NEW ORLEANS (AP) — Ochai Agaji followed a celebratory stream of Kansas players in the Final Four with the words "One more!" echoes to the tunnel of the Superdome and to the door of their locker room.
Another game awaits, which is the biggest match of his career.
The Jayhawks returned to the national championships on Saturday night with a shooting performance that will go down in history. David McCormack pitched his way to 25 points, Ochai Agbaji hit six 3-pointers and was 21, and the only No. 1 seed to reach the national semi-final came home before a huge crowd with an 81–65 victory over Villanova. Packed up. The New Orleans Saints kept almost everyone away a year after the pandemic.
"Even after this game, even after last weekend, everyone has the same attitude the weekend before that - everybody's attitude was on the next one," Aghazi said, "and what's happening on Monday is pretty much the same. Not looking forward.
Well, they can now look forward to a big-time showdown: The Jayhawks, the most winning event in Division I history, will face North Carolina, which sits at No. 3 on the list and has been in more final fours than anyone. Is.
The Tar Heels sent Duke coach Mike Krzyzewski into retirement with an 81-77 win in their semi-final on Saturday night.
The Jayhawks (33-6) expect a familiar pattern as well: The last three times Kansas and Villanova have met in the tournament, the winner has cut the nets, including their one-sided Final Four matchup in San Francisco four years ago. Antonio.
"You come to Kansas for the big games," said Christian Braun, who has 10 points against the Wildcats, "but you don't come to Kansas to play in the Elite Eight." You don't come to Kansas to play in the Final Four. You come to play for the championship."
Playing without injured guard Justin Moore, the Wildcats (30-8) saw the Kansas score the first 10 points of the game and eventually a 19-point cushion on Saturday night. And despite big performances from Colin Gillespie, Brandon Slater and Jermaine Samuels, the short-handed and undersized Wildcats never made it back.
In his 156th and final game for the Wildcats, Gillespie hit five 3-pointers and finished with 17 points, while Slater hit four 3-pointers and had 16 points. Samuels finished with 13 points in the last game of his career.
"He played very well. He was well prepared. He really executed," said Villanova coach Jay Wright. "We did a lot of things wrong, but we want to make sure he gets the credit he deserves. He played a great game."
Each team finished with 13 made 3-pointers, and 26 total shots from beyond the arc set a record for the Final Four game, topping 25, the same two teams scored at the Alamodome in 2018.
Unlike that night, however, it was the Jayhawks who initially attacked Villanova, trying to drive a team whose depth problems were compounded only by the loss of Moore, who tore his Achilles tendon in the regional finals. Had given.
The Jayhawks put pressure when Villanova put the ball in. He set nets on the half-court, something he rarely did in the regular season. And he twice pocketed Gillespie, a two-time Big East player of the year, making easy baskets and a 10-0 lead before some of the more than 70,000 fans got their seats.
"We got off to such a great start in large part because of how we shot the ball," said Kansas coach Bill Self.
Whenever the Big 12 player of the year, Aghaji, wasn't enjoying the Superdome's soft rims, 6-foot-10, 250-pound McCormack was making his way into the paint with the undersized Wildcats.
The Jayhawks' lead soon expanded to 15 in the middle of the first half before a timeout was called at the end of the right.
Their counterparts can probably relate: In a sport that it's detestable to see itself re-watched, the Wildcats pulled off a 22-4 lead from the gates four years ago to win the Final Four blowout and eventually their third national championship. traveled for.
“This is legal revenge for 2018,” tweeted Mavericks’ Jalen Brunson, who played a big role for Villanova that night.
Daniels and Gillespie did everything possible to rewrite the finish.
Daniels, a New Orleans native who began his career down the road in Tulane, kept pretending to hustle around the hoop, and Gillespie, Philadelphia's blue-collar kid, was able to knock out a couple of 3s.
The Jayhawks were still leading 50-34 at the start of the second half when Wright moved to a smaller lineup and increased the pressure on the defense. The result was three consecutive turnovers, and quick 3-pointers by Slater and Antoine - a rarely used guard that absorbed many of Moore's minutes - that allowed Villanova to trim the lead to single digits.
"We felt like we were right there," Gillespie said. "It's a long game, it's a 40 minute game, and we pride ourselves on playing 40 minutes every night. And we were just talking about digging, scraping and clawing and trying to steal it at the end." Were."
McCormack eventually paid Villanova to play with a rim-rattling dunk to be short with 10:25.
And when the Wildcats scored one last, three-point play from Samuels closed within 64-58, with just 6 minutes left, McCormack and Braun responded again. The deep fadeaway 3 after the shot-clock deadline gave Kansas some breathing room again, and the Big 12 champs edged out there in Monday night's title game.
"You knew Villanova would score a run and we just kind of caught and replied," Self said, "but I thought we played well. I thought we were disciplined defensively. I thought we shot." On Fake, basically, stayed down for 40 minutes. And with the exception of defending the arch, I thought we just played pretty well."
Welcome back
The Jayhawks will play for the championship on the same Superdome floor where they lost to Kentucky in the 2012 title game. The Kansas allowed the Wildcats to make a big early lead that night before their return bid fell short.
Familiar enemy
Kansas and North Carolina will play in the NCAA Tournament for the seventh time, and five of those games have taken place over the final weekend. This includes the triple-overtime 1957 title game won by the Tar Heels in Kansas City, Missouri.
Stats and stripes
Kansas had just seven turnovers while Villanova had nine. ...Self coached his 75th tournament game, breaking a fifth-place tie on the career list with Tom Izzo of Michigan State. ... Villanova fell to 5-6 when her opponent scored at least 70 points this season. ... Gillespie and Slater were 9 out of 15 from beyond the arc; The rest of the wildcats were 4 out of 16.