In a national championship game nobody at Kansas will soon forget, Bill Self went from the Hall of Fame coach who too often failed on the big stage to the brilliant mastermind of the biggest second-half comeback in NCAA title-game history.
Blitzed by plucky North Carolina for most of the first 20 minutes Monday night and digging a seemingly insurmountable 40-25 hole, the Jayhawks rallied for a 72-69 victory over the Tar Heels inside the boisterous Superdome.
Self managed to calm down his disjointed team in the locker room, then get it back on a script for success: Pound the ball inside to David McCormack, ride the hot hand of Remy Martin and make crucial stops in the closing minutes.
McCormack finished with 15 points and 10 rebounds, dueling in the paint all night with ailing Carolina big man Armando Bacot. Martin poured in 11 of his 14 points after the break, while Jalen Wilson also had 15 points — including a couple of big baskets early in the second half, when the Jayhawks managed to turn a blowout into a ballgame.
It's the fourth title for the Jayhawks and the second for Self, who claimed his first when another bunch of comeback kids rallied to beat Memphis in overtime in 2008. And this one came on the same Superdome floor where Kentucky denied Kansas in the finals a decade ago, one of the many heartbreaks that Self and his team have experienced over the years.
There was the 2010 team that spent much of the season ranked No. 1 but lost in the second round of the tournament, and the following year the Jayhawks didn't lose until late January but were dumped by VCU in the Elite Eight.
There was also the overtime loss to Michigan in the Sweet 16, and back-to-back years in which Kansas failed to make it out of the tournament's opening weekend. And more recently, the 2018 drubbing at the Final Four by Villanova — which Kansas avenged Saturday night — and second-round exits in each of the previous two NCAA Tournaments.
The Tar Heels sure seemed to be adding another layer of heartache early in Monday's game.
They dominated the offensive glass in the first half, and scored second-chance baskets nearly at will, while Kansas went through long periods of offensive ineptitude. Martin was 1 for 5 from the field, his only make a clanked 3-pointer off the backboard, and Wilson and Christian Braun were a combined 2 for 13 from the floor.
At halftime, Self referenced the Jayhawks' 2008 national championship comeback with his team, asking if they'd rather be down by nine with 2 minutes left — as they were that night — or down by 15 with 20 minutes still to play.
It took about 10 minutes to learn their answer.
The trio of Braun, McCormack and Wilson went to work to start the second half, wiping out North Carolina's lead and finally pulling even when Ochai Agbaji — the Final Four MVP — converted a three-point play with 10:53 to go.
It was a back-and-forth affair from there until McCormack gathered his own rebound and got a basket to go with 1:16 left in the game. Bacot turned the ball over at the other end and his sprained ankle from the semifinals against Duke finally gave out. Then, McCormack added another basket with 22.3 seconds left to give the Jayhawks some breathing room.
Caleb Love and Puff Johnson both missed tying 3-point tries, then North Carolina got one last chance when Dajuan Harris turned the ball over with 4.3 seconds to go. The Tar Heels again got the ball to Love, the hero of their dramatic win over the Blue Devils, but his shot missed as the clock expired and confetti began to fall from the rafters.
The comeback broke the record for the largest halftime deficit overcome in a championship game, set by Kentucky in 1998, when it rallied to beat Utah. It also broke the record for any Final Four comeback of 11, set by Duke's rally past Maryland in 2001 and Temple, when it beat Kansas State in the 1958 third-place game.
