UNC Vs. Kansas Live Score: NCAA Championship Analysis From New Orleans – The New York Times

Kansas is seeking its first N.C.A.A. title since 2008, fourth overall and second under coach Bill Self.

We seem headed for a thrilling finish down the stretch.

And Bacot is the first player in N.C.A.A. history with six double-doubles in one tournament, according to David Worlock, the N.C.A.A.’s director of media coordination for the men’s tournament. Bacot is on a mission.

But something switched as the teams zipped back and forth, up and down the court. North Carolina matched the Jayhawks’ pace and intensity and all but took Agbaji out of the game. And they turned an early 7-0 deficit into a 40-25 halftime lead.

Tar Heels forward Brady Manek was inadvertently hit in the head by McCormack, whose elbow collided into the side of Manek’s forehead as he was landing after a jumper. The hit appeared to be painful, but Manek returned to the game shortly after the hit and played for most of the half. He hit 3-pointers on back-to-back possessions to give the Tar Heels a lead.

North Carolina pulled away in the final five minutes, outscoring Kansas 18-3. The Tar Heels looked to be in complete control. The Jayhawks looked stunned, hastening to the locker room at the halftime buzzer.

They’re probably still feeling regret for losing to St. Peter’s.

North Carolina’s Armando Bacot, a 6-foot-10 center, has more double-doubles in 2021-22 than anyone in the Atlantic Coast Conference has ever recorded in a single season. And the 6-foot-10 Kansas forward David McCormack has fought through a foot injury to power his team to the title game.

Both teams are littered with players who have taken over certain games to help their teams advance: The Tar Heels’ Caleb Love scored 30 points against U.C.L.A. in the round of 16 and hit a 3-point dagger against Duke in the semifinal, and Ochai Agbaji of Kansas shot nearly perfectly against Villanova to help his team reach the championship game.

But the battle down low between Bacot and McCormack may be the game’s spotlight.

Bacot, who is dealing with an ankle injury he suffered against Duke, is averaging 16 points and 16.3 rebounds in the tournament. And McCormack had a career night against Villanova, scoring 25 points on 10 of 12 shooting.

Both players are a part of a crop of bigs who have dominated the college game this season — including Kentucky’s Oscar Tshiebwe, who won the Naismith Trophy for national player of the year; Illinois’ Kofi Cockburn; and Gonzaga’s Drew Timme — as the N.B.A. moves away from old-school centers and players who work predominantly in the low post.

“Two unbelievable post players that can rebound the basketball, can score consistently down low in the paint. It’s a big emphasis for us as well as Kansas,” North Carolina Coach Hubert Davis said. “And it could ultimately come down to the winner of that matchup being the determining factor of who wins the championship.”

Even the most accomplished coach of all, John Wooden, who won 10 championships in a 12-year stretch at U.C.L.A., has left his mark in Lawrence, Kan.

But it was on the football stadium.

The summer before his senior year in high school, Wooden and a friend hitchhiked from Martinsville, Ind., because they heard there was good money to be made harvesting wheat. But when they arrived, the wheat was not ready.

One day, Allen, noticing their letterman jackets, picked them up while they were hitchhiking. He set them up with jobs pouring concrete for an addition to the football stadium and let them sleep in the Kansas gym.

When asked about his skills as a mason, Wooden, then in his 90s, said, “I think I did an excellent job.” Why? Well, the building was still standing, wasn’t it?

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 championship since 2017 thanks largely to the stellar performance of Love, a 6-foot-4 sophomore guard. After managing just 6 points in the first half, he, along with the sophomore guard R.J. Davis, helped the Tar Heels control the tempo.

It wasn’t his first breakout game in the tournament. Against U.C.L.A. in the round of 16, Love scored 27 of his game-best 30 points in the second half of a 73-66 victory. He made 6 of 13 from deep after missing his first seven attempts.

If North Carolina is going to beat Kansas, it will most likely need another such performance from Love, who is widely considered a potential second-round N.B.A. draft pick.

