The 2022 NCAA tournament delivered historic upsets and millions of broken brackets, but there’s nothing Cinderella about the programs and matchups in Saturday night’s Final Four. Kansas, Villanova, Duke and North Carolina have collectively made 61 Final Four appearances and 17 national championships, including winners in seven of their last 13 title games. It’s a blue-blooded Final Four field with programs whose reach and recognition are far-reaching, making Saturday night one of the most anticipated nights in college basketball history.
The four programs even have some history against each other. Kansas and Villanova played in the NCAA tournament in 2008, 2016, and 2018, with the last meeting being in the Final Four, with the winner in all cases winning the national championship. Duke beat Kansas for Mike Krzyzewski’s first national championship in 1991. Villanova defeated Duke en route to Jay Wright’s first Final Four and then defeated North Carolina at Buzzer to capture Wright’s first title with the program. The only programs that don’t have an NCAA tournament history are the two who know each other best: Tobacco Road rivals Duke and North Carolina.
Kansas, No. 1, and Villanova, No. 2, will start historic proceedings in New Orleans at 18:09 ET and replay the national semifinals from San Antonio four years ago. After Game 1, around 8:49 p.m., No. 2 Duke plays No. 8 North Carolina. Mike Krzyzewski’s retirement tour has been one of the big draws for sports fans, and now the Blue Devils’ dream season against their biggest rival is upon us Game. If you consider the history of those two programs in the Final Four and the severity of where both Duke and North Carolina are at this moment, the Blue Devils are ending Coach K’s final season, while North Carolina is ending the Final Four in Year 1 achieved with Hubert Davis – the stage couldn’t be bigger.
You can see why fans are so excited to watch and stream this Final Four, because that’s not half of what you should be looking for on Saturday night. Let’s get to the big storylines for this weekend’s national semifinals.
Historic stage for college basketball’s greatest rivalry
Duke and North Carolina have played 257 times but never in the NCAA tournament. This clash not only in the Final Four but in the overall context of this season lends historic weight to the occasion. Krzyzewski and the Blue Devils hoped to end the season here with a talented roster of future NBA talent who started the year in the top 10, finished No. 1 in the AP Top 25 poll, and picked up the ACC’s first regular-season crown Programs have won since 2010. But Duke has suffered a number of setbacks on his way to No. 2, none more notable than North Carolina’s 94-81 win in Coach K’s final game at Cameron Indoor Stadium.
Publicly, the Duke players avoided making strong connections between that defeat and Saturday’s national semifinals. It was a very businesslike approach from the Blue Devils — one very different from the passion that defined the Duke-North Carolina rivalry during Coach K’s time at Durham. North Carolina’s win over Duke in Cameron on March 5 was just the latest in a long line of iconic moments – we’ve rounded up some of our pre-game favorites for you – in a rivalry that features the best in more than just the college basketball, but all American team sports. Other rivalries have already had their postseason moment, but so far, Duke-North Carolina has stayed within the friendly confines of the ACC’s regular season and conference tournament. Now the Final Four kicks off with a big crowd and a national championship at stake. No matter what happens, Saturday night’s game will be a historic moment in the rivalry.
Villanova adapts after Justin Moore injury
Aside from the four wins themselves, no aspect of the Elite Eight had a bigger impact on Saturday’s national semifinals than Justin Moore’s injury in the last minute of Villanova’s 50-44 win over Houston in the South Regional Finals. Moore suffered an Achilles injury and was ruled out the day after the game, with Wildcats coach Jay Wright noting the importance of losing a team captain, second-best scorer and “one of the best rebound guards” to his time at Villanova.
Now that Wright and the Wildcats are in New Orleans, the message was clear: They need to adjust the way they play with Moore out of the lineup. Villanova already had a low rotation of around six players, so even losing a player will mean more responsibility for players who haven’t been in those spots before. Look for Chris Arcidiacano and possibly Bryan Antoine to be X-Factors with more minutes, but Wright also had to adjust the many ways Moore plays in out-of-bounds situations, press-break and other sets that the Will be key to overcoming a strong Kansas team.
Lone #1 seed kinda under the radar
The Duke-North Carolina showdown is consuming a lot of oxygen ahead of the Final Four, and Villanova’s two national championships in the last five tournaments make it easy to focus on the Wildcats and their injury woes. Somehow, the most successful program in Division I men’s collegiate basketball history is the least talked about competitor in the Blue Blood Final Four, and on top of that, the Jayhawks are the only No. 1 in that tournament left!
But Kansas knows this isn’t a popularity contest, and being the bottom line in terms of pre-Final Four hype means nothing to their chances of winning a national championship. Oddsmakers have the Jayhawks with the second best odds to win it all (+180), ranked just behind Duke (+155) at the time of writing. Bill Self’s group is experienced — four seniors, one junior and two sophomores make up the seven-man rotation — and have their own unique motivations after the 2020 NCAA tournament was canceled when Kansas was the best team in the country would have. With several players from this team here in the Final Four, including 2022 Big 12 Player of the Year Ocahi Agbaji, there is a possibility of winning the program’s fourth national championship, an elusive feat for the Jayhawks in the past decade.
Schedule for the Final Four 2022
- (1) Kansas vs. (2) Villanova – 6:09 p.m. on TBS (watch live)
- (2) Duke vs. (8) North Carolina – 8:49 p.m. on TBS (watch live)