MEMPHIS, Tenn. — These are the sweetest dreams of all, when you are a small-town North Carolina boy and you find yourself with a basketball and a Final Four berth in your hands for the school you loved growing up, loved so much you chose to be a walk-on a year ago and show the doubters you belonged in Michael Jordan’s Chapel Hill.

“Luuuuuuuke!” they chanted as Luke Maye, wearing a smile you could have stretched all the way back to Huntersville, N.C., climbed the ladder to cut a strand of the net he would soon be wearing inside his black Final Four cap.

At the end of a heart-pounding, breathtaking finish, it was supposed to be Justin Jackson or maybe Joel Berry II carrying North Carolina back to the Final Four on its Redemption Tour if it wasn’t De’Aaron Fox or Malik Monk taking Kentucky to Arizona.

It was Maye.

Maye, the region’s Most Outstanding Player, with a forever shot from the left wing. Not as forever as Michael Jordan’s left-corner 16-footer that beat Georgetown in the 1982 national championship game, but forever enough.

Forever enough to beat Kentucky 75-73.

“It looked great going up,” Maye said in the locker room. “But luckily it hit the back rim and fell in.”

He could have gone to Notre Dame or Davidson or Clemson or Gonzaga. He wanted to go where his father played quarterback in 1986 and 1987. He was on the bench when Villanova’s Kris Jenkins hit the miracle 3 in the national championship game a year ago in Houston. He is a 6-foot-8 power forward and not one of North Carolina’s six McDonald’s All-Americans, so he is always on the bench when the games start.

But give him 20 minutes off that bench in an Elite Eight March Madness game, and he will somehow give you a career-high 17 points and rush into the warm embrace of his parents in the stands.

He was Kris Jenkins this time, 0.3 seconds from the buzzer.

“I knew I had confidence in myself, and I wanted to prove people wrong,” Maye said on the court.

I asked him what people had said about him, and he said: “They were just saying I’m a little undersized, I’m not gonna be able to play here, and I just wanted to prove those people wrong and show ’em that I can play, and I proved it tonight.”

It was Maye who threw the overhead pass downcourt to Justin Jackson for a lay-in that made it North Carolina 73, Kentucky 70 with 34 riotous seconds left.

Then Malik Monk drilled a monster 3 with 7.2 ticks left.

“I was kinda like, ‘Oh my gosh, he did not just make that shot,’ ” Nate Britt said.

Theo Pinson saw that Monk was being contested by Maye and Jackson.

“And I was like, ‘I need to find a way to get this rebound,’ ” Pinson said. “And then once it went in, I was like, ‘Aw, crap.’ ”

It was Pinson who delivered the ball to Maye.

“I was on the right wing, so I needed to get in the middle of the floor to put pressure on both sides,” Pinson said. “So once I did that, I tried to put a quick move on Fox and just make a play, and once I saw [Derek] Willis commit, I knew I had Luke wide open. I wanted it to be a handoff so I could just at least get in the way a little bit so he had time to get it off.”

Maye had a feeling Pinson might pitch it to him, so he stepped back.

“Kind of an impulse reaction,” Maye said.

Pinson pitched it to him.

“It was like a left-handed pitch,” Pinson said.

Maye had hit 3-of-4 3s against Butler (14 points, nine rebounds in 11 minutes). His season high had been 13 points, but his teammates weren’t covering their eyes when Maye launched his shot.

“In practice, Luke tries to take all the big shots,” Britt said. “If he’s on the team that’s down two or three points, he’s always trying to take the 3, so we’re not surprised that Luke was confident and able to knock down that shot.”

“I knew it was good, but I was like, ‘Lord, please go in,’ ” Pinson said.

Maye grew up with a hoop in his driveway.

“My parents spoiled us,” he said.

He is a self-made player, a gym rat, a classic overachiever who achieved at the most critical time.

“I’ve always tried to model my game after Dirk [Nowitzki],” Maye said. “But I’ve never gotten to that height.”

On Sunday night, on the biggest stage, in the biggest game of his life, for one shining moment, he did.

“Every kid dreams of hitting a shot like that, right?” I said to him.

“I think everyone does,” Maye said. “And I’m just glad that it happened to me today.”