final Four and maybe win another national championship. Outlook: Defeating the NCAA 2020 tournament is not a primary motivation for Kansas, but it is not lost on anyone in the program that Self and the Jayhawks had the best team in the country at the time the tournament was canceled due to the COVID -19 pandemic. Agbaji, David McCormack and Christian Braun were all part of this team and in this tournament they saw the bracket break at almost every turn.
(8) North Carolina tar heels
Regional Governor of the East
Record: 29-9 Participations in the Final Four: 20 (1946, 1957, 1967, 1968, 1969, 1972, 1977, 1981, 1982, 1991, 1993, 1995, 1997, 1901, 200, 200) NCAA Titles: 6 (1957, 1982, 1993, 2005, 2009, 2017) NCAA Tournament Route: Round One – Def. No. 9 Marquette 95-63; Second Round – Def. No. 1 Baylor 93-86 (OT); Sweet 16 – Def. No. 4 UCLA 73-66; Elite Eight – Def. No. 15 Saint Peter’s 69-49; Def. No. 2 Duke 81-77 Coach: Hubert Davis is the first coach since Bill Guthridge (in North Carolina in 1998) to lead his team to a Final Four in his first year. Roy Williams ‘successor got off to a difficult start to the season, starting 12-6 overall with no notable out-of-conference wins and 4-3 in the ACC, but Tar Heels’ strong proximity to the season kept the team out of the game. now until the Final Four. Best Player: There has been a stylistic change in the North Carolina lineup with the move from Roy Williams to Hubert Davis, but it has retained at least one traditional big one that can run on the floor with Armando Bacot. It would be a bad decision not to let one of the best rebounders in the country see as much time on the floor as possible, but it was interesting to see how Bacot has also taken on modern attacking roles. He will start from the perimeter and float in the lane, giving him the choice of either leading to the basket or kicking in one of North Carolina’s possible 3-point options if the defense collapses. Scorer, rebounder and facilitator are all in Bakot’s wheelhouse, which is why he is the best player on the floor. Pros: North Carolina has four players who can score 20+ each night, and this flexibility of scoring options makes them a dangerous team for match planning. In this tournament alone we have seen guards Caleb Love and RJ Davis score 30 points each, Brady Manek has scored 26 or more times and Bacot has doubled in every game since the season (ACC Tournament and NCAA Tournament) the Tar Heels played this year. Weaknesses: The lack of depth of play was fully apparent during Baylor’s almost 30-4 win in the second half, which would ultimately be an overtime victory for the Tar Heels in the second round. After Manek was sent off in the middle of the second half and Love’s problem fell in front of him before the end of the regulation, the Tar Heels depth problems and the problems of matches with elite teams beyond their starting five appeared in full force. A lot has been done for the “Iron Five” who have so much weight from playing time and played every minute of the second half in the Duke win, but the other side of the “Iron Five” is a drop in experience. and performance in the event that one of these five is eliminated from the game. Key number: 39.1%. This is the percentage of 3 points from the victory of North Carolina against Duke at the Cameron Indoor Stadium. They are just a few ticks above the respectable Tar Heels season average of 36.1%, but in this increase you can find what North Carolina needs to beat Duke again on Saturday night in the Final Four. While North Carolina has improved defensively in March, the best course of action will not be to rely solely on defensive stance to win against the mighty Blue Devils. Timely defensive stances, for sure. But North Carolina must hit three points to continue in the standings and give itself a chance to win slowly. Outlook: According to BartTorvik.com, where you can not only check customized odds during the season but also sort data by date, North Carolina is the No. 1 team in the country in custom offensive odds from March 1. The seven-game series is completely susceptible to criticism due to the small sample size, but it also supports what our eyes have told us. North Carolina may not be the absolute No. 1 team in the country right now, but they have been playing just as well with the best teams in the country since the calendar turned from February to March. The Tar Heels are the No. 8 seed in the tournament, but the quality of the game represents a team that does not check in as the No. 29 to No. 32 team on the 68 field. However, the task is to win the next one. ..
