MEMPHIS, Tenn. _ Kris Jenkins was sitting right behind the North Carolina bench, so if anyone knew what this felt like, it was him. He hit the shot to beat the Tar Heels in last year's national title game for Villanova, after Marcus Paige tied the score with a crazy 3-pointer, and he watched as the same sequence played out Sunday, only the other way this time.
Instead of Paige, it was Kentucky's Malik Monk hitting the tying shot. Instead of Jenkins, it was Luke Maye hitting the last-second game-winner to send the Tar Heels back to the Final Four.
North Carolina's quest for redemption took an ironic turn Sunday with that sequence, securing a 75-73 win in a game that felt every bit like it was also for the national title.
So the Tar Heels will get their shot, first against Oregon, then perhaps against Gonzaga or South Carolina. Either way, they head to Phoenix as the favorites, just as Kentucky would have been with a win, two elite teams that delivered a classic regional-final finish that met every expectation.
And the winning shot came from a player who would have seemed entirely unlikely before this weekend but seemed entirely fitting at the end of it. Maye's double-double Friday night was the difference-maker in North Carolina's win over Butler. His 17 points helped carry the Tar Heels through a second-half dry spell Sunday, the last two the clutchest of all.
North Carolina already had its season flash before its eyes once this tournament, down five to Arkansas late, only to score the final 12 points of the game. Here the Tar Heels were again, with a little more time but in the same fix, down five to Kentucky with five minutes to go, stagnant on offense, unable to stop the unlikely Isaac Humphries on defense.
Then Theo Pinson got to the rim. North Carolina went zone for a possession. Justin Jackson got to the rim. Kennedy Meeks blocked Bam Adebayo. Pinson drew a foul and made two free throws. Maye made two free throws. Joel Berry got to the rim for his first points in hours. Two more Pinson free throws made it another 12-0 run. This one didn't end the game. But it did get the Tar Heels in position to get to a second straight Final Four.
For a while in the first half, it felt like 2012 all over again for North Carolina, right down to playing in front of a partisan opposing crowd as a No. 1 seed. When Berry went down clutching his other ankle _ sitting with a towel over his head before leaving for the locker room with a downcast look on his face _ and Stilman White came off the bench, there were echoes of that frustrating regional final everywhere.
But White beat Monk on the baseline for a reverse layup, and Berry came trotting back shortly after and went straight to the rim, and the 2012 team, for all its star power, never had a shooter like Jackson, who kept the Tar Heels afloat during that dangerous sequence. On a team obsessed with redemption, White got a little bit personally in that sequence, after his "poor Stilman" cameo as a freshman in that 2012 loss to Kansas in St. Louis.
Unlike the wild 103-100 Kentucky win in December, this was a more physical, more emotional game, but it delivered everything that was expected of it, the unquestioned marquee game of the tournament so far, between what were, in some eyes, the two best teams remaining. In a year when the other titans of the game fell early or unexpectedly or both _ Villanova, Duke, Kansas, Louisville, Arizona, UCLA _ these were the last two standing. As they so often are.
Either North Carolina or Kentucky has been in seven of the past nine Final Fours, 2017 included, but never together. Twice, they have met in a regional final. Kentucky won in 2011. This was North Carolina's year.
So in a Final Four with two football schools and the original mid-major, North Carolina is left to carry not only the banner of basketball tradition but their own _ of redemption, having gotten one step closer to it by winning Sunday the same way they lost last April.