“It means everything to me,” Love said of leading his team to the championship game. “I couldn’t do it without my guys and my coaches. I give all the credit to them. 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?”

When the Tar Heels beat Michigan in the 1993 final, Derrick Phelps, who grew up in Queens, ran the point. Phelps, now an assistant coach at Washington State, scored on a layup with just over three minutes left to put North Carolina ahead, 68-67, and give it a lead it would not relinquish.

Danny Green, who grew up on Long Island, started in the backcourt in 2009 when North Carolina breezed to the title, winning each of its six tournament games by at least 12 points.

R.J. Davis will have his chance to add to that legacy tonight. Davis, a sophomore point guard who grew up in White Plains, about 30 miles north of Midtown, kept the Tar Heels in Saturday’s game against Duke in the first half before Caleb Love carried North Carolina to the victory.

Davis, 51, spent 12 years playing in the N.B.A. and nine as an assistant to Williams before taking over for him last April. He guided the Tar Heels to victories over the defending national champion, Baylor; the darling of the tournament, St. Peter’s; and their most hated rival, Duke, in Krzyzewski’s final game.

Nine other first-year coaches have guided a team to the Final Four, most recently Bill Guthridge with North Carolina in 1998. Davis is the sixth Tar Heels coach to reach a Final Four.

“I’m just overwhelmed with thankfulness,” Davis said after the national semifinal. “I think about the experiences that I’ve been able to have. I had always dreamed about being part of the program. And to think that I got to play for them, to think that I got to come back and be an assistant coach, and now I’m a head coach of North Carolina and we’re in the national championship game.”

He added: “When you look back, everything significant in my life has happened because they’ve given me this opportunity and a chance to be a part of this program. My wife and I fell in love there. We got married there. After I played in the N.B.A., we moved back, raised our three kids there. Now I’m the head coach there. It’s just a pretty cool deal.”

Davis was asked whether Michael Jordan, who played at North Carolina in the 1980s, was expected to be in New Orleans on Monday. Jordan attended the 2017 Final Four in Glendale, Ariz., when the Tar Heels won.

“That would be great,” he said. “I don’t want him just to show up. I’d like him to play.”

Iona Coach Rick Pitino won championships at Kentucky (1996) and Louisville (2013), but the latter was vacated. Active coaches who have 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 it does have added value to me and the players because there’s no guarantees in this tournament,” said Self, 59, whose team is the last remaining No. 1 seed in the tournament. “A lot of times the favorites don’t win, obviously.”

He pointed out that his 2020 team “was equipped to make a run,” but the pandemic forced the cancellation of that year’s tournament.

“We were so good defensively,” he said. “And we had enough scoring. I thought that was probably as prepared a team to do well in the tournament as any we’ve had.”

The N.C.A.A. this season changed its rules so that more players could transfer once and play immediately. The 6-foot-9 Manek has played a huge role for the Tar Heels in their run to the championship game by stretching the floor with his shooting ability. He’s averaging 15.2 points and 5.9 rebounds this season, and in five N.C.A.A. tournament games has been a big scorer for the Tar Heels.

Kansas features several transfers, with former Arizona State point guard Remy Martin playing the most important role. In 2020-21, the 6-foot Martin led the Pac-12 with 19.1 points per game, including 21.5 points in conference play. While battling a knee injury at Kansas, Martin is averaging 8.4 points, 3.0 rebounds and 2.6 assists. His play has been uneven in the tournament. He managed just 3 points on 1-of-5 shooting in Kansas’ 81-65 win over Villanova on Saturday, but put up 23 points in the win over Providence and 20 in the victory over Creighton.

“What the transfer portal does, it allows you not to take a step back whenever you have unexpected things happen during the season,” Kansas coach Bill Self said.

“The transfer portal allows you to fill in the gaps, which allows programs to stay at the level that they’re presently operating at,” Self added. “And there won’t be as many dips like this because of the portal.”

He recalled how former North Carolina Coach Dean Smith was ejected with 35 seconds left in the game after getting two technical fouls.

