Duke and North Carolina’s first ever matchup in the men’s NCAA tournament was always going to be historic. The fact that we finally got it in the Final Four and during Mike Krzyzewski’s final year before retirement made it perhaps one of the most anticipated games in the history of the sport.
With UNC as a No. 8 seed and Duke struggling entering March, this matchup simply felt too good to be true. It should have been impossible for this game to live up to such an immense level of hype, but somehow it did that, too.
North Carolina beat Duke, 81-77, to punch their ticket to the national championship game. The Tar Heels will now face Kansas for the national championship. The Jayhawks defeated Villanova, 81-65, in the other semifinal.
This was truly one of the best games you will ever see. Coach K’s career ends with a loss to his archrival.
RELATED
Bet on UNC-Kansas in the title game at DraftKings Sportsbook
The game lived up to the hype
The final minutes of this game were absolutely incredible. Trevor Keels hit a three-pointer to give Duke a one-point lead with just over two minutes left. North Carolina’s Brady Manek answered with his own three on the next possession to put Duke back up. Duke came down and found Keels for a three that missed, but Duke grabbed the offensive rebound, swung the ball to Wendell Moore, and saw him hit another go-ahead three.
North Carolina took the lead back on free throws from R.J. Davis. Then Duke’s Mark Williams missed a pair of free throws. On UNC’s next possession, Caleb Love hit a ridiculous pull-up three-pointer to put the Heels up four. This was the biggest shot of the night.
CALEB LOVE ONIONS pic.twitter.com/OsxCv9uSOV— CBS Sports (@CBSSports) April 3, 2022
It still wasn’t over. Duke’s Jeremy Roach drove down and scored a layup to cut the lead to two. After Love split free throws following an intentional foul, Duke had one more chance down three points. Trevor Keels was fouled and split his own free throws to keep Duke down two.
Duke fouled Love on the next possession, and he made both free throws to give UNC the win.
North Carolina’s Final Four run was no fluke
This Tar Heels team was in jeopardy of missing the NCAA tournament midway through the year after Duke beat them by 20 points on their home floor. North Carolina rallied late in the season — famously giving Duke a double-digit defeat in Coach K’s last ever home game on March 5.
UNC entered this tournament as a No. 8 seed. They knocked off No. 1 seed Baylor in the round of 32, but almost blew a 25-point lead before doing it. Carolina’s Sweet 16 win over UCLA was convincing enough, but there were still some questions of whether this was a Final Four caliber team after easily advancing past No. 15 seed Saint Peter’s in the Elite Eight.
UNC proved itself in the biggest game of the season in the Final Four against Duke. Carolina showed how much talent this team always had. Love was electric, finishing with 28 points on 11-of-20 shooting. Armando Bacot was incredible inside despite rolling his ankle late, ending the night with 11 points and 21 rebounds. Davis added 18 points and Manek had 14 points in the win.
This Carolina team checks almost every box you want in a college basketball contender with great guard play, a physical force inside in Bacot, and enough shooting on the wings. These Heels are absolutely worthy of winning it all.
Paolo Banchero played a good game, but it wasn’t enough
RELATED
Why Duke’s Paolo Banchero is the No. 1 player in our 2022 NBA mock draft
We have had Paolo Banchero pegged as our No. 1 prospect in the 2022 NBA Draft since July. We even published a lengthy breakdown about why he’s so good before tip-off. While other top prospects have struggled on the biggest stages in this tournament, Banchero has been fantastic throughout Duke’s run. He turned in another great game against UNC.
Banchero put his full skill set on display. At 6’10, 250 pounds, he hit pull-up threes, scored in the post, and showed dynamic driving ability. He finished with 20 points and 10 rebounds on 8-of-17 shooting from the field in the loss.
Pretty awesome to see Paolo Banchero pulling up like this. 2-3 3PT so far tonight pic.twitter.com/G27HLFt0Mj— DGC (@Itamar_17_10) April 3, 2022
North Carolina vs. Kansas in the men’s national title game will be amazing
The Jayhawks are a No. 1 seed and the Tar Heels are a No. 8 seed, but it doesn’t feel like there’s a favorite going into this one. Both are these teams are playing amazing basketball.
An outstanding men’s NCAA tournament has one game left. We can’t wait to see what surprises are still in store.
For the 48th time over 47 years of unparalleled coaching, Duke’s Mike Krzyzewski took the slow walk to midcourt and shook the hand of the North Carolina coach who beat him.
After that, he found his wife, Mickie, and they made the slow, sad walk, hand-in-hand, off the Superdome floor. Saturday night’s 81-77 setback in the national semifinal showdown between archrivals marked Coach K’s last loss, and one of his toughest losses, too.
And thanks to the Tar Heels — those dadgum Tar Heels — the 75-year-old coach will have plenty of time to get over it.
“I’m sure at some time, I’ll deal with this in my own way,” said the coach, who had announced before the start of the season that 2021-22 would be his last.
Krzyzewski’s remarkable career came to gut-wrenching close after Caleb Love made a key 3-pointer and three late free throws to lift the Tar Heels to their thrill-a-minute victory.
This was the 258th, most consequential and maybe, just maybe, the very best meeting between these teams, whose arenas are separated by a scant 11 miles down on Tobacco Road.
The eighth-seeded Tar Heels (29-9), of all teams, pinned the 368th and final loss on Krzyzewski. He finished with 1202 wins. His lifetime record against North Carolina fell to 50-48. Losses No. 47 and 48 are ones Carolina fans will treasure forever. They were partying early into Sunday morning on Franklin Street in Chapel Hill. This latest win came exactly four weeks after the Tar Heels ruined the going-away party in Coach K’s final home game at Cameron Indoor Stadium.
