Kansas versus North Carolina. Does it get much bluer blooded than that?
Funny thing, though. The two titans have combined to play 6,594 college basketball games, but only 13 against one another. Once in a blue-blooded moon. The 14th matchup is Friday night in Chapel Hill, and to get in the proper mood, here are six things to know about a meeting of two programs with 4,811 wins, 10 national championships and 37 Final Four appearances combined.
1. They’re strangers, but not really. The Hall of Fame connections echo through time.
Dean Smith played at Kansas and coached at North Carolina. Larry Brown played at North Carolina and coached at Kansas. Roy Williams coached at both of ‘em. Matter of fact, one reason they have so rarely played is because someone or another didn’t want to be facing his old school.
“It means more to us and to them probably because our programs are so entwined,” Jayhawks coach Bill Self said this week. “Is Carolina really Carolina without Kansas and is Kansas really Kansas without Carolina, and the answer is no. You can debate that, but that’s a fact.”
2. No, they haven’t crossed paths often. But when they do something special often happens, especially in March or April. Seven of their 13 meetings have come in the NCAA tournament — four in the Final Four. Kansas leads the series 7-6.
3. Never mind yesterday, both these teams could really use winning a game like this now.
Kansas started last season ranked No. 1, North Carolina No. 9. They finished with 27 losses between them and out of the top-25. Now, questions hover. Can the Tar Heels do something about that infamous 1-13 record in Quad 1 games last season? Did the Jayhawks really finish sixth in the Big 12 and get picked to do that again?
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4. Look who’s coming to Dean Smith’s house. His alma mater, finally.
These two have hooked up in New Orleans, Indianapolis, St. Louis, Kansas City and San Antonio. Twice in Lawrence, Kansas. But never in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, until now. Self mentioned two places on his bucket list where he has yet to coach a game. One will be marked off Friday at the Dean Smith Center. The other is 11 miles down the road at Duke’s Cameron Indoor Stadium.
5. It’s been a while since North Carolina left a meeting with Kansas smiling. The Jayhawks have won five in a row, and you have to go back to 2002 to find a Tar Heels victory.
6. Where to begin with the highlight reel of the past?
Their first meeting in the 1957 championship game that went on all night? It took the Tar Heels three overtimes to beat the Jayhawks and Wilt Chamberlain, 54-53 — only 24 hours after North Carolina needed three overtimes to get past Michigan State. Only seven Tar Heels played against Kansas, and that was before all the breathers from TV timeouts.
The 1960 meeting in Lawrence when North Carolina won 78-70 and Larry Brown came off the bench for the Tar Heels? Nearly three decades later he would be back in town to coach Kansas to the 1988 national title.
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The 1991 Final Four when Williams beat his mentor Smith? Only, Smith wasn’t there at the end of the 79-73 Kansas win, getting tossed after his second technical foul with 35 seconds left — his third ejection ever. “I didn’t want to distract from Kansas’ victory,” Smith said afterward, “and I’m afraid I did.”
The 2008 Final Four when Williams had changed sides and was coaching North Carolina against his old Kansas bunch? It did not go well. The Jayhawks blitzed to a shocking 40-12 lead and won by 18. By tipoff, Williams had long grown weary of the entire him-against-his-old-school subject. “I hope it has set aside. I hope it goes away forever,” he said after the game. “I told my team that I hoped that that distraction didn’t bother them because that would be about as bad as anything that you could have as a coach.”
The 2012-13 NCAA tournaments when Kansas knocked out Williams and North Carolina two years in a row, making it three times in six seasons? That included the messy 2013 second rounder when the Jayhawks won 70-58 and got away with making 22 turnovers. Self observed that night how “we played great (against the Tar Heels) in ’08. Today was not one of those games.”
The 2022 national championship game, Hubert Davis having taken over for the retired Williams, when North Carolina led by 15 at halftime but Kansas won by three? The biggest second-half comeback in the history of the event.
Or even last season when Kansas blew a 20-point lead in Lawrence but escaped 92-89 on the night Self tied Phog Allen for most Jayhawks victories?
It has nearly always been the plot thickener of someone on one side having part of his heart with the other. When Williams coached at Kansas, he wasn’t about to face North Carolina if he could avoid it, seeing as Smith was “a man that gave me every opportunity in my entire life.” And when Williams was at North Carolina, he got himself in hot water with some Tar Heels fans, staying around San Antonio at the 2008 Final Four after getting thumped by the Jayhawks and rooting for them in the championship game. Even wore a Kansas sticker.
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Self mentioned last season how maybe these two programs could get together more often now since such complications are past. “For the first time in a long time, it is not emotional if Hubert and I play. It was emotional for Roy. It was emotional for coach Smith. It was emotional for Larry. Now it’s a good game, and I think in large part because those emotional ties don’t exist anymore. But there’s nothing but respect for each other. At least, I assume that’s how they feel, too.”
So Friday night will mostly be about two traditional heavyweights who could use an early-season boost, each ready to test the other’s vaunted freshman: Darryn Peterson for Kansas and Caleb Wilson for North Carolina. Current questions are what matter most. Will the Tar Heels do better than that 10-for-29 shooting from behind the arc in their opener? Will Peterson be over his cramping issues that limited him to 22 minutes the first game?
But the past matters, too, and should when it’s Kansas and North Carolina, who share legends and history, if not a lot of nights together.
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