Look below to find our top March Madness predictions for all the National Championship action.
Saturday, April 2nd 2022
#8 North Carolina vs #1 Kansas – pm ET
Two of the greatest schools to ever step on a basketball court in the history of the men’s college basketball game will now face off for a national championship. As the North Carolina Tar Heels will take on the Kansas Jayhawks in what could end up being an all time classic between two great programs.
Marko Nadin
Kansas and North Carolina will face off in the National Championship game. North Carolina has won NCAA championships with the last one in 2017 and Kansas has won 3, the last one in 2008. North Carolina upset Duke in the semifinal with an 81-77 win. They were excellent throughout the tournament, eliminating the defending champion Baylor on their way. Kansas had a superior performance against Villanova in the semi final winning by 81-65 in a game with no lead changes and as a matter of fact, no team pushed them to the limits on their way to the final.
Kansas is a 4.5 points favorite coming into the final game. They have more seniors on the team led by their best player Ochai Agbaji who made 6 of his 7 three-point attempts in the semis. He will be the difference maker in the final game and lead Kansas to the title. Kansas also has a much more experienced coach as Bill Self is in his 19th season while Hubert Davis is in his rookie season with the Tar Heels. UNC is the best rebounding team in the nation and that will help them stay close but that will not be enough to win in the end.
Marko’s College Basketball Pick: Kansas (-188)
Tony Battalio
The Kansas Jayhawks come into this game searching for their first national championship since 2008 when they beat a Memphis Tigers team that featured Derrick Rose. Kansas is one of the blue bloods of the sport of college basketball but it has been a long time since they’ve been back to the mountaintop. In fact this is only their second national championship game appearance since that 2008 victory. They played in the 2012 national title game but lost that game to the Kentucky Wildcats.
The shot heard around the world.#CarolinaFamily | #MFinalFour pic.twitter.com/uGsfJ1rOio
— Carolina Basketball (@UNC_Basketball) April 3, 2022
The North Carolina Tar Heels enter this game looking for their second national championship in the last 5 years after defeating the Gonzaga Bulldogs in 2017. This will be their national championship appearance since 2016, where they lost to the Villanova Wildcats on a buzzer-beating three in one of the best national title games of all time. North Carolina started out the year shaky and by the time the tournament came around nobody expected them to be here. However, as for the result of this game I have North Carolina getting the victory.
Tony’s College Basketball Pick: North Carolina (+155)
Noah Dunlap
And then there were two. The National Championship will come down to Kansas and North Carolina, and gives us a matchup of one team that most had potentially making it this far, and the other being a team that virtually no one had getting to this point, as the North Carolina Tar Heels entered the tournament as an eight-seed. They may be an eight, but over the second half of the season they’ve played like one of the best teams in the country, and I don’t see this moment being too big for them. They showed this on Saturday night, as they took down Duke in the Final Four, in what turned out to be Coach K’s last game, as Caleb Love led the way with 28, including a massive three late in the game that proved to be the dagger.
On the other side, Kansas is obviously the older, more experienced team, but to me they’re a team that relies more on streaks than Carolina does. For instance, if they play well, as they did through the second half of their Elite Eight win over Miami, and the first half in the Final Four win over Villanova, they’re almost unbeatable, but I’m hesitant to think that happens again. They’re led by Ochai Agbaji, who was a player of the year candidate, and who was unconscious from deep against Nova, hitting six of seven threes, but I question their overall depth. Agbaji got help from David McCormack, who went 10-12 from the field, which put them at 16-20 from the field total, but I don’t think they’re able to repeat that same performance on Monday night. I’m calling for an upset here, as I think the run from the Tar Heels ends in a title. It’s close, but North Carolina pulls it out late.
Noah’s College Basketball Pick: North Carolina (+155)
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*Odds and spreads correct at time of publication, courtesy of FanDuel.
