Kansas cruises to reach title game

NEW ORLEANS — Kansas and Villanova waged a 3-point shooting contest at the Final Four with one of them racing out to a big lead in the opening minutes and the other spending the rest of the night trying in vain to catch up.

It all may sound familiar to basketball fans.

But in a rematch of a rout by the Wildcats four years ago in San Antonio, it was the Jayhawks who joyously walked off the court with the win this time at the final buzzer Saturday night. David Mccormack muscled his way for 25 points, Ochai Agbaji was nearly perfect from the field and finished with 21, and the lone No. 1 seed to reach the national semifinals rolled to an 81-65 victory.

“This is what we were planning to do that season,” said Agbaji, who was 6 of 7 from beyond the arc. “Everyone that was on that team, this is for them and they know it just as much as us.”

Now, the Jayhawks (33-6) hope to follow a familiar pattern against North Carolina on Monday night. The last three times the Jayhawks and Wildcats have met in the tournament, the winner has gone on to win it all.

Playing without injured guard Justin Moore, Villanova (31-7) watched as Kansas scored the game’s first 10 points and eventually built 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 and final game for the Wildcats, hit five 3pointers and finished with 17 points, while Slater hit four 3s and had 16 points. Samuels finished with 13 points in the final game of his career.

Each team finished with 13 3-pointers, and the 26 made shots from beyond the arc set a record for a Final Four game, topping the 25 that the same two teams made in 2018 at the Alamodome.

Unlike that night, though, it was the Jayhawks who pounced on Villanova at the start, trying to run ragged a team whose depth problems were only compounded by the loss of Moore, who tore his Achilles tendon in the regional finals.

The Jayhawks applied pressure the moment Villanova inbounded the ball. They unleashed traps in half-court, something they rarely did in the regular season. And they twice picked the pocket of Gillespie, the two-time Big East player of the year, leading to easy baskets and a 10-0 lead before some of the 70,000-plus fans had even found their seats.

“We got off to such a great start in large part because of how we shot the ball,” Kansas coach Bill Self said.

Whenever Agbaji, the Big 12 player of the year, wasn’t enjoying the soft rims of the Superdome to knock down 3s, the 6-foot-10, 250-pound Mccormack was having his way with the undersized Wildcats in the paint.

The Jayhawks’ lead soon stretched to 15 midway through the first half before Jay Wright finally called timeout.

STEPHEN LEW/USA TODAY SPORTS Kansas forward David Mccormack dunks against Villanova during a Final Four matchup on Saturday in New Orleans. Mccormack finished with 25 points.