“it was an emotional game and an emotional end to a season,” Davis recalled.

Now with another chance to beat Kansas as the head coach of his alma mater, Davis is hoping for a different outcome. North Carolina is seeking its seventh national championship and first since 2017. Davis is looking to become the first man to win the title in his first full season as a head coach.

Davis said one thing he told his team before it traveled to New Orleans is that “the best experience is tears.” For him, his best experience as a player was going to the Final Four.

“That was a place of tears of joy but that was the best place, personally, that I had ever experienced,” he said. “I told them, I played 12 years in the N.B.A. and that was my finest as a basketball player, finest moment, just being part of the Final Four.”

He added: “Now that they’re being able to experience it is great. So it was tears of joy, but it was also a place that I enjoyed so much that I wanted to be a part of again.”

“Everybody was affected in some way,” Kansas Coach Bill Self said. “It was probably maybe our most equipped team to go deep in the tournament.”

David McCormack, Kansas’ senior forward, said that this season, in which Kansas entered the tournament as a No. 1 seed after splitting the regular-season title with Baylor in a tough Big 12 and making it to the championship game, has been an atonement for the opportunity missed for that 2020 team.

“I know what we would have done that year.,” he said. “We were just on a positive slope. Everything was kind of going right for us. Everybody was gelling, connecting. So I just see this year as an avengement to that team and what they likely deserve. And now it’s just our year to go get it.”

Before his injury, Martin had been one of the biggest transfer acquisitions of the off-season, arriving after four seasons at Arizona State, and bringing the accolades of a co-Pac-12 Sixth Man of the Year and several All-Pac-12 selections with him.

Kansas appeared fine without him as it shared the Big 12 regular-season title with Baylor and earned a No. 1 seed in the tournament.

But since he has been healthy, Martin has been key to the Jayhawks’ run to the national title game as one of the most dynamic teams in the tournament. He averaged 17.5 points in Kansas’ first four games, powering Kansas past Creighton in the second round in a game that was much closer than the No. 1- seeded Jayhawks would have wanted.

“Remy deserves a lot of credit,” Kansas Coach Bill Self said after that game. “One, Remy doesn’t make excuses. Remy doesn’t like to tell anybody’s he’s hurt.”

He added: “I think we’re seeing what our team can be, if in fact, Remy is healthy. And it’s a different team than what we had a month ago.”

When the ex-teammates squared off in the national semifinal on Saturday, Davis had a huge game, going for 18 points, 7 rebounds and 4 assists in North Carolina’s 81-77 win. Griffin, a projected N.B.A. lottery pick, managed just 6 points and 4 rebounds.

“When we were lined up for the jump ball, I looked across to my right and just to see we’re both battling to get to a national championship, both were high school teammates, that was great,” Davis said here Sunday. “Just to come from the same high school and then now playing for something bigger, it was just amazing.”

Now Davis hopes to become the first Stepinac player to win an N.C.A.A. championship when he leads the Tar Heels against Kansas.

“It’s actually a surreal moment,” Davis said. “I won a state championship my sophomore year in high school, now I can win a national championship my sophomore year of college.”

The Tar Heels (29-9) are seeking the program’s seventh N.C.A.A. championship, having won titles in 1957, 1982, 1993, 2005, 2009 and 2017. They are 6-5 in title games. North Carolina’s most recent title-game loss came to Villanova in 2016. Coached by Roy Williams, the Tar Heels returned to the final a year later to defeat Gonzaga. Only U.C.L.A., with 13, has more title game appearances than North Carolina. The Bruins are 11-2 in such games.

The Tar Heels are also seeking to become only the second No. 8 seeded team to win the title; Villanova was the first when it won the tournament in 1985, the first time it had 64 teams.

The Jayhawks (33-6) are 3-6 in title games, having won the championship in 1952, 1988 and 2008. In their most recent title game appearance, Coach Bill Self and the Jayhawks lost to Kentucky, coached by John Calipari, in 2012. Four years earlier in the title game, Self’s team beat Calipari’s Memphis team, which featured Derrick Rose.