HOUSTON — There will be more on the line than a national championship Monday night.
For North Carolina guard Nate Britt and Villanova forward Kris Jenkins, there also will be bragging rights — for life — when the two brothers meet at NRG Stadium.
“Who else is there [better] to beat than someone in your household and to have permanent bragging rights for the rest of our lives,” Britt said with a smile Sunday. “If we get into an argument, we can look at this game, whoever wins.
“We’re super competitive, so what better way to do it than this?”
In 2007, Britt’s family legally adopted Jenkins when his mother decided they could give her son a better life. They played on the same youth teams and went to the same high school, Gonzaga College High School in Washington, D.C., so this will be their first matchup. Britt said the two have not communicated since before the national semifinals and doesn’t expect them to before the opening tip. Their family plans to be neutral, according to Britt, but that won’t carry over to the brothers.
“There’s nobody in the world I want to beat more than my brother,” Jenkins.
While Roy Williams will be making his fifth appearance in the national championship, Jay Wright will be coaching in his first title game, having been denied by Williams in his other Final Four appearance in 2009.
Wright, a Pennsylvania native who left Hofstra in 2001 after back-to-back NCAA Tournament trips and who has been at Villanova since, said Sunday he has been “tempted” to leave the Wildcats multiple times over the past 15 years.
“I have been tempted a couple of times,” Wright said. “How close I was to going, I couldn’t say. I mean, I really don’t remember now, but one thing you just realize the longer you’re in this, it’s not just you. … I don’t think the way we do it would fit at other schools. So we’re very happy. We love the school. We love living there.
“I think our coaching style fits Villanova’s culture. So to quote [the] great Jimmy Valvano, [he] said, ‘Don’t mess with happy.’ That’s kind of the way we look at it.”
Villanova leading scorer Josh Hart could go down as one of the best players in school history, but chances are he will never be known as the best athlete in his family.
Hart’s father, Moses, was the nephew of former Yankees great Elston Howard, who won the 1963 AL MVP and six World Series titles.
“I use him as a role model, just everything he was able to do — the first black player to play for the Yankees,” Hart said. “The character that he had is something that I try to resemble.”
Wright was named the Naismith Coach of the Year for the second time, and Oklahoma senior Buddy Hield, the two-time Big 12 Player of the Year, was the Naismith Player of the Year, beating out Michigan State’s Denzel Valentine, Virginia’s Malcolm Brogdon and Kentucky’s Tyler Ullis.
