The Kansas Jayhawks defeated the North Carolina Tar Heels 72-69 to win the National Collegiate Athletic Association’s men’s college basketball tournament Monday night in New Orleans, Louisiana.
The Jayhawks’ comeback from a 40-25 halftime deficit is the biggest comeback in the history of the tournament, commonly known as “March Madness.” The title is the second under head coach Bill Self, one of the top coaches in the upper ranks of U.S. college basketball, having won the trophy in 2008.
Kansas senior Ochai Agbaji, who scored 12 points in the championship game, was named the tournament’s Most Outstanding Player.
Monday’s game was a matchup of two of the most storied programs in men’s college basketball. The Jayhawks had won three NCAA titles heading into the game, while making 16 appearances in the tournament’s Final Four since 1940. North Carolina has won six NCAA titles and has made 21 trips to the Final Four since 1946.
Among the Tar Heels legends are players Michael Jordan and James Worthy — who both went on to become Hall of Fame players in the National Basketball Association — the late Dean Smith, the head coach who won two NCAA titles while building North Carolina into a major program, and former head coach Roy Williams, who won three championships before retiring in 2021.
Some information for this report came from The Associated Press.
