NEW ORLEANS — Sitting just a few rows behind the Kansas Bank at Caesars Superdome on Monday night, Mario Chalmers tried not to squirm.
The program he led to the 2008 Basketball National Championship went into halftime 15 points behind. Chalmers, the hero of this team that hit a 3-pointer to send the game into overtime in a win against Memphis, hoped the Jayhawks would remember what was still possible.
“I just thought, ‘Keep believing,'” Chalmers said after Kansas’ 72-69 win over North Carolina. “Same, coach [Bill] Self told us [in 2008] was to keep believing. And I knew they would make it in the end.”
There is a fine line between the joy of a hard-fought victory and the agony of fasting. Self, who won his second national title Monday, knows all too well after losing to Kentucky in the 2012 championship game and a lopsided loss to Villanova in the 2018 Final Four. But his first national title team with Chalmers was also down in the second half, albeit in a worse and more pressing scenario, so he challenged his 2022 players in the dressing room.
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“We were disappointed with the way we played at halftime,” Self said after a 16-point comeback, the largest deficit by a winning team in a national championship game in NCAA history. “I said to them, ‘Would you rather lose 15 points or nine with at halftime? [two minutes] Left?’ because that happened in ’08. They said all 15.”
His players also looked at each other in the dressing room and started yelling, “We’re coming back! We’re coming back!”
The comeback that saved a season and further strengthened a longtime coach’s legacy was born in that moment. But there was more than flying bodies and energetic college athletes who launched a powerful offensive attack against a North Carolina team that had already sacked Baylor, UCLA and Duke en route to the championship game in Hubert Davis’ freshman year.
The Jayhawks knew how much energy North Carolina had expended 48 hours before Monday’s game in a back-and-forth, 69-possession affair against rival Duke. Though the Tar Heels seemed invincible in the first half, the Jayhawks waited for fatigue.
“We ended up guarding the 3-point line and going to the posts and putting a couple of them in bad trouble,” said Kansas assistant Kurtis Townsend. “We really tried [speed them up]. We thought they were exhausted from the game the other day. The last lap was all we needed.”
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Ochai Agbaji, Remy Martin and Jalen Wilson come through with big buckets for Kansas after three straight possessions.
Early in the second half, Ochai Agbaji – who made just five shots in the first half while Leaky Black chased the Kansas star – was more aggressive. His outbursts from the screens frustrated North Carolina, who played more cautiously, with Black trying to avoid his fourth foul and Armando Bacot limping on a bad right ankle he injured late in the win over the Blue Devils. With shots coming from all over the place — Kansas beat North Carolina 31-10 in the first 10 minutes of the second half and also outplayed the Tar Heels 20-8 in the paint during that period — UNC seemed about how the game was turned to be stunned. Just five minutes after the break, Schwarz went on the bench with his fourth foul.
But KU’s defensive pressure was also critical. North Carolina only made five 3-pointers all night. However, in the second half, North Carolina finished a 2-for-12 shooting from beyond the arc and missed all seven 3-pointers it scored down the right side of the court.
Second-half efforts by Jalen Wilson (11 points), David McCormack (nine points), Christian Braun (10 points), Remy Martin (11 points) and Agbaji (four points) got a Kansas team going, the North Carolina surpassed 47-29 after halftime. But the Jayhawks’ defensive discipline made even one of the most explosive teams of the past month seem ordinary.
“That was a ‘Rocky,'” Self said. “Just get hit, hit, hit. Almost done, and somehow you just keep fighting.”
Six months ago, Self wasn’t sure he had a team that could pull off that run. He respected the excitement surrounding his 2021-22 roster, which had brought back Agbaji, McCormack and Braun, and also added Martin, an All-Pac 12 star at Arizona State, but Self wasn’t ready to hand him his first and only National players to compare title team.
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Sean Farnham locates Leaky Black’s departure just as Ochai Agbaji and Kansas rounded the corner.
“This team played better in 2008 than they faced [adversity]’ Self told ESPN at Big 12 Media Day in October. “We have some things that are similar but I don’t know if if it really comes down to how much this team is going to enjoy that [adversity] when the team loved it. The harder it was, the more they enjoyed it.”
3 minutes, 6 seconds to play and tied on Monday night on college basketball’s biggest stage, however, Martin hit a 3-point shot from the corner and McCormack pocketed two shots to keep Kansas ahead. The Jayhawks didn’t shrink.
Agbaji even laughed at Self crawling on the sidelines as North Carolina got another possession in the dying seconds of a 3-point game after a review found Kansas guard Dajuan Harris Jr. kicked out of bounds.
“[Self] made something up and he was just so intense and his lips went dry,” Agbaji said. “I was like, ‘Whoa, whoa, whoa. … We get it, Coach.’”
With his second national title, Self is now poised to succeed Mike Krzyzewski as the face of college basketball – albeit within the sport’s most complicated chapter. The introduction of the transfer portal and the era of name, image and likeness deals have added more layers to the program structure. As the sport’s new champion and leader of a team still awaiting the outcome of a serious violations case that includes allegations of five Tier I violations, Self has been labeled by some as a villain and an easy target of a disorganized system that doesn’t does ‘ It doesn’t seem to know what it wants from these investigations by others.
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Caleb Love’s game-changing attempt goes wide for North Carolina as Kansas claim their fourth national title.
But the FBI’s claim five years ago that it had college basketball’s “playbook” didn’t produce the sweeping indictments that many expected. The sport has largely evolved. Self and Kansas could face penalties in the coming months, but the court case hasn’t left a significant mark so far.
The awkwardness of the moment was highlighted when Mark Emmert, the head of the NCAA coming for Kansas and other programs, presented the championship trophy to Tom Burnett, commissioner of the Southland Conference and head of the men’s basketball selection committee himself, but only after Emmert did Team dubbed the “Kansas City Jayhawks”.
However, the joy about oneself never disappeared on Monday. A few months ago he lost his father, Bill Self Sr. He says he’s been talking to him all week and wished his father had been there for this run — a run that elevates the coach’s status among his peers . On Monday night, Self joined Jay Wright and Rick Pitino as the only active coaches with multiple national titles.
“It feels even better than I thought it would,” Self said before climbing a ladder to cut a piece of the mesh inside the Superdome.
As the confetti fell and the players cheered, the scene was familiar to Chalmers, who smiled as he watched the celebration from the crowd.
The Kansas team, which made the biggest comeback in national title game history Monday night, played with a passion Chalmers and his teammates also tapped into 14 years earlier. And he was proud.
“Most teams,” Chalmers said, “would give up at a moment like this.”