Final Four

Looking at the men's Final Four by the numbers, plus a look back at Geno Auriemma's first national championship with UConn on this day 27 years ago.

• Duke and UNC have never met in the NCAA tournament, but it almost happened in 1991. On a team full of streaky scorers, his shooting is the most crucial component, and has been the toughest to stop. The two replacement options: oft-injured guard Bryan Antoine (a former five-star recruit) and Chris Arcidiacono (whose brother, Ryan, was a March hero in 2016). Kansas doesn’t have anyone else who can consistently create their own shot, so when he’s making jumpers—and lately, he has been—Martin gives the Jayhawks a critical spark. He’s matured as a player this month, and whether or not he can sustain those habits may be the difference. Duke: Just 6.3% of the Blue Devils’ giveaways this season have been non-steal turnovers (per KenPom), which limits dangerous mistakes and opportunities for opponents to run.

The 2022 NCAA Tournament delivered historic upsets and millions of busted brackets, but there's nothing Cinderella about the programs and matchups in the ...

The Duke-North Carolina showdown is taking up a ton of oxygen heading into the Final Four, and Villanova's two national championships in the last five tournaments makes it easy to focus on the Wildcats and their injury concerns. When you consider the history of both of these programs in the Final Four and the gravity of where both Duke and North Carolina are in this moment -- the Blue Devils finishing out Coach K's last season while North Carolina has made the Final Four in Year 1 with Hubert Davis -- the stage could not be bigger. Now that Wright and the Wildcats are in New Orleans, the message has been clear: they've got to adjust the way they play with Moore out of the lineup. You can see why fans are so excited to watch and stream this Final Four, because that's not half of what you should be on the lookout for on Saturday night. It's a blue-blood Final Four field with programs whose reach and recognition are wide-ranging, making Saturday night one of the most-anticipated evenings in the history of college basketball. For March Madness this year the NCAA Tournament gave college basketball fans around the nation plenty of historic upsets and millions of busted brackets, but there's nothing Cinderella about the blue-blood programs programs and matchups in the Final Four on Saturday night.

You know the teams well, but the storylines of Saturday's national semifinals are unlike anything college basketball has seen.

Don't be fooled by the nine-point outing against Miami in a game that Kansas had well in hand for the balance of the second half. But if we can acknowledge that this North Carolina team is not the same team from a month ago, then I also think it's prudent to recognize the same reality for Duke. The current version of the Blue Devils are confident and they know their roles. Medcalf: I think North Carolina's decision to play like the 2016-17 Golden State Warriors in the second half of that game is the simple answer. The Cats somehow won their Sweet 16 and Elite Eight games with an offensive average of 56.5 PPG. I just don't see a scenario in which that is enough to beat the current iteration of Kansas. But give me the biggest brands in the sport, the biggest coaches in the sport, the best players in the sport on the final weekend of the season. In other words, "historic" is a pretty high bar, and, personally, I want to see the game first before I toss that label around. The college basketball history books will say either "Mike Krzyzewski won his last game" or "lost his last game," not that he won his "next to last" game. Medcalf: I think it's one of the top five moments in the history of the sport. Part of the magic of the NCAA tournament is the idea of Cinderella, the potential for anyone to have a chance to cut down the nets on Monday night. Duke and North Carolina have never squared off in the NCAA tournament, with a chapter set for Saturday that will add another dimension to this most historic of rivalries. I understand the argument about wanting new, fresh teams in the Final Four, but the boredom argument and the "it's basically college football" argument don't make a ton of sense to me. The men's version of the 2022 Final Four brings a heavy dose of the familiar, with just a touch of the unique.

It's the culmination of the NCAA Men's Division I Basketball Tournament, with four "March Madness" teams remaining. The "Final Four" takes place in New ...

