Courtesy of Kansas Athletics
NEW ORLEANS – The No. 1 seed Kansas Jayhawks (33-6) is set to make its 10th NCAA Tournament Championship appearance as they take on the No. 8 seed North Carolina Tar Heels (29-9) in the NCAA Tournament Championship on Monday, April 4 at 8:20 p.m. CST at the Caesars Superdome in New Orleans.
The Kansas Jayhawks in the NCAA National Championship Game vs. North Carolina can be heard on 95.5 KNDY in Northeast Kansas & Southeast Nebraska as well as Z-96.3 The Lake in North Central Kansas. The game will be unavailable for internet streaming due to NCAA Tournament rules.
The game will air on TBS with Jim Nantz (Play-by-Play), Bill Raftery (Analyst), Grant Hill (Analyst) and Tracy Wolfson (Reporter) on the call.
Kansas earned its 10th NCAA Tournament title bid with an 81-65 victory of No. 2 seed Villanova on Saturday, in which senior David McCormack led the team with 25 points, followed by senior Ochai Agbaji’s 21 points. Redshirt sophomore Jalen Wilson added 11 points and 12 rebounds, marking his fourth-straight double-digit rebounding effort of the tournament. Wilson became the first Kansas player since at least 1996-97 to accomplish such a feat.
Entering the NCAA Tournament title game, Kansas owns a 10-game win streak, Kansas’ first double-digit win streak since closing the 2020 season with 16-straight wins. Under head coach Bill Self, Kansas now has 18 streaks of 10 or more wins in a row.
Kansas is led by Naismith Player of the Year finalist, Agbaji, who averages 18.9 points per game, while shooting 41.1 percent beyond the arc, both of which are Big 12 bests. Paired with Agbaji, senior Remy Martin leads the team in scoring throughout the NCAA Tournament, with both Jayhawks averaging 14.0 points per game.
With the Sweet 16 win over Providence, Kansas became the winningest program in NCAA Division I men’s basketball history, and the Jayhawks are currently holding 2,356 all-time wins. Kansas enters the NCAA Championship with wins over No. 16 seed Texas Southern (83-56), No. 9 Creighton (79-72), No. 4 Providence (66-61), No. 10 Miami (76-50) and No. 2 Villanova (81-65).
North Carolina enters the Final Four following an 81-77 victory over No. 2 seed Duke in the Final Four on Saturday evening. The Tar Heels were led by sophomore Caleb Love, who poured in 28 points, including six in the final minute of play to put away rival Duke.
The Tar Heels entered the NCAA Tournament with a 15-5 record in the ACC, before defeating No. 9 seed Marquette (95-63), No. 1 seed Baylor (93-86), No. 4 seed UCLA (73-66), No. 15 seed St. Peter’s (69-49), and No. 2 seed Duke (81-77).
Kansas is 3-6 in NCAA Tournament title games all-time, including 13-14 in Final Four games. Kansas and North Carolina have met 11 times in the storied history of the programs, with North Carolina holding the series advantage at 6-5.
The two teams have met on six occasions in the NCAA Tournament, with Kansas 4-2 in those games, including 3-0 under head coach Bill Self. They most recently met on March 14, 2013, when the Jayhawks defeated the Tar Heels, 70-58, in the NCAA Midwest Regional in Kansas City, Mo.
You must be logged in to post a comment.