UNC, Kansas MBB Announce Home-and-Home Series Agreement
CHAPEL HILL – North Carolina and Kansas, two of college basketball’s legendary programs, have agreed to play games on each other’s campuses in the 2024-25 and 2025-26 seasons.
The Tar Heels will travel to Lawrence, Kan., for just the second time ever and first time since 1960, in the 2024-25 season.
In 2025-26, the Jayhawks will play in Chapel Hill for the first time.
“These two games should be exciting for players and coaches on both teams and a win for fans of college basketball,” says UNC head coach Hubert Davis. “It’s an opportunity for two great programs to play in each other’s home arenas, which are among the best and most historic in our game.”
Carolina and Kansas are richly-connected and have two of the most illustrious resumés in college basketball history:
• They have combined for 10 championships, 247 wins and 37 Final Fours in 103 NCAA Tournament appearances.
Carolina is first all-time in NCAA Tournament wins and Final Fours, second in appearances and third in championships; Kansas is third all-time in NCAA Tournament appearances, fourth in wins, fifth in Final Fours and seventh in titles.
• Thirty (30) former UNC and Kansas players and coaches are inducted in the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame. Tar Heels and Jayhawks have won a combined 22 National Player-of-the-Year awards and 131 first-team All-America honors, including the two most consensus first-team All-America seasons in college basketball history (25 Jayhawks in 32 seasons and 18 Tar Heels in 27 seasons).
• Carolina and Kansas rank in the top three in college basketball history in both wins and winning percentage. UNC is second in winning percentage and third in wins; the Jayhawks have the most wins and are third in winning percentage.
• Dean Smith played for Phog Allen at Kansas, where he was a member of the 1952 NCAA champions and 1953 NCAA finalists, and was head coach for 36 years at UNC, where he won two NCAA titles, led the Tar Heels to 11 Final Fours and retired as the winningest coach in college basketball history. Following his graduation from KU in 1953, Smith began his Hall of Fame coaching career the following season as a volunteer assistant to Allen and Dick Harp.
• Roy Williams was the head coach at Kansas from 1988-2003 and Carolina from 2003-21, leading the two programs to a combined nine Final Fours. Williams won NCAA championships with the Tar Heels in 2005, 2009 and 2017, and is the only individual to win 400 games at two schools (418 at Kansas and 485 at Carolina).
• Larry Brown played for and coached under Smith at UNC and was the head coach of the Jayhawks for five seasons, leading KU to a pair of Final Fours and the 1988 NCAA championship.
• Harp was head coach of the Jayhawks when they played the Tar Heels in a historic triple overtime game for the 1957 NCAA championship and was later a member of Smith’s coaching staff in Chapel Hill.
• Brad Frederick played for Smith at UNC and is in his 11th year as a member of the Tar Heel coaching staff. His father, Dr. Bob Frederick, was the director of athletics at Kansas for 14 years and hired Williams, who was an assistant coach at UNC, to be the Jayhawks’ head coach in 1988.
• Steve Robinson, Joe Holladay, Jerod Haase, C.B. McGrath, Matt Doherty and Jonas Sahratian were on staff at both Carolina and Kansas, and Haase and McGrath played for Williams at Kansas. Doherty played for the Tar Heels, was an assistant in Lawrence with Williams and was head coach at his alma mater for three seasons.
• Fred Quartlebaum was an assistant coach at UNC from 2000-03 and is in his 11th season on staff at Kansas, where he currently is the director of basketball operations.
The Tar Heels and Jayhawks have played 12 times with each team winning six games, including four straight wins by KU over the last 16 seasons. They last played in the 2022 national championship game in New Orleans, a 72-69 Jayhawk victory.
Carolina and Kansas have played seven times in the NCAA Tournament, including two championship games (1957 and 2022) and three times in the national semifinals (1991, 1993 and 2008). UNC-Kansas is the most frequently-played matchup in the Final Four, twice more than any other pair of teams have played in the Final Four.
Led by National Player of the Year Lennie Rosenbluth, Carolina won the first of its six NCAA championships in 1957 by defeating Wilt Chamberlain and KU, 54-53, in three overtimes in Kansas City, Mo.
The Tar Heels’ only previous appearance in Allen Fieldhouse was a 78-70 victory on Dec. 17, 1960, in Frank McGuire’s final season as UNC’s head coach and Smith’s third season as an assistant coach at Carolina.
The teams have previously played two regular-season games in the state of North Carolina – Dec. 11, 1959, in Raleigh’s Reynolds Coliseum, and Nov. 28, 1981, in the Charlotte Coliseum in Michael Jordan’s first game as a Tar Heel.
The 1959 game was part of a two-night doubleheader that also included host NC State and Kansas State.