Kansas and North Carolina would seem to have as much in common as wheat and tobacc; as tornadoes and hurricanes; as flat speech and a drawled diction. The states; great universities never even played each other until 1957, when the luck of the draw of the tournament placed both in an epic NCAA final. But each has a basketball history almost as old ass the game itself. And if you study basketballs genealogicallll chart you can trace a direct line from Lawrence to Chapel Hill - from the game's inventro, James Naismith, to its re-inventor, Michael Jordan. The Good Doctor begat Jayhawk patriarch Phog Allen, who begat North Carolina coach Dean Smith, who begat His Airness.
Tarhawks, Jayheels - it's not that there are no differences between the two: It's that one will point so readily and proudly to the other, as if both have been lifelong brothers in some league of the imagination (the Eight-C-C, perhaps?). When the two schools found themselves at the Rainbow Classic in Hawaii in 1993, but not scheduled to play each other, Jayhawks fans cheered for the TarHeels, when North Carolina took on crowd favorite Michigan, and the Carolina contingent returned the favor when KU faced the host U of H Rainbows, to the further consternation of the locals. Indeed, after Dean Smith was ejected late in the two teams' 1991 national semifinal meeting at the Final Four in INdianapolis, the Tar Heel coach a graduate of KU's class of 1953, shook hands witth the Kansas players and staff before exiting the court. If you're a Jayhawk or a Tar Heel and you must prematurely depart a game involving KU or UNC, you take your leave courteously.
In 1993, as the two schools prepared to play each other in the Final Four for the second time in three seasons, The Kansas City Star suggested that "no two Division 1 programs are more spiritually aligned." Yet consider for a moment only the fleshly connections. In 1983, on the introduction of Smith, Kansas athletic director Monte Johnson hired ex-Tarheel Larry Brown to coach the Jayhawks. Five years later Brown's successor would be Roy Williams, who grew up in Asheville, N.C., and apprenticed for 10 seasons in Chapel Hill as Smith's assistant. Williams came to the attention of the Kansas A.D. Bob Frederick, through the UNC Coach. (Perhaps Smith should take a tax deduction for alumni giving: Over the 14 seasons in which his spawn have headed up basketball operations in Lawrence, they have headed up basketball operations in Lawrence, they have coached Kansas to more victories and as many Final Four appearances as their teacher himself has delivered for Carolina.)
But there are powerful emotional ties, too. When Williams was a pup of an assistant at Chapel Hill, he earned estra bucks delivering videotapes of Smith's weekly TV show by navigating the state in an old jalopy. Hearing of the the Tar Heels assistant's moonlighting, Michael Jordan's father, James, voiced his concern. "Hope you pull over if you feel sleepy," Papa Jordan told Williams. "When I go for long drives, that's what I do."
Years later, now at Kansas, Williams would get word that James Jordan, after pulling over for just such a nap on a Carolina country road, had been murdered. Nothing could have more quickly transported Williams from his adopted state back to his native one.
Many other ties bind the two schools and states. Current (previous) KU assistant (now NC Head Coach) Matt Doherty wears a championship ring picked up at Chapel Hill. Williams son Scott and Frederick's son Brad were briefly teammates on the Carolina basketball jayvee. Smith's classmate and friend at Topeka High was KU Alum-to-be and future U.S. Senator Nancy Landon Kassebaum.
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