Duke and North Carolina, heated rivals separated by only about ten miles distance on Tobacco Road, will face off next weekend in the NCAA men’s basketball Final Four. The rivals will be joined in New Orleans by fellow “blue-blood” programs Kansas and Villanova, a set of teams that has sent the ticket prices sky-high as of Sunday afternoon’s Tar Heel victory to complete the field.

Duke, which will see the retirement of legendary head coach Mike Krzyzewski at the end of the season, had punched its ticket to New Orleans on Saturday, as had Villanova. Kansas made its way to the national semifinals with a win earlier Sunday.

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According to ticket resale marketplace Ticket Club, get-in prices for the NCAA semifinals double-header on April 2 went up by over 50 percent when North Carolina clinched its trip with a win over Cinderella 15 seed St. Peter’s. An upper level ticket could be had at 3:42 p.m. for $486, but that minimum was $759 as of 7:53 p.m. Sunday night. Better seat locations also saw a similar bump in price, with the least expensive lower-level seat going from $1,617 before UNC’s win to $3,941 after. Those numbers have since softened – the overall get-in fell below $600 per seat by 9 p.m. Sunday and has continued to fall throughout Monday morning – but the market is expected to be very strong for the first Final Four with a full stadium since 2019.

Of course, it isn’t just Duke and UNC fans that are causing the market to pop – Kansas has as storied a history of any program in basketball, and Villanova has won  two NCAA championships in the last six years. The four teams to book tickets to New Orleans this weekend have combined for 17 titles and 61 final four appearances.

The NCAA tournament matchup will somehow be the first in history between Duke and North Carolina, which have played each other 257 times, most recently in the last home game of the regular season, when the Tar Heels trounced Duke to spoil hopes of Coach K going out with a victory in his final game at storied Cameron Indoor Stadium – a game that saw outlandish prices of its own on resale marketplaces. Villanova defeated Kansas in both of its recent NCAA Championship runs, defeating the Jayhawks in the 2016 Elite Eight and again in the 2018 Final Four.

The timing for the semifinal games has not yet been announced. The first game is scheduled to tip off at 6:09 p.m., with the second game following after, estimated at 8:49 p.m. The championship game on Monday, April 4 is scheduled for a 9:20 p.m. start.

NCAA Men’s Final Four Matchups

April 2: National Semifinals Double-Header
Duke (2) vs. North Carolina (8)
Kansas (1) vs. Villanova (2)

April 4: National Championship Game
Duke/UNC winner vs. Kansas/Villanova winner

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Men’s NCAA Final Four Ticket Links

Final Four tickets at SeatGeek
Final Four tickets at StubHub
Final Four tickets at Ticket Club | Free Membership Offer
Final Four tickets at Ticketmaster
Final Four tickets at TicketNetwork
Final Four tickets at TicketSmarter
Final Four tickets at TickPick
Final Four tickets at Vivid Seats

Headline photo: Duke and North Carolina face off in the final home game of Coach K’s career at Cameron Indoor Stadium. Via NCAA.com.

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