SWEET CAROLINA, WHAT A FINAL FOUR

The North Carolina Tar Heels now are a win away from getting back to a national championship game they narrowly lost a year ago.

And this time, they made the last shot. Luke Maye hit a jumper with 0.3 seconds left and top-seeded North Carolina held off No. 2 Kentucky 75-73 to earn the Tar Heels’ second straight trip to the Final Four and 20th all-time in Sunday’s showdown of college basketball’s elite in the South Regional in Memphis.

The Tar Heels (31-7) will play Midwest champ Oregon Saturday in Glendale, Ariz., in a national semifinal. Earlier, Sindarius Thornwell scored 26 points and South Carolina earned its first trip to the Final Four with a 77-70 victory over Florida Sunday in New York. The seventh-seeded Gamecocks (26-10) used their swarming defence and solid free-throw shooting to beat the Gators (27-9) in the East Regional final. South Carolina will face Gonzaga in the Final Four.

In the NCAA women’s tournament, Stanford rallied from a 16-point deficit as the Cardinals edged top-seeded Notre Dame 76-75 Sunday to reach its first Final Four since 2014. Stanford faces Monday’s South Carolina-Florida State winner in the Final Four next weekend. On Saturday, UConn beat UCLA 86-71, putting the Huskies in the Bridgeport Regional final. The victory was the 110th straight for the No. 1 Huskies, who will face 10th-seeded Oregon Monday.