In 1952, the Kansas basketball team won its first NCAA National Championship. That team was, of course, coached by Phog Allen, the inventor of basketball coaching. On that team was a seldom-used junior guard named Dean Smith.
Smith played in 18 games, scored 26 total points, and pulled in 11 rebounds. The following year, as a senior, Smith played in 25 games, scoring 49 points, recording 27 rebounds, and shooting just 26.8 percent from the field (15-56). It obviously wasn’t as a player that Smith made his mark on college basketball.
In 1961, Smith succeeded Frank McGuire as head coach of the North Carolina Tar Heels. McGuire was incredibly successful at UNC, winning the 1957 National Championship in triple overtime against Wilt Chamberlain and the Kansas Jayhawks.
In Smith’s first year as coach, UNC’s leading scorer was a crappy guard named Larry Brown. Yes, that is the same Larry Brown who led KU to its second National Championship in 1988.
Smith also recommended the coach who succeeded Brown at KU for the 1988-89 season, a little-known North Carolina assistant, Roy Williams. When Brown moved on after 1988, he left KU to deal with an NCAA probation, and Kansas was not allowed to play in the 1989 NCAA Tournament. It’s the last time KU has failed to make the field.
Starting in 1990, Williams led the Jayhawks to 14 straight tournaments. During his tenure, KU appeared in four Final Fours and two title games.
Meanwhile, Smith took the Tar Heels to 11 Final Fours and added two more national titles. He won 879 wins at UNC, against just 254 losses (77.6 winning percentage).
At the end of the 2003 season, UNC wooed Williams back to his alma mater, where he added three more national championships before retiring in 2021.
Kansas vs North Carolina head-to-head history
The triple-overtime national title game in 1957 was the first matchup between the two schools. The schools have only played each other 13 times. Kansas has a slim 7-6 lead in the series, which includes wins in each of the last five games between the two titans.
North Carolina has visited Lawrence just twice - once in 1960, the year before Smith took over the program, and last year. The game on Friday will be the first time KU has ever visited Chapel Hill. All of the other 11 matchups between these blue bloods took place on neutral courts.
In 2022, the schools met in the National Championship game, and the Jayhawks overcame a 15-point halftime deficit to win the title, 72-69.
Kansas vs North Carolina - Blue blood credentials
Going into this season, Kansas ranks second all-time in school wins (2,414) and North Carolina is third (2,395). The Tar Heels rank first in Final Four appearances (21), and the Jayhawks are fifth on that list (16). UNC is tied for third with six National Championships, and KU is seventh with four.
There is no doubt that these two schools are the bluest of the blue college basketball schools, along with Duke and Kentucky (with strong arguments to be made for UCLA and UConn).
It will be exciting to watch Kansas basketball finally play a game in Chapel Hill, in a building named for Dean Smith, a Kansas alum. There are so many connections between these two programs that it seems impossible they’ve only played 13 times, and never in Chapel Hill.
This matchup should be special, and it is an early-season bonus for fans of both schools.
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