Kansas vs. North Carolina could be incredible. Do not go automatically believing that Monday night’s national title match will stumble into the aftermath of Saturday night’s epic headliner. Duke is gone, but that hardly removes the blue-blooded and nostalgic response that completes this 2022 NCAA Men’s Tournament. Think about it: North Carolina has proven for five consecutive games – hello, no one has already worn Carolina blue yet do they officially believe in this team? – that she is as good as any team in the sport. Kansas, meanwhile, has the No. 1 seed, the only one to reach the Final Four. The Jayhawks resisted the push of the short-handed Villanova and now are in favor of winning the national title with four points. If it happens, it will be the program’s fourth NCAA tournament. These schools are quite familiar with each other, even if the groups are not. It is this story – a rich one, with many people combining two royal basketball houses – that makes a fantastic director here at Big Easy. This is the fifth match in a Final Four stage / title game between the two, making UNC vs. KU the most common clash in Final Four history. It began in 1957, when the only three-team Final Four match was settled 57-56 in favor of the undefeated, 32-0 North Carolina team, which beat a Kansas team with a sharp player named Wilt. Since then:

Kansas beat UNC in the 1991 national semifinals Carolina reciprocated the favor by beating KU in the ’93 semifinals The Jayhawks defeated the Tar Heels in the Final Four in 2008, when all four No. 1 seed won

Here we are rewarded with the first title match between the schools that are ranked first (Kansas) and third (Carolina) in victories of all time. Hi, you’re getting a whole Final Four blood, you’re going to have an amazing historical background no matter who gets into the title game. It is also the seventh match between the Jayhawks and the Heels in the tournament, which equals the second place in history. The connections run even deeper between the couple. Remember that one time coach in Carolina, Dean Smith? Kansas graduate. He was on the team that won the national title in 1952. Later in life, it is said that Smith did well for himself. retired with 879 wins (more than ever when he left) and two national titles with the Tar Heels. Smith is considered the best coach in the history of North Carolina. And yet, is he the best? Because, despite all the talk about Coach K’s farewell season, this season’s last game is actually a Roy Williams special. You could argue that Williams, not Smith, is the best coach in UNC history. He won three national titles and 485 games, with a winning percentage of 0.748. Prior to that, of course, Williams was the manager of a Kansas program that dominated the 1990s and early 2000s. Williams won 418 games in 15 seasons with Kansas. He was in the building on Saturday to cheer with joy for the shocking defeat of Carolina by Duke. Safe bet the camera will find him early and often on Monday night. Kansas-UNC now charmingly doubles as an unofficial mission a year later to ol ‘Roy. What about this one; There are more. Another former coach, Larry Brown, who led Kansas to the title of Danny and the 1988 Miracles, played for Smith in the 1960s at UNC. Maybe find a place near Williams. With Bill Self and Hubert Davis meeting at the moment, it marks the first time two coaches have competed in a national league match as successors to the same person. Self replaced Williams in Kansas, Davis the same in Carolina. If you want one more, for sure, why not: North Carolina assistant coach Brad Frederick is the son of a formative and important figure in the history of Kansas, his late athletic director, Bob Frederick.
He knows that this game has a chance to be great because of who is on the other side. There is an increase in the specificity factor here. “I think no matter who we play tonight, it would be incredibly special, because both teams are as blue as you can see when you talk about blue bloods,” he said. “But to play a Carolina program that is intertwined with Kansas history, largely because Coach Smith played in Kansas and won a national championship in ’52 and then goes on and is believed to be an equally good basketball coach to have coached. never the sport. over a period of time. Well, I think that’s special. Also, with Coach Williams running our program for 15 years and doing a great job there and then going back to his Alma Mater and winning three national championships, I think he definitely adds So, I’m very proud to be part of that game. “ For Kansas, it is the 10th national title game. North Carolina returns here for the 12th time (second of UCLA 13). UNC is 2-0 in title matches in the Superdome, winning in 1982 and 1993. Speculation continues about the appearance of Michael Jordan. As far as I know, he was not here on Saturday. But he showed up in 2017 to see UNC beat Gonzaga in the title game. And this is the 40th anniversary of the winner of the match against Georgetown, which is the genesis of the story of Jordan’s origin. “I just do not want him to appear. I want him to play,” Davis joked on Sunday. Fortunately for North Carolina, Armando Bacot will play. The man who has 30 double-doubles this season is set to start after a brief retirement with a lower leg injury against Duke. Not only will Bacot be in uniform, but also what he told reporters on Sunday: “I will have to have my right leg amputated so I do not play.” That rules. This matchup does too. North Carolina is trying to do something that has not matched the first 64-team stadium in 1985: to win the No. 8 overall. The school that did that, of course, is the one that Kansas won on Saturday to get here, Villanova. This Carolina team is by no means like the Rollie Massimino team that made one of the most upheaval in the history of American sports. If UNC beats Kansas on Monday night, the story will be threefold: Davis wins his first season, UNC makes it No. 8 seed and beats Kansas as the cherry-on-top after an all-time win over of Duke two nights before. . Davis knows a lot about the painful defeats in a Final Four scene, and that’s where we delve even deeper into how these two epic programs feel more and more interchangeable. Davis revealed on Sunday that he was performing a tumultuous ritual for himself each year in an earlier part of his life: he watched the entire defeat in the 1991 national semifinal suffered as a player in Kansas. “This was the hardest loss I have ever experienced in my entire life,” he said. “It would make me cry. And I was hoping that – interestingly, every time I saw it, I thought it would turn out differently.” The ceremony stopped in 2017, when Davis was an assistant to the UNC-winning team that won Gonzaga at Glendale, Arizona. Purification of the basketball soul. Now he has a chance for any compensation, although for Davis this is an opportunity for his players. He insists that this is now their moment, their chance for something he did not immortalize when he wore a UNC uniform. “It was the best place, personally, I had ever experienced,” Davis said. “I said [my players], I played 12 years in the NBA and that was my best moment as a basketball player, the best moment, I was just part of the Final Four. I was trying to convey to them how special it is to be here. “Now that they can live it, it’s wonderful.” Throughout the history of NCAA tournaments between the two, they are not frequent enemies. It is usually this tournament that forces them to unite. The UNC has a 6-5 all-time lead over Kansas, with the Jayhawks winning the last three (all coming to the NCAA). There is a little too much familiarity here to believe that this game can not be great. Kansas is rated as the best team, North Carolina shouts in this match as the most exciting story. For almost three weeks, I felt that Duke was fatal to get here with Mike Krzyzewski. Now that he is off the table, there is a flexibility here that could give way to a relaxed game with lots of possessions and a lot of points. The story is waiting. Either Self becomes the first Kansas coach to win many titles, or Davis becomes the first coach in history to win a national title in a first full season as the No. 1 coach he could. Come on. This is Kansas. It’s Carolina. It is the pan-Hellenic championship. This is New Orleans. These games in this city have developed the habit of being classics. Hopefully the voodoo is in the building once again on Monday afternoon.