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Kansas Defeats Villanova To Reach NCAA Final

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Kansas guard Remy Martins celebrates after scoring against Villanova

Ochai Agbaji moved with a celebrating team of Kansas players off the pitch at the Final Four, their shout of “One More” following up the tunnel of the Superdome and right to the gate of their locker room.

One more match awauts, the biggest of their careers.

The Jayhawks earned a trip back to the national championship Saturday night with a shooting performance that will move down in history. David McCormack muscled his way to 25 point, Ochai Agbaji hit six 3-pointers and got 21, and the only No. 1 seed to reach the national semi-finals rolled to an 81-65 win over Villanova before a huge crowd that got the home of the New Orkeans Saints a year after the Covid-19 pandemic kept just about everyone away.

“That is everyone’s attitude – even after this game, even after last weekend, the weekend before that – everyone’s attitude was on to the next one,” Agbaji commented, “and not looking too far ahead at what is going on Monday.”

Well, they can look towards a big-time showdown now: The Jayhawks, the winningest program in Division I history, will combat North Carolina, which sits at No. 3 on the list and has been to more Final Fours than any other team.

The Tar Heels sent Duke coach Mike Krzyewski into retirement with an 81-77 win in their semifinal Saturday night.

The Jayhawks (33-6) hope a familiar pattern holds, too: The last three Kansas and Villanova have met in the tourney, the winner has moved on to cut down the nets, with their lopsided Final Four matchup four years ago in San Antonio.

“You come to Kansas for big matches” said Christian Braun, who got 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 a championship.”

Playing without injured guard Justin Moore, the Wildcats (30-8) watched as Kansas scored the game’s first 10 points and eventually built a 19-point cushion Saturday night. And despite big shows from Collin Gillespie, Brandon Slater and Jermaine Samuels, the short-handed and undersized Wildcats never made it all the way back.

Gillespie, playing in his 156th and final match for the Wildcats, hit five 3-pointers and finished with 17 points, while Slater hit four 3s and had 16 points. Samuels finished with 13 points in the final game of his career.

“They played great. They were well-prepared. They really executed,” Villanova coach Jay Wright commented.” “We did a lot of things wrong, but we want to make sure they get the credit they deserved. They played a great game.”

Each of the team finished with 13 made 3-pointers, and the 26 total shots from beyond the arc set a record for a Final Four game, topping the 25 that the same two teams made in 2018 at the Alamodome.

Unlike that night, though, it was the Jayhawks who pounced on Villanova at the start, trying to match ragged a team whose depth problems were only compounded by the loss of Moore, who tore his Achilles tendom in the regional last game.

The Jayhawks applied pressure the moment Villanova inbounded the ball. Theu unleashed traps in half-courtt, something they often did in the regular season. And they twice picked the pocket of Gillespie, a two-time Big East player of the year, leading to easy baskets and a 10-0 lead before some of the 70,000-plus fans had even found their seats.

Whenever Agbaji, the Big 12 player of the year, was not enjoying the soft rims of the Superdome to knock down 3s, the 6-foot-10, 250-pound McCormack was having his way with the undersized Wildcats in the paint.

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