Kansas Basketball: 3 keys to beat North Carolina in 2022 national title game
By Bryan Mauro
Take away the perimeter
Kansas has been fantastic from deep all year long and they are going to be again in the NCAA tournament. They will be just fine and the guards will make their threes. Kansas plays at one of the fastest paces in the country and is efficient when doing so. This game is going to be high scoring and it will be the advantage of Kansas if this game turns into a track meet as the Jayhawks love to play that way and are efficient in transition when playing that way.
The one thing that Kansas needs to make sure they do is guard the three-point line and contest every shot. The Tar Heels have a lot of guys who can hurt you from deep and especially their guards. In the Final Four win over Villanova, Kansas came out and used their pace to jump on Villanova and get out to a huge lead.
Then as the game wore on the Jayhawks started to give up offensive rebounds which resulted in wide-open threes that Villanova hit to get back into the game. Kansas hit a ton of threes as well and were able to go on a run at the beginning of each half to win the game.
The Jayhawks don’t have to deny the three-point line altogether, but they do need to contest the line and not give the shooters for North Carolina open looks. It will be imperative to run them off the three-point line at times. End-of-game situations are when the Tar Heels have made all their threes.
If Kansas contests the shots and they still go in well that is Basketball, however, you have a much higher chance of having them miss the shot when it is contested. If they are giving North Carolina wide-open looks all game, they can still win but it will be a lot closer than it potentially should be.
The one thing to keep in mind that Kansas will find when watching the film is if you contest the shots and try to run North Carolina off the three-point line they are prone to some silly turnovers and bad passes. Duke was able to get some easy runouts on bad passes when they were contesting the three-point line.
Kansas should hope to get out in transition and get some easy baskets to extend the lead. Transition is where Kansas loves to play and if as mentioned a track meet will bode well for the Jayhawks.