It's pretty rare that we get the best two teams in the national championship. The tournament is called March Madness for a reason. It's just not easy to navigate 5 rounds (or 6 rounds if you're UCLA) of single elimination to get to the final game. But with all the twists and turns in this year's edition, we still managed to get the matchup everyone was eager to see. Baylor and Gonzaga were supposed to play earlier in the year, back when they were both unbeaten. Some covid positives in the Baylor program forced the game to be cancelled and it looked like we wouldn't get to see these two titans battle. But the fates were kind and rather than see those teams face each other in a somewhat meaningless game in December, we got to witness it on the grandest stage of them all. Bears. Bulldogs. Battlestar Galactica. Basketball immortality.
One way or another, a program was about to get its first national title, as neither of these teams had ever won the championship before. And for Gonzaga, the stakes were even higher. Indiana back in 1976 was the last team to run the entire gauntlet undefeated. The last team to make it this far was Indiana State back in 1979, but they were the underdogs vs Magic's Michigan State Spartans. The Zags were the favorites in this matchup. However, they were going to have to dig into the reserves to beat Baylor. The national semifinal against UCLA was a Rocky-like slugfest. Could they come back two nights later and maintain their high octane level of play?
The analysts on TV will tell you that Gonzaga looked flat early, but I disagree. I think Baylor came out with a strong game plan that put the Zags into a situation they weren't used to. Here's how the game started and see if you notice any trends:
- Baylor wins tip. Misses jumper. Gets offensive rebound. Misses jumper. Gets offensive rebound. Makes jumper.
- Gonzaga misses a three pointer.
- Baylor misses jumper. Gets offensive rebound. Makes layup.
- Gonzaga turnover.
- Baylor makes a three pointer.
- Gonzaga misses a three pointer. Gets offensive rebound. Turns ball over.
- Baylor makes layup.
Add that all up and it was 9-0 Baylor very quickly. As this game would go on, the analysts would talk about a weary Gonzaga team and how they couldn't make stops. But to me, that really wasn't the case. What I saw was:
- Baylor dominating on the boards. It wasn't like the Bears came out with a hot hand or that the Zags were playing bad defense. But Baylor kept getting offensive rebounds and it was too hard for Gonzaga to make multiple stops.
- Baylor was taking Drew Timme out of Gonzaga's offense. The Zags couldn't get the ball to Timme, so they settled for three pointers early on, which they were not hitting.
- Baylor refused to drive 65. I mentioned Charles Barkley's comment about Gonzaga only playing at 65 mph and being the best at it. But Baylor's aggressiveness and speed on defense, especially in the first few minutes when they jumped out to a big lead, caused the Zags to have to play faster. And when they played faster, they made mistakes. There would be a lot of Gonzaga turnovers in this game where players tried to drive to the hoop faster than they were accustomed to and lost control of their dribble.
Would a fresh Gonzaga team be able to play at that faster speed? Maybe. But it seemed like Baylor had the perfect game plan in place. The Zags were thrown off and panic mode set in quickly. Jalen Suggs picked up his 2nd team foul before the first TV timeout, so they would have to play without their team leader for most of the first half. The lead would balloon to 29-10. Gonzaga was the top scoring team in the nation, but it sure seemed like they would need everything to go right the rest of the way to even have a chance of completing an improbably comeback against this Baylor squad.
To Gonzaga's credit, they would begin to figure it out as the first half wore on. They had more success on the defensive end by switching from man-to-man to a zone. They got Timme into the offensive flow eventually. And after only scoring 10 points in the first 10 minutes, they scored 27 points over the next 10 minutes. Their deficit at halftime was a mere 10 points, Suggs had managed to stay away from foul #3, and despite an ugly start, the undefeated season was still a possibility.
Unfortunately for Gonzaga, the second half started out eerily similar to the first half. Baylor had the ball first again and that possession went: Missed three, offensive rebound, missed layup, offensive rebound, made three. After a Gonzaga layup, the Bears came down and knocked down another trey. The lead was 14 again. Gonzaga would whittle it down to 9 at one point during the second half, but less than two minutes later, Baylor would put the final nail in the coffin. With the lead back up to 13, Corey Kispert drove to the hoop and had his layup swatted away. On the other end, the Bears had numbers. After some crisp ball movement, they found an open shooter behind the arc. As the ball was in the air, you could hear someone from Baylor yell "Yup" and sure enough, the ball found nothing but net. The lead was 16, there was only 12 minutes to play and Baylor had crushed every small run Gonzaga had made to get back into the game.
I used to watch NFL Primetime on ESPN after the games on Sunday afternoon were over and every year, when the last undefeated team was handed their first loss, Chris Berman, Tom Jackson, and company would talk about how the 1972 Dolphins would pop the champagne again as the last undefeated champ. They would even play a sound effect of a champagne cork popping. As Baylor hit that three to extend the lead back to 16, I imagined hearing the 1976 Hoosiers popping their champagne, knowing it would be at least another year before someone could take their throne as the last undefeated champ. (Of course, since this entire tournament took place in Indiana, it's possible that the 1976 Hoosiers were in the arena popping bottles and that's what I was hearing. Ya never know.)
There was no drama over the last 12 minutes as Gonzaga would get no closer than 13 points. With the blowout in place, CBS was desperate for filler as the minutes ticked down. I'm sure they had a ton of stuff ready in case Gonzaga had been way ahead, but it felt like they weren't as ready for a Baylor blowout. They decided to air coach Scott Drew's press conference from back when he got the Baylor job in 2003. The program was in shambles, but he promised that he would get them back to the NCAA tournament. And then he followed it up by saying that they weren't just going to get there, they were going to win games when they got there. Well Coach Drew, your team won 6 of those games this year. And that makes the Baylor Bears your national champion. They handed the Zags their only defeat of the season, by a final score of 86-70.
One last look at the Magic Spreadsheet:
Aiden and Scott B are your two champs. Tiny is your double runner-up. And Scott B and Dave H claim the final spots on the respective podiums.
That's it folks. It was Madness as advertised: a 15 seed nearly making it to the Elite Eight, an 11 seed almost getting to the title game in one of the best college basketball games of all time, a final between the top two ranked teams in the country, and an undefeated team coming up one step short of glory. I hope you enjoyed this tournament as much as I did. I hope you watched One Shining Moment. And I hope we're back to normal this time next year. Take care everyone!
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