Kansas basketball overcomes 15-point halftime deficit to defeat UNC for NCAA championship
NEW ORLEANS — A national championship slipped away from North Carolina on Monday night as the Kansas Jayhawks erased a 15-point halftime deficit to cut down the nets in front of over 70,000 fans at the Caesars Superdome.
The Jayhawks survived two missed 3-point shots from Caleb Love in the final 14 seconds, including a last gasp at the buzzer to hold on for a dramatic 72-69 win.
It was Love who put the dagger in Duke's back two days ago in an epic Final Four win but came up short with a title on the line.
With former Kansas and UNC coach Roy Williams, the arbiter for both programs, watching from the stands, Kansas' Bill Self joined him in the ranks of coaches with multiple NCAA Tournament titles, winning a second championship on the same court from his last in 2008.
Watch: North Carolina vs. Kansas basketball video highlights, score in March Madness championship
UNC's 15-point halftime lead was the fifth-largest in NCAA Tournament history but will go down as the biggest blown lead in tournament history.
Kansas outscored UNC 47-29 in the second half, erasing the deficit in eight minutes before holding on for the win. 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.
Davis fell short of becoming the fifth Black coach to win a men's NCAA Tournament championship, a list that includes Georgetown's John Thompson (1984), Arkansas Nolan Richardson (1994), Kentucky's Tubby Smith (1998) and UConn's Kevin Ollie (2014).
UNC remains at six national titles.
Kansas' David McCormack and Jalen Wilson finished with 15 points each while Christian Braun added 12 points and 12 rebounds.
It was McCormack who played the hero down the stretch, scoring on a put-back with 1:21 left to give KU a 70-69 lead and adding another bucket with 22 seconds remaining to give his team the lead for good.
UNC junior Armando Bacot, playing with an injured right ankle, had 15 points and 15 rebounds in a gritty performance that will forever endure him with Tar Heel faithful.
The price of the emotional toll of a Final Four win over Duke, at least at first, seemed like too much for the Tar Heels to pay.
Kansas jumped out to a 7-0 lead. David McCormick stuffed a wounded Bacot on his first shot and the Jayhawks looked like a team on the verge of a blowout.
But as they’ve done all season – coming back from embarrassing early-season losses and spending an uncomfortable amount of time on the NCAA Tournament bubble – the Tar Heels grinded and twisted their way back to relevancy.
First, it was an 8-0 run that erased Kansas’ four-point lead with 8:11 left in the half. Then, two minutes later with the game tied at 22, a backbreaking 16-0 run began with back-to-back 3s from Brady Manek.
The Oklahoma transfer went 1 of 5 in the first half against Duke, and against Kansas found his 3-point rhythm a trio of treys in the first 15 minutes.
Five of the next 10 points came from the two hands of Bacot that more than made up for the one foot he played on all night.
The junior forward rolled his right ankle in the final minutes of the win against Duke, and one the even of the national title tilt proclaimed that only amputation would keep him from the court.
He finished the first half with 12 points and 10 rebounds, tying David Robinson's NCAA record with 31 this season.
Bacot could barely leave his feet at the opening jump, but played the first eight minutes of the game, even waving off Hubert Davis’s attempts to take him out as R.J. Davis shot free throws at the 13:30 mark. Davis missed his second attempt and Bacot grabbed the offensive board before being fouled on the putback.
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. With a lack of depth in the frontcourt, Bacot was only able to sit for 1:18 in the first half. When replaced by Puff Johnson, he declined to sit, instead standing near the edge of the bench in an attempt to ward of the pending swelling that will undoability come.
David Thompson is an award-winning reporter for the USA Today Network covering NC State and Duke athletics. He can be reached at dthompson1@gannett.com, at 828-231-1747, or on Twitter at @daveth89.
This article originally appeared on The Fayetteville Observer: Kansas basketball erases 15-point deficit vs. UNC for NCAA title
