North Carolina, Kansas had unconventional Blue Blood journeys to title game

NEW ORLEANS — It is an eighth seed that was on the bubble deep into February against the No. 1 seed that was forgotten until recently. 

Neither team features an elite freshman. Both have had multiple close calls in this run. They are the other blue bloods, overshadowed by Duke and Kentucky entering the NCAA Tournament. 

But Monday night, North Carolina and Kansas take center stage at the Caesars Superdome, each traditional powerhouse looking to cut down the nets and write a storybook ending to a season that wasn’t expected to end this way. 

“It’s crazy to think: Nobody thought we would be here but us,” North Carolina senior wing Leaky Black said. 

Kansas (33-6) is in its first national championship game in a decade after consecutive second-round exits in its previous two tournaments. It is North Carolina’s first trip to the final game of the season since winning it all in 2017. It will be a matchup of high-level scoring guards, Caleb Love for North Carolina and Ochai Agbaji for Kansas, and top big men, Armando Bacot and David McCormack. 

Of the two, the Tar Heels (29-9) are the far less likely finalists. They weren’t viewed as a tournament lock in February. Under first-year coach Hubert Davis, there were considerable growing pains, ugly losses to Tennessee, Kentucky, Miami and Wake Forest. Bacot felt it was a selfish, me-first team early on. Black described it as a group that relied on “hero ball.” It wasn’t a team — it was a group of individuals. 

“It just wasn’t good basketball,” said Bacot, the first player since Tim Duncan in 1997 to produce consecutive tournament games of 20 or more rebounds. “We realized what we were doing wasn’t working.” 

Throughout those struggles, Davis never lost faith. He stayed positive. He harped on the need for them to become a cohesive unit. He never backed away from his preseason belief this team could win it all. Point guard R.J. Davis pointed to the 22-point road loss at Wake Forest as the turning point. A meeting followed where the entire team aired its feelings. It has won 17 of 20 since then. Four of those have been upsets, two over Duke — including the epic Final Four victory on Saturday — and one apiece over Baylor and UCLA in the NCAA Tournament. Once again Monday night, North Carolina is the underdog. 

“It just energizes us,” Davis said. “It’s motivating. You want to prove people wrong.” 

Kansas has caught some breaks along the way. Second-round opponent Creighton was without two injured starters, Ryan Kalkbrenner and Ryan Nembhard, and Villanova didn’t have second-leading scorer Justin Moore on Saturday night. But the Jayhawks have hit a different gear lately, blowing away Miami in the second half of the Elite Eight and disposing of the Wildcats by 16 to reach the national-title game. Overall, they have won 10 straight games, and are surging at the right time. 

“Going back to when we got beat at TCU [on March 1], which knocked us probably out of a chance to win the league outright and then the pressure was on us to go win two in a row to get a piece of it, we’ve been as locked in as any team that I can remember,” Kansas coach Bill Self said. “And we are [locked in] right now, too.” 

There is extra ammunition for these Jayhawks, too. Four starters — Agbaji, McCormack, Jalen Wilson and Christian Braun — were on the team two years ago that thought it could win it all. That group never got a chance due to the COVID-19 pandemic. But it has an opportunity now to be the last team standing. 

“I just see this year as [payback for] that team and what they likely deserve,” McCormback said. “Now it’s just our year to go get it.”