City of Basketball Love

Stephen Pianovich (@SPianovich)
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At some point early in North Carolina’s East Regional final at the Wells Fargo Center on Sunday night, Nate Britt looked behind his team’s bench and saw an unexpected guest in the front row.

It was someone he considers a brother, who just a day earlier had re-set the family bar a day by reaching the Final 4. Britt knew he had to follow suit.

The junior scored four points as the top-seeded Tar Heels pulled away from No. 6 Notre Dame for an 88-74 victory and a ticket to Houston. And when Britt cut down his piece of the net, Villanova’s Kris Jenkins was there in the front row, snapping a picture with his cell phone.

Jenkins -- who was named the South Region’s Most Outstanding Player after scoring a combined 34 points in the Wildcats’ wins over Miami and Kansas -- has a long history with Britt and his family. It started when both were around 10 years old playing AAU basketball and has only grew stronger since.

Britt’s parents, Nate Sr. and Melody, legally adopted Jenkins a few years after they met, and their story has garnered some national media attention in the past week from USA Today and the Washington Post, among others. Britt and Jenkins lived together for years and played on the same AAU (D.C. Assault) and high school (Gonzaga) teams, growing up in Upper Marlboro, Md. -- just outside the nation’s capital.

They don’t see each other as often anymore, going to school 400 miles away, but they had a joyous reunion on Sunday night in the City of Brotherly Love, appropriately enough.

“It’s kind of unbelievable that we’re here and both in the Final 4, and that we can potentially match up in the Championship Game on opposite sides,” Britt said. “The experience has been fun. We’re watching each other’s games, and the first weekend, my games were first and his games were second, so I would win and it was like ‘OK, now you got to win.’

“I was comfortable with it that way, but now the other way around, once they punched their ticket to the Final 4 yesterday, I said ‘OK, he’s there, I gotta get there, the pressure is on me now.’ ”

Britt knew the pressure was really on when he noticed Jenkins seated directed behind the Tar Heels’ bench. Jenkins, a junior, got back to Villanova’s campus earlier in the afternoon, and the draw of the bracket worked out perfectly to have him be able to make the trip to South Philly and join the celebration. He got a great seat, too, seated with the rest of the Britt family and about six rows in front of Carolina legend Rasheed Wallace.

The Britts will make the trip to Houston’s NRG Stadium next weekend, the site of the Final 4, where they will have two players on two teams to root for. And while Britt and Jenkins have been trying to put off the possibility of facing each other for a national championship, the opportunity is now just a pair of wins away.

It would be a rarity for Jenkins and Britt to play against each other, as the duo hasn’t done it in about a decade. And they couldn’t find a much bigger stage for that potential meeting.

“When we first met each other, we played against each other,” Britt said. “But since then, I don’t think we’ve ever played against each other. Even when we’re playing pick up, we always tried to be on the same team. We have this chemistry. I don’t think I played against him since we were 11 or 10 years old.”

But whatever happens in Houston -- Villanova faces Oklahoma and North Carolina squares off against Syracuse on Saturday night -- Jenkins and the family he shares hundreds of memories with aren’t taking the one they had over the weekend lightly.

“It’s just a great opportunity for our family,” Jenkins said. “We definitely are appreciating it and we do not take it for granted.”