LAWRENCE, Kan. (AP) — It's hard to call any series between basketball programs a rivalry when they've met just 12 times in their shared history.
Hard to call North Carolina-Kansas anything else, though.
They are linked by Dean Smith and Larry Brown, Matt Doherty and Roy Williams. And when they have played, the stakes have been the highest: Seven matchups in the NCAA Tournament, five in the Final Four, and twice the winner has cut down the nets — the Tar Heels won the national title in a triple-overtime thriller in 1957, turning back a team led by Wilt Chamberlain, while the Jayhawks got their revenge in 2022 with the largest comeback in title game history.
Nothing nearly as important is at stake Friday night. But when the No. 9 Tar Heels visit Allen Fieldhouse for the first time since 1960, and plays No. 1 Kansas only the second time on either campus, they will be writing another chapter in their rivalry.
“Our history is so intertwined,” Kansas coach Bill Self said Thursday, “that you can't help but respect the other, because we're not who we are — either one of us — without the other. So it just makes it a special series.”
A rare one, too — a home-and-home, on-campus series between traditional bluebloods. Duke and Arizona are playing a similar series, but most such games have become one-offs on neutral floors, arranged primarily for TV and squeezed into an increasingly cluttered calendar filled by lengthy conference schedules, in-season tournaments and interleague showdowns.
Kansas is due to play North Carolina at the Dean Smith Center in Chapel Hill for the first time on Nov. 14, 2025.
“We'll see how tomorrow goes," Self said with a wink, “and then we'll decide if we want to return the game.”
While there are no championships at stake Friday night, the game should be one of the marquee nonconference matchups in college basketball all season. The Jayhawks (1-0) are led by All-American center Hunter Dickinson, and feature one of the nation's top transfer classes, while the Tar Heels (1-0) have a loaded backcourt headed by All-American guard R.J. Davis.
The anticipation was palpable on the Kansas campus Thursday. Hundreds of students representing several thousand compatriots were dutifully camping out to land prime seats inside the renovated Phog, and had been since Tuesday morning.
“Nothing against neutral courts, but I like playing on each other's floor,” Tar Heels coach Hubert Davis said. “Those are games that you remember for the rest of your life, whether you’re a player or a coach.”
The matchups between North Carolina and Kansas have certainly been remembered.
The two national title games stand out first and foremost. Chamberlain had 23 points and 14 rebounds in the ‘57 game, played about 45 minutes from Lawrence at Municipal Auditorium in Kansas City, Missouri, but it wasn’t enough to fend off Lennie Rosenbluth and the Tar Heels. And some 45 years later, when the teams met for the title again at the Superdome in New Orleans, it was North Carolina that was unable to hold on to an early 16-point lead in a 72-69 defeat.
Three other matchups have taken place in the Final Four, too.
Smith, who played for the Jayhawks' 1952 title team, was coaching North Carolina when they met in 1991, and was ejected as Kansas went on to victory in the Hoosier Dome. Two years later, the Tar Heels beat Kansas at the Superdome, then outlasted Michigan's Fab Five for the title. And in 2008, the Jayhawks beat North Carolina on the way to the title, roaring to a 40-12 lead and holding on to earn a date with Memphis, where they won Self's first title in an overtime thriller.
The Tar Heels and Jayhawks played an Elite Eight game in 2012. A second-round game the next year. Even rare matchups outside the NCAA Tournament have had historical value. Michael Jordan's first game with the Tar Heels? He had 12 points against Kansas on Nov. 28, 1981, in a game played in Charlotte, North Carolina.
Doherty was his teammate that year, later became a Kansas assistant and eventually the Tar Heels' head coach. It was a similar path to Smith, who played for Kansas, was an assistant at his alma mater and then built North Carolina into a juggernaut. Williams played under Smith, then wound up coaching the Jayhawks before returning to coach his alma mater to two national titles.
Brown went the other direction. His fifth game as the Tar Heels' point guard was that matchup with Kansas at Allen Fieldhouse on Dec. 17, 1960. He later became an assistant for them. But in 1988, as head coach of Kansas, Brown won a national title.
“It's just huge for college basketball," Davis said of the matchup between Kansas, the nation's second-winningest program, and North Carolina, which sits at No. 3. "It's something that each player should aspire and look forward to, because you only get these types of games and these types of moments once in a while. So it's definitely something you want to look back on, and it's definitely something you want to take full advantage of, because it's fun at the end of the day.”
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AP Basketball Writer Aaron Beard contributed.
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