That loss hurt. “Unacceptable,” he called it, still knowing there was time to regroup for one last run into March Madness. They made that run, but the last loss stopped that all in its tracks — one agonizing win short of a title game and a chance at his sixth championship.
Krzyzewski said he had a locker room full of crying players when it was over.
“It’s not about me,” he insisted. “Especially right now. I’ve said my entire career that I wanted my seasons to end where my team was either crying tears of joy or tears of sorrow. Because then you knew that they gave everything.”
They gave everything all the way through the nip-and-tuck contest — neither team led by more than seven — that concluded with an edge-of-the-seat stretch run that Duke played without a timeout. When the final buzzer of his career blared, Krzyzewski shook the hand of Carolina’s rookie coach, Hubert Davis.
Instead of Krzyzewski going for his sixth title, on Monday, Carolina will try to win its seventh. It will be Davis, Love, who led the Tar Heels with 28 points, and R.J. Davis, who scored 18, going against Kansas, which beat Villanova 81-65 earlier in the undercard.
“Dwelling on the two wins against Duke doesn’t help us against Kansas,” said Hubert Davis, who took over for Roy Williams this season and has now brought Carolina to its 12th title game.
Maybe not, but what a game — as good as any these teams have played in an ancient rivalry that has so-often determined conference titles, or, at the very least, bragging rights in a state where basketball is king. Their first-ever meeting in the NCAA Tournament, this one, featured 18 lead changes and 12 ties.
It also featured another breakout performance from Love, whose 28 points after an 0-for-4 start were one more than what he put up in the second half of a win last week against UCLA in the Sweet 16.
“It means everything to me,” Love said of his key 3 with 25 seconds left.
There was so much to talk about in this instant classic, one that Krzyzewski, clad in his blue pullover with a “D” embroidered on the chest, watched most of while perched on a stool situated on the sideline above the Duke bench.
At around the 2-minute mark, the teams traded three straight 3s. Wendell Moore Jr.’s 3-pointer with 1:19 left ended the flurry and gave Duke a 74-73 lead. It was the last lead of Krzyzewski’s career.
R.J. Davis came back with two free throws, then after Duke’s Mark Williams, in foul trouble all night, missed a pair from the line, Carolina worked the ball around the perimeter.
Tar Heels guard Leaky Black set a pick — make that threw a block — on Trevor Keels to free up Love, who drained a 3 from near the top for a 78-74 lead and what felt like breathing room in this one.
Love made three more free throws down the stretch, and then it was over. Krzyzewski and his wife walked off the floor together, same as they had after four wins during the run to his record 13th Final Four.
Near the other bench, Hubert Davis was crying again — just like Ol’ Roy — much as he did last weekend when North Carolina punched its ticket to its record 21st Final Four.
“I felt like over the last two or three years , North Carolina wasn’t relevant,” said Davis, whose biggest win came a year to the date Williams announced his own retirement. “North Carolina should never be irrelevant. It should be front and center with the spotlight on them.”
Freshman Paolo Banchero led the Blue Devils with 20 points and his classmate, Keels, had 19. Another freshman, A.J. Griffin, never really got untracked, finishing with only six points.
Chances are Griffin and Banchero will be following Krzyzewski out the door. They are the latest in his revolving door of “One and Done” players, though neither they nor Zion Williamson in 2019 could lead Duke back to the promised land.
North Carolina is back on the verge again, playing in its third final since 2016 and looking for its second title since 2017 Win or lose, though, 2022 will always be remembered as the year North Carolina sent Coach K packing for good.
One team’s joy is another team’s pain.
“When you’re in the arena, either you’re going to come out feeling great or feel agony, but you always will feel great about being in the arena,” Krzyzewski said. “I was in the arena for a long time, and these kids made my last time in the arena an amazing one.”
FOUL TROUBLE
Carolina big man Armando Bacot finished with his seventh straight double-double — 11 points and 21 boards — despite fouling out down the stretch. Duke’s Williams played the entire game in foul trouble. He finished with four buckets for eight points — all of them on dunks.
FAMILIAR FOES
Monday will mark the fourth meeting in the season’s final week between Kansas and North Carolina, but the first in the national final since 1957, before the tournament had become what it is today.
Carolina won the title game in triple overtime over Wilt Chamberlain and the Jayhawks. The Tar Heels won in 1993 on the way to the title and Kansas returned the favor in 2008, then also went on to take the championship
For years we were told by the game’s cognoscenti there was nothing like it, this Duke-Carolina rivalry. It was pounded into our heads not only by a certain revered, gravelly-voiced cable TV color analyst but all of college basketball’s upper crust.
You have no idea, we were told. Seven miles apart, we were told. The greatest rivalry in college sports, we were told. Cameron Crazies. Dean Dome. Stately traditions
They forgot Oklahoma-Texas and Auburn-Alabama in football, for starters. Dismissed them, looked down their noses as if those blood lettings were second-class. Those monumental games are contested once a year living in the hearts of the losers and winners for the next 365. Heck, sometimes Duke-Carolina was played three times in three months.
But let it be known that Duke-Carolina graduated Saturday night. It is something bigger now. It transcended the arguments. It might have transcended sports. Given the stakes, the circumstances and the 40-plus coaching career of a 75-year old giant that painfully, gloriously, improbably ended, it is bigger than what the experts tell us.
washington football team roster
wwe releases . Why is WWE releasing so many superstars 2021?
The American Swimming Federation has announced its new policy for trans women
NBA Basketball League play-offs / Defending champions eliminated / LeBron returned home empty-handed