Kansas basketball

The Jayhawks rallied from a 16-point deficit to down the Tar Heels in a thrilling — and physical — N.C.A.A. men's basketball tournament championship game.

I’ve definitely never been there before.” By the end of the night, the Jayhawks had been somewhere else they hadn’t been in quite some time — standing atop a podium at center court, blue confetti at their feet, after being crowned national champions. NEW ORLEANS — As Kansas players glumly trudged off the Superdome floor at halftime on Monday night, down by 15 points, mired in foul trouble and dazed by a powder blue North Carolina hurricane, David McCormack was all smiles.

The program he had led to the 2008 basketball national championship had entered halftime with a 15-point deficit. Chalmers, the hero of that team who hit a 3- ...

A few months ago, he lost his father, Bill Self Sr. Throughout the week, he said he had talked to him, wishing his father had been present for this run -- a run that elevates the coach's status among his peers. As the sport's new champion and the leader of a team that's still awaiting the outcome of a major infractions case that includes allegations of five Level I violations, Self has been cast as a villain by some and an easy target of a disorganized system that doesn't seem to know what it wants from these investigations by others. But the FBI's assertion five years ago that it had college basketball's "playbook" failed to yield the sweeping indictments many had anticipated. In the second half, however, North Carolina finished 2-for-12 shooting from beyond the arc and missed all seven 3-pointers it took on the right side of the court. But there was more to it than flying bodies and energized collegiate athletes mounting a powerful offensive attack against a North Carolina squad that had already dismissed Baylor, UCLA and Duke on its way to the championship game in Hubert Davis' first year. The harder it was, the more they enjoyed it." Just five minutes after the break, Black had gone to the bench with his fourth foul. The line between the joy of a hard-fought victory and the agony of almost is thin. The program he had led to the 2008 basketball national championship had entered halftime with a 15-point deficit. And I knew they'd be able to pull it out in the end." The last round was all we needed." The Jayhawks knew how much energy North Carolina had expended in a 69-possession, back-and-forth affair against rival Duke 48 hours before Monday's game.

A national championship slipped away from North Carolina basketball Monday as Kansas erased a 15-point halftime deficit to cut down the nets.

With a lack of depth in the frontcourt, Bacot was only able to sit for 1:18 in the first half. Five times he was sent to the free-throw line half as Kansas big man David McCormack sat on the bench for 10 minutes with two fouls. Davis missed his second attempt and Bacot grabbed the offensive board before being fouled on the putback. First, it was an 8-0 run that erased Kansas’ four-point lead with 8:11 left in the half. The Jayhawks used a 31-10 rally and took a 56-50 lead midway through the second half off three consecutive huge plays — an Ochai Agbaji three-point play, a Remy Martin three-pointer and then a Jalen Wilson and-1. Kansas jumped out to a 7-0 lead.

The Kansas Jayhawks beat the North Carolina Tar Heels for the NCAA men's basketball championship Monday in New Orleans. Here's how they did it.

UNC has taken its biggest lead, 22-18, at the under-8 break in action. It's a tall task, for the Jayhawks to recover from this one. Kansas obviously wants to tighten this up again Armando Bacot is going to the line. The result? Remy 3-pointer from the corner. Jalen Wilson and-1 off the break. 45-37 under with Jalen Wilson going to line to finish and-1 at the under-16 timeout. This is as poor a time as any for Kansas to be struggling the way it is on both ends of the floor. That 15-point halftime lead for UNC is now a 46-45 lead. When Kansas opened the game on a run, it looked as if this game could resemble the Villanova game coach Bill Self and company just won earlier in the Final Four. Instead, North Carolina both found its way back into the game and took control. Christian Braun just finished a beautiful 2-on-1 as Kansas is on a 12-1 run in the second half.

The Jayhawks overcame a 16-point deficit to take down North Carolina and win the fourth national championship in program history.

