“That was their game to make it to the Elite Eight,” Britt said. “So I was like, now we got to win so we can make it.”

North Carolina advanced, too, which kept alive a vision Britt and Jenkins realized would be possible when the NCAA tournament bracket came out. “We both want each other to keep moving forward, so hopefully we can meet in the championship game,” Britt said.

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Even in distant locations and on different teams, Britt and Jenkins, both juniors, have in large part played this NCAA tournament together. They have discussed games and opponents over the phone, traded text messages and kept track of each other’s Snapchat accounts. They have rooted for each other from afar, and if both keep winning, Britt’s Tar Heels will face Jenkins’s Wildcats for the national title.

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Their relationship stretches beyond typical high school teammates, or even standard childhood friendship. When Jenkins was 12 and his parents faced travel issues for work, he moved in with Britt’s family. “We’ve been brothers ever since,” Britt said.

And so they have kept close track as their teams have been perhaps the two best in the tournament. Jenkins, a sharpshooting forward, has scored 16 points per game in the tournament, including his breakout Sweet 16 performance, in which he scored 21 on 8-of-10 shooting, drained six three-pointers and grabbed nine rebounds. Britt, a reserve point guard, scored seven of his 14 tournament points in UNC’s blowout victory over Indiana on Friday night.

In 2013, their final year in high school, Villanova played UNC in the first round of the NCAA tournament. Britt and Jenkins had both already committed, which spawned ample trash-talking during the week. They have not been aligned against one another since. They are hoping it happens again soon.