Tar Heels’ magical ride continues
North Carolina sends Coach K into retirement with Final Four victory
NEW ORLEANS — 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 semifinals showdown marked Coach K’s last loss, and one of his toughest losses, too.
And thanks to the Tar Heels — those gosh darn 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,” the coach said.
Krzyzewski’s remarkable career came to sudden 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 in Tobacco Road.
The eighth-seeded Tar Heels (29-9), of all teams, pinned the 368th and final loss on Krzyzewski. His lifetime record against North Carolina fell to 50-48. Nos. 47 and 48 are ones Carolina fans will treasure forever. This one 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. This one stopped the coach’s last-gasp, storybook run one win away from a title game and a chance at his sixth championship. Krzyzewski said he had a locker room full of crying players when 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 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 K ansas, which beat Villanova 81-65 earlier in the undercard.
“Dwelling on the two wins against Duke doesn’t help us against Kansas,” Hubert Davis said.
Maybe not, but what a game! It 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.
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 for a fourpoint lead and what felt like massive 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, 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
after Hall of Famer Roy 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, looking for its second title in six years. Win or lose, though, 2021-22 will always be remembered as the season North Carolina sent Coach K packing for good.
One team’s agony is another team’s joy. The happy team has more work to do.
“All I’m thinking about are these players,” Davis said of his own squad. “Coach K is unbelievable. That team is the best team so far that we have played. And we just happened to make more plays tonight.”
Kansas 81, Villanova 65: David McCormack muscled his way to 25 points, Ochai Agbaji was nearly perfect from the field
and added 21 points, and the hot-shooting Jayhawks raced to a big early lead before withstanding every Wildcats run to earn a berth in the championship game.
Christian Braun also had 10 points, including a key 3-pointer to ward off a comeback late in the game, as Kansas (33-6) exacted a measure of revenge for a Final Four beatdown by the Wildcats four years ago in San Antonio.
Now, they hope to follow a familiar pattern against Duke or North Carolina on Monday night. The last three times that the Jayhawks and Wildcats have met in the tournament, the winner has gone on to cut down the nets.
Playing without injured guard Justin Moore, Villanova (31-7) watched the lone No. 1 seed to reach the semifinals score the game’s first 10 points and eventually build a 19-point cushion. And despite big nights from Collin Gillespie, Brandon Slater and Jermaine Samuels, the short-handed and undersized Wildcats never made it all the way back.
Gillespie, playing in his 156th game for the Wildcats, hit five 3-pointers and finished with 17 points, while Slater hit four 3s and had 16 points. Samuels finished with 13 points in the final game of his college career.