March Madness Final Four: Here's what you need to knowThe Men's Basketball Division 1 National Championship Trophy, on display ahead of the Final Four of the NCAA Men's Basketball Tournament in New Orleans, Louisiana. It's the culmination of the NCAA Men's Division I Basketball Tournament, with four "March Madness" teams remaining. But if you can't make it to Louisiana, don't worry: the remaining men's games will be broadcast on TBS. You can stream the games via the official March Madness website or the NCAA March Madness Live app. With this season -- his final before retiring -- he has set the record for the most Final Four appearances in NCAA history.

The Jayhawks and the Wildcats are underway in the first national semifinal. The Blue Devils and Tar Heels will play in the second game of the night.

Villanova needs to keep him from establishing post position so close to the basket when he returns in the second half. The game changed when McCormack picked up his second foul. But the Jayhawks didn’t force the ball to him, allowing them to find open three-point shooters and make seven of their first 10 from outside the arc.

Between the Kansas Jayhawks, Villanova Wildcats, Duke Blue Devils and North Carolina Tar Heels, the schools have combined to win 17 NCAA championships and ...

The GOAT gets another game to coach ! ⁦@ESPNPR⁩ pic.twitter.com/QZs4eLyuZd— Dick Vitale (@DickieV) April 2, 2022 On the court, Duke should have the talent advantage. The Blue Devils have two of the top eight draft prospects in this year's class. The No. 2 seed Wildcats face the No. 1 seed Jayhawks to start the night. Then the Tobacco Road rivalry between Duke and UNC takes on new stakes. These schools, separated by about eight miles, meet for the first time in the Final Four. It will be UNC coach Hubert Davis' first Final Four as a coach and Duke coach Mike Krzyzewski's last.

The Jayhawks face the Wildcats in the national semifinals on Saturday.

About the Jayhawks: The loss of the 2020 NCAA Tournament is not a primary motivation for Kansas, but it's not lost on anyone around the program that Self and the Jayhawks had the best team in the country at the time that the tournament was canceled because of the COVID-19 pandemic. The loss of Justin Moore is undeniably going to change the math on how Villanova takes care of business, but Jay Wright has all week to put in a new game plan specifically for this weekend and there's not another team I trust more to receive and implement such changes than the Wildcats.  -- Patterson The 2022 Final Four is underway on Saturday, and at halftime of the first game in New Orleans between No. 1 seed Kansas and No. 2 seed Villanova, it's the Jayhawks who take a commanding 40-29 lead into the half.

Duke guard Michael Savarino won the Elite 90 Award on Friday at the 2022 NCAA Men's Final Four in New Orleans. Savarino is the grandson of Duke coach Mike ...

It is presented to the student-athlete with the highest cumulative grade-point average participating at the finals site for each of the NCAA's 90 championships. "I'm hoping my mom is crying in the crowd (when he received the award)," Savarino said. I'm forever grateful for it." I guess that shows," Savarino said. Krzyzewski's name appears all over the NCAA men's basketball records book. "It shows that Duke basketball isn't just about basketball, especially with this being coach's last year.

Bob Fishman is retiring as a director for CBS Sports after this year's Final Four. Kentucky has played in nine Final Fours in his four decades of working ...

Of the 10 shots ranked, five came in the final seconds of overtime. By the time I called him, he had already talked to some of the former guys. “I remember Kentucky was down, like, 10 points at halftime,” he said of UK’s 78-69 victory over Utah in the title game. Tim Chartier, a professor of mathematics and computer science at Davidson, also participated. Other factors included how much time remained and if the score was tied or the shooter’s team trailed. Kentucky has played in nine Final Fours since Fishman became the lead director of CBS’s coverage of college basketball in 1982. Fishman relishes having a camera capture Georgetown coach John Thompson hugging guard Fred Brown after the Hoyas beat Houston in the championship game. “All standing around and watching that and all wishing, oh my God, why didn’t we have that game?” he said. Pitino, (Tom) Izzo and Coach K (Mike Krzyzewski).” He is directing the TBS telecasts of this year’s Final Four games. “My 40th Final Four,” he said. It promised to be remarkable no matter which marquee program — Duke, Kansas, North Carolina or Villanova — wins the championship.

