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Final Four connections

North Carolina has been one of Niwot High grad Luke Kingsley's favorite teams since he was a little boy, according to his wife, Katie Spencer Kingsley, also a Niwot grad.

As North Carolina made its way to an improbable Final Four appearance at the NCAA basketball championships in New Orleans, Luke got a call from a friend in North Carolina, who said, "I have a ticket for you, your wife and Brady...."

As it turned out, the friend, Justin Cavenaugh, had met Luke at the Final Four in Phoenix in 2017. "He had gone to every Final Four that North Carolina was ever in with his dad," Luke said. "He met me and my son Brady, who was eight years old then, in the lobby of our hotel, and he said, 'I saw how excited your son was and it reminded me of my dad.' Justin's dad had Parkinson's disease, and had passed away."

Katie Kingsley's father, Bob Spencer, suffered from a similar debilitating disease, which gave the two Tar Heels fans more in common. "We stayed in touch," Luke said. Bob Spencer succumbed to the illness on March 1, 2022.

"We had a trip planned to Arizona, and we missed it when Bob died," Luke said. "He [Justin] called me up and said, 'I have tickets for you if you want them.' So we went down there [to New Orleans]."

North Carolina had made it to the Final Four as an eighth seed, and the semi-final game matched the Tar Heels against Coach "K" and his No. 2 seed Duke squad, in what proved to be the final collegiate game for legendary Coach Mike Krzyzewski.

"The night before the Final Four started, we were walking back to our hotel, and we passed on the back side of the Kansas hotel," Luke said. They saw a player Luke recognized, and it turned out to be Ochai Obagi, the Big 12 Player of the Year for Kansas. "Brady had a North Carolina hoodie on, and Obagi stopped to talk to him, and posed for a picture with Brady." The next night the Kansas star made his first six 3-pointers in the semi-final victory. "It's because he shook my hand last night," Brady said. It seemed the Kingsley luck carried over to the next night.

The Kingsleys planned to go to North Carolina's Saturday semi-final game, then head home. "And then they won the game," Katie said. So they decided to stay, thinking they could be part of the atmosphere and be able to watch the game on TV.

Those plans changed. "We were walking back to the hotel Sunday, in a back alley in New Orleans, and we ran into Niko Medved, who was there for a coach's convention," Katie said. Luke and Katie are both CSU alums, and they had gotten to know the Colorado State men's basketball coach and his wife through an assistant coach on the CSU staff.

The next day Medved texted Luke and said he had tickets he couldn't use. The tickets turned out to be in the same row as former Kansas and North Carolina coach Roy Williams. They picked up a third ticket from a fan, and there was an open seat next to Medved's tickets. Williams was sitting in an aisle seat, and each of the Kingsleys went down to say 'hello' and pose for a photo. "Roy was really nice," Katie said.

And at the first TV timeout, Luke happened to be next to Williams as the TV camera closed in on the iconic coach. "All of a sudden our phones were blowing up," Katie said, as friends from all over had seen Luke on national TV.

"The seats were in the same row as the children of [current North Carolina] Coach Hubert Davis, and Brady befriended them." Antawn Jamison, the national player of the year for North Carolina in 1998, was also in the same row. "Brady was speechless," Katie said.

As it turned out, they also ran into Luke's Niwot High teammate and former roommate, Darin Reese, a very successful basketball coach at Mead High School who was in town for a coaches convention. Even though Reese is a Duke fan, Kingsley ended up giving some extra tickets he had come across so that Reese and his son could attend the game.

They finally flew home on Tuesday night, flying standby, and all three of them made the flight. "It was like my dad was directing everything," Katie said. She recounted how they had gone to a roulette table and bet twice on her father's birthday – and it hit twice in a row. "I felt guilty going on the trip, but Luke said, 'No, I want you to come.'"

Brady, an eighth-grader, plays basketball on a travel team in Windsor that Luke coaches. At Niwot, Luke was a multi-sport athlete, playing soccer, basketball and baseball, where he was part of two state championship baseball teams and a state runner-up soccer team.

Luke also coaches his son in baseball. Brady will be a freshman at Windsor High School next fall, and the Kingsley family is looking forward to continuing to follow college basketball. "Brady is 13-years old, and I've been to two Final Fours with him," Luke said. It will be a hard act to follow.

 

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