Preamble
No matter what Baylor does in the next few hours, everything will be about Gonzaga. As we commented since the beginning of the men’s tournament, the main story was whether any team could prevent Gonzaga’s attempt to not only win his first NCAA championship, but also an undefeated season.
We, in fact, may have just witnessed the biggest challenge for the Gonzaga Bulldogs at the UCLA Bruins, who managed to make an unprecedented journey from the First Four to the Four Finals and then forced Gonzaga to play an overtime and almost forced them to play a second . So, of course, Jalen Suggs took a legendary snapshot three points from almost half a court to put them in a game of perfection.
The bell beating three by Jalen Suggs.
It was a great game, to the point where the instant analysis ended up being “maybe that really was the men’s championship game”. Well, the Baylor Bears may be hoping that everyone is ignoring them. After all, before Gonzaga showed himself vulnerable for the first time in the entire tournament, struggling to cancel an 11º-seed upstart, Baylor absolutely ran over No. 2 Houston 78-59. If they’re being overlooked as just a footnote to Gonzaga