CHAPEL HILL – Only a handful of college basketball programs reside in the fabled wing of the sport’s lore.

UCLA with its many national championships under John Wooden, Kentucky with its deep roots and second most titles, Duke with its incredible four-decade run under Mike Krzyzewski and bouts of success before him, and then there’s North Carolina and Kansas.

Indiana was on the list, but it isn’t unwarranted to suggest the Hoosiers have dropped to the next tier.

UNC and KU, however, are more intertwined than any combination of the others. The Tar Heels and Jayhawks are so interwoven in their basketball DNA that it’s truly remarkable to think their meeting in Lawrence, KS, on Friday night will be just the second ever in either program’s home building.

In 1960, UNC went into Allen Fieldhouse and beat the Jayhawks, otherwise the other 11 meetings between the programs have come on neutral courts, seven times in the NCAA Tournament. That makes Friday’s game special on so many levels. It’s more than a game, it’s a celebration of these incredible historic programs, their shared connections, and really a celebration of the sport.

“The history of these two programs playing each other,” UNC Coach Hubert Davis said Wednesday during a press conference at the Smith Center. “I played against Kansas in the Final Four in 1991. We played in the NCAA Tournament my first year (as an assistant at UNC) in 2012-13 in Kansas City. We played them in the national championship game.”

Both programs have six wins in the 12-game series. Kansas knotted the record with a victory over the Tar Heels in the title game Davis noted. Kansas has won the last four meetings, all with Bill Self as its head coach. Self replaced Roy Williams following the 2002-03 season when Williams returned to UNC.

The seeds of this fruitful relationship were first planted in Emporia, KS, where the legendary Dean Smith was born in 1931 and grew up. He later attended Kansas, serving in a reserve role on its 1952 NCAA title team that was coached by Phog Allen. Allen, by the way, played at KU for James Naismith, who invented the sport.

Smith was an assistant under Tar Heels head coach Frank McGuire when UNC won at Allen Fieldhouse in 1960, and the following season was the head coach at Carolina, where he would hold that position for 37 years until retiring prior the start of the 1997-98 season.

Smith was the NCAA all-time leader in wins with 879 when he retired and while guiding UNC to two national championships and 11 Final Fours. Two of Smith’s victories came over his alma mater in 1981, which happened to be Michael Jordan’s college debut, and in the 1993 Final Four. The Tar Heels won the 1982 title and beat Michigan two days after beating Kansas in 1993.

Those Jayhawks, of course, were coached by Williams, who served as an assistant under Smith for a decade before his mentor got him hired at Kansas in 1988. Williams’ third KU team beat Smith’s 30th Carolina club in the Final Four in 1991.

Backing up to 1983, Kansas hired Larry Brown as its head coach. Brown starred for Smith at UNC in the legend’s early days in Chapel Hill and served as an assistant under him from 1965-67. That final season was Smith’s first Final Four team. Sixteen years later, Brown took over at Kansas and led the Jayhawks to the national championship in 1988, its first since the 1952 club included Smith.

Brown left after that season taking a head coaching job in the NBA, and his replacement was Williams, who in 15 seasons led the Jayhawk to a 418-101 record and four Final Four appearances, twice reaching the national title game. He lost both times. And in fact, his final game at Kansas was the national championship loss to Syracuse in 2003. He was UNC’s coach not long after.

At UNC, Williams led the Tar Heels to a 485-163 mark with three national championships and five Final Fours.

In keeping a count here, since Phog Allen was second generation to Naismith, Smith was third generation, therefore Williams was fourth generation, and Davis is now fifth generation to the inventor of the sport.

Davis also almost won a national championship by beating the Jayhawks three seasons ago. Carolina led by 15 points at halftime but wore down and lost 72-69. Current Tar Heels guard and reigning ACC Player of the Year, RJ Davis, scored 15 points that night in New Orleans. He will start for UNC in Allen Fieldhouse on Friday night.

His memories of the loss in the 2022 title game are painful, as one would imagine.

“We was just one rebound away from winning it,” he said. “It’s definitely something that the following year I was rewatching that game over and over again because you get so close to your dream that you set as a freshman, or just as a high school athlete; you always want to win a national championship from watching different teams, different players play in March Madness and you want to be the last two standing.

“So, just to be that close, it was definitely heartbreaking for me. A lot of emotions I can remember from that game. I remember looking up at the clock and then watching it hit zero and the buzzer going off.”

Here’s a look at some other noteworthy connections:

*UNC assistant coach Brad Frederick, who played for Dean Smith at UNC, his father, Bob Frederick, was the AD at Kansas who hired then-UNC assistant Roy Williams to take over the Jayhawks program.

*Dick Harp played for Phog Allen at KU and later replaced him as head coach when Allen retired in 1956. Harp led the Kansas program for nine seasons, and later served as an assistant coach for Smith at UNC from 1986-89. Hubert Davis was on the team in Harp’s last season on the Carolina bench.

---As a sidenote, Harp’s first season at KU was Wilt Chamberlain’s senior year, and in March 1957, UNC beat Kansas in triple overtime to win the national championship.

---Another side note: Harp and Davis are the only two coaches to play and serve as head coach in the Final Four at their alma mater

Note: Kansas 2,394 wins, UNC is third with 2,373

The 12 Meetings:

1957 NCAA Championship: UNC 54, KU 53

2022 NCAA Championship: KU 72, UNC 69

1991 Final Four: KU79, UNC 73

1993 Final Four: UNC 78, KU 68

2008 Final Four: KU 84, UNC 66

2012 Elite 8: KU 80, UNC 67

2013 NCAA 2nd Round: KU 70, UNC 58

UNC’s last win over Kansas came in November 2002 in the semifinals of the Preseason NIT. The 67-56 victory was over a Williams-led Jayhawks team and starred Tar Heels freshmen Raymond Felton, Sean May, and Rashad McCants, who were the core of Williams’ first national title team two years later at UNC.

Other meetings:

November 1981, UNC 74, KU 67 in Michael Jordan’s college debut.

December 1959 UNC 60, KU 49 in Raleigh. Dean Smith was an assistant coach on that Carolina club.

December 1960, UNC 78, KU 70 at Allen Fieldhouse.

January 1981, KU 56, UNC 55 in Kansas City