He made all four shots he took in the second half, including all three of his threes. “After the [2020–21] season we took like one week off, and we got right back to it and started going for like an hour a day, workouts and working out. And in Monday’s title game, Martin came off the bench and took five shots in his first five minutes of action, missing four of them while North Carolina made its push. “It was Dajuan, he sparked it in the second half,” Agbaji said. It was a similar recipe to what the Jayhawks had done coming out of halftime against Miami in the Elite Eight, when KU rallied from a 35–29 deficit before proceeding to blow out the Hurricanes in the second half, conceding just 15 points over the final 20 minutes. After turning it over just five times in the whole first half, UNC matched that number in the first 10 minutes of the second, miscues that helped get Kansas out in transition for easy buckets. The ’20–21 version, at least per KenPom, was the worst of the Self era. McCormack improved his body, had the biggest game of his career in the Final Four and scored two defining buckets down the title game’s stretch. We weren't making shots, we still really didn't, but we made them play worse than us in the second half.” But KU came out of the locker room looking like it had been there before, and it all started on the defensive end. The Jayhawks were in foul trouble, missing layups and couldn’t keep North Carolina off the offensive glass. While there was no epic shot or defining play like Chalmers’s in this one, Kansas had dug itself a hole that would require a nearly-perfect finish to climb out of.

No. 1 Kansas and No. 8 North Carolina are battling for a national championship from the Caesars Superdome on TBS and we have updates through the night.

The Tar Heels are competing for their seventh national title in program history, while the Jayhawks aim for their fourth. The lone remaining No. 1 seed, Kansas, dominated Villanova in Saturday’s first semifinal, beating the Wildcats 81-65. On Saturday, Caleb Love dominated in the second half to lead the Tar Heels to an 81-77 win over rival Duke. UNC's victory marked the end of Coach K's illustrious career with the Blue Devils.

How many points was Kansas trailing by at halftime? Fifteen. Did the Jayhawks come back and win? Yes, they did.

Harris didn’t score much in the second half, but he did have an acrobatic shot he hit and he was on the floor for a little more than half of a second half in which Kansas shot 57.6% from the field and 40% from behind the arc. It just means the world to them, and as far as six years of college I figure you stay around long enough and you’re bound to get one.” Lightfoot continued: “So, no, I was super blessed to be a part of this group. Self acknowledged himself, when asked about this title filling the void of not being able to make a run in 2020 due to the pandemic, how much different his team will look next season. While he made clear he means no disrespect, he added playing on the road against Kansas State isn’t the same as playing in front of a national audience with a championship on the line against North Carolina. That change will mean a different batch of personalities in Jayhawks uniforms next season. “I didn’t want to lose,” said Harris, speaking at a press conference with six teammates, five of whom he’s spent multiple seasons with. “And the way we got our tails handed to us by Kentucky, even though we hated it — but it showed us what a real team looks like. There at the Caesars Superdome in New Orleans, North Carolina had put itself in position to throttle Kansas and had all the momentum. Then came McCormack, delivering again with a bit less than 1:30 left, hitting a shot on a second-chance opportunity to give his team the lead for good. Now, like then, Agbaji said they just had to come out of halftime and execute. The start of the second half saw the Tar Heels turn the ball over on its first possession.

Why this Jayhawks team will be remembered as the poster child for one particular time period—the era of asterisks in college sports.

It’s about a father who meant everything and the son who still wants to make that father proud, one loaded wagon—and national title—at a time. The key to another national title was embedded in the human element, the gap between what Kansas had done and what it would do. It explained him, on and off the court, in every season and in this improbable year most of all. He harped on playing better defense in practices, then watched as the rest of his team lined up behind his seniors, Agbaji and McCormack, like they were ready to scrap for the remainder of the season. Agbaji missed a three-point attempt for the lead, Puff Johnson dunked at the other end and Agbaji evened the game with a drive, a foul and a free throw. Self was reminded of Danny Manning, the archetype of Kansas basketball, who, in 1988, won all Agbaji has and more—most notably a national championship. He became a first-team All-American and a true national player of the year candidate. They didn’t win the Big 12 regular season (won by Baylor), conference tournament (won by Texas) or national title (Baylor, yet again), and were flat-out flatlined by USC in the second round of the NCAA tournament. Kansas had built its next champion, the title all but assured, at least in the collective mindset of a program that would know. Hinson noticed early on what Self understood as his primary duty: to uphold a tradition as long and historic as the one that landed in his hands. Friends of Bill Self joke now about the broad shoulders, oil-town ethos and upbringing in Okmulgee, Okla., his being attached to a no-nonsense basketball coach who passed along far more than a name. Bill Sr., who died in January at 82 due to undisclosed reasons, taught his son that the soul of any coach is formed from two important tenets: relationships, all the nurturing and teaching that crafted individual players into a greater whole; and constitution, how leaders carried themselves in times of crisis.