Carolina, No. 1 in the national polls, and Kansas, the No. 2 team with ideas about proving the polls wrong, meet tonight at 9 for the national championship. Michigan State and San Francisco play for third place at 7 p.m.

A sellout crowd of 10,500 in Municipal Auditorium, which thought it perhaps had seen it all after watching the triple-overtime Tar Heel victory, discovered in the nightcap it hadn't seen anything yet.

Kansas put on one of the finest basketball shows ever seen in this storied cage palace, and as each Kansas regular left the court late in the game he got a rousing ovation. Kansas shredded Frisco's famed defenses and three times in the first half had eight-point leads before blowing the game wide open in the second half. Before the second half was four minutes old, KU had a 12-point lead and late in the game turned it into a rout.

The opener, however, was a classic of suspense in which the Tar Heels from the tobacco belt proved they belong here and in which Lennie Rosenbluth proved he rates as an All-America.

Rosenbluth hit four of his 31 oints on his first two shots in the third overtime to lead Carolina to its 31st straight victory, longest single-season streak in collegiate history.

The regulation game ended at 58-58, the first overtime at 64-64 and the second overtime at 66-66. The crowd probably couldn't have endured another one like that, so Kansas obliged and put the nightcap away in a hurry.

Wilt Chamberlain, who also proved again he's the genuine article as an All-America, scored 32 points to lead the Jayhawks, but he had to share honors with Maurice King and Gene Elstun. King played one of his greatest games and scored 13 points, and Elstun got 16.

Frisco cut an eight-point Kansas lead to four points with a spurt in the last minute of the first half and went out at intermission trailing, 38-34.

But Wilt, Elstun and King made the first points of the second half to build the lead to 12 points, and kansas was home free with its 24th victory of the season against two defeats.

San Francisco, the defending two-time national champ, just couldn't match Kansas, which combined a zone defense and a fast break with devastating effect. Very often, it was Wilt who was on the scoring end of the break.

The defeat ended Frisco's string of 11 straight NCAA playoff victories which produced the two straight national titles, and also ended the Dons' dream of becoming the first team to win three in a row.

Rosenbluth and Carolina had to win a double-overtime game from Maryland to build their perfect record this season, and they had what it took when they were carried into the third overtime period against Michigan State in the opener.

Carolina by that time was playing without three of its regulars who had fouled out. Joe Quigg went out in the regulation game, and Bob Cunningham and Pete Brennan followed in the overtimes.

But Rosenbluth was left, and he was just about enough. He hit the first time he got the ball and after Michigan State came back to tie it for the last time at 68-68, Rosenbluth hit what proved to be the winning bucket on another of his long jumpers.

Tommy Kearns added two free throws to pad the Carolina lead to four points and then Bob Young was spotted all alone under the basket by a Rosenbluth pass and laid one in to make it a 74-68 and it finally was all over.

The game lacked by one overtime tying the record for endurance in NCAA playoff action. Canisius last year downed North Carolina State, 79-78, in four overtimes in a first-round NCAA game in Madison Square Garden.

No more than two points ever separated the two teams in overtime play until Carolina blew it open in the third one.

During the whole affair, there were 21 ties and 24 lead changes.

The Tar Heels were forced to come from behind the biggest lead either team had all night when the Spartans went out in front, 54-49, with 5:40 left in the regulation game. Carolina did it, however, as Rosenbluth hit the last six points for Carolina in the game.