While a Final Four involving four blue-blood men's teams should spell huge ratings for Turner Sports, there won't be an instant payoff.

Rosenstein suggested Turner Sports and CBS Sports will find a way to collect extra cash from the Final Four bonanza. That’s sort of the hallmark of sports is that you never quite know what will happen, and that’s part of the fun." He said a blockbuster Final Four is part of the larger property, the NCAA Tournament, that helps increase the networks’ value with distributors. Turner Sports declined to provide the estimates it used, but it’s unlikely the network accounted for such marquee Final Four matchups before estimating the ratings it used to negotiate with advertisers. But it’s part of the overall benefit of being involved in sports because you get a Super Bowl that goes down to the last few seconds, you get a great Final Four matchup. Can you expand the postgame for us? So with the value of those 30-second and 60-second spots for commercials now worth significantly more than the original price, Turner Sports has little to sell. “You’re always going to want to over project," said Seth Winter, who has nearly 40 years of advertising sales experience and recently retired as an executive at Fox Sports. “We would call it gapping the ratings. The networks are paying about $1 billion a year for those rights through 2032, and their accountants surely will figure out they left some advertising money on the table this year. Generally speaking, the blue bloods generate bigger ratings and, as a result, make that advertising time more valuable. That play involves multi-year deals with cable distributors and annual deals with more than dozens of advertisers. And you have the Coach K thing.

It's a blockbuster that CBS Sports and Turner Sports could only dream of. At the 2022 Men's Final Four, March Madness comes to an epic conclusion ...

A big part of that normalization is engaging with the fan directly on site. Turner and CBS have their standard set position in the Superdome bowl immediately behind one of the student sections. In addition to the elite level matchups, this Final Four is bolstered by the return of live fans, following the cancelation of the tournament in 2020 and an attendance-limited event in 2021. You can add technology, you can build storylines, but [the atmosphere] was the one large differentiator for us that we really felt was going to push us back to normalization.” “[Duke-North Carolina], Barry continues, “is, historically, one of the biggest match ups in Final Four history. It doesn’t always determine the drama of the event, but it definitely helps determine the dramatic impact of an event.

That victory to close the regular season helped North Carolina get on the right side of the NCAA Tournament bubble, and the Tar Heels have not relinquished the ...

North Carolina may not be the absolute No. 1 team in the country right now, but it's been playing as well as the best teams in the country since the calendar turned from February to March. The Tar Heels are a No. 8 seed in the tournament but the quality of play represents a team that does not check in as the No. 29 to No. 32 team in the field of 68. Beating two of the best defensive teams in the NCAA Tournament eliminates the idea that there's some secret to stopping Duke's success, which means the onus is on the coaches and players to be in position to make history. Likely to be a close one -- almost certainly will be a close one -- but Blue Devils by a field goal feels like the number. Duke's expectation is to compete at a high level and be in a position to win two games in the Final Four and do so, and there's plenty of evidence to suggest they've got what it takes. That victory to close the regular season helped North Carolina get on the right side of the NCAA Tournament bubble, and the Tar Heels have not relinquished the momentum. After the Tar Heels spoiled Coach K's final home game with a 94-81 victory on March 5, there will also be an element of revenge at stake.

A number of former Panthers have rooting interest in Saturday night's colossal matchup in the Final Four.

This season is the last for Hall of Fame Duke head coach Mike Krzyzewski, while North Carolina head coach Hubert Davis has led North Carolina on a dramatic run through the tournament as an eight seed. Julius Peppers is the most notable alum of either school as he played football and basketball at North Carolina and was inducted into the North Carolina Sports Hall of Fame. Peppers owns the Panthers record for most career sacks (97.0) and remains the only person to ever play in both a Super Bowl (2003) and a Final Four game (2000). CHARLOTTE - The state of North Carolina is on the edge of its seat Saturday as Duke and North Carolina face off in a storybook Final Four matchup.

After Hurricane Ida, a tornado and a difficult time in the pandemic, the city is primed to let loose.