How the Kansas Jayhawks won the 2022 men's national championship, and what's next for both KU and the North Carolina Tar Heels

Men's college basketball has a new national champion. The Kansas Jayhawks launched a historic comeback to prevail 72-69 over the North Carolina Tar Heels in Monday night's final in New Orleans, the school's fourth national title and second under head coach Bill Self, who also led KU to the 2008 crown. Kansas made history by overcoming the largest halftime deficit ever for a national champion, trailing 40-25 at the break before storming out of the locker room with an 18-6 run that eliminated any notion of a Tar Heels runaway. The previous largest halftime deficit for a champ was 11, attained by the 2001 Duke Blue Devils and 1958 Temple Owls.

With Kansas cutting down the nets to put a bow on the 2021-22 season, ESPN's team of Myron Medcalf, Jeff Borzello, John Gasaway and Joe Lunardi took a final look at this historic national championship game, including what went right for Kansas and what went wrong for North Carolina in the second half. The ESPN quartet also reflected on the meaning of the Kansas triumph, of the past five months of college basketball and also took a look ahead at the personnel the Jayhawks and the Tar Heels have coming back in 2022-23.

North Carolina and Kansas came together to give us one of the most thrilling national title games in years. With five minutes to play, Kansas had a 63-61 edge after being down 15 points at halftime. North Carolina's offensive firepower and defensive pressure had created that cushion going into the break, but Kansas' offensive efficiency helped it recover and take the lead in the second half. That 10-minute stretch for Kansas at the start of the second half, when it outscored North Carolina 31-10, kept the Tar Heels chasing it until the end of the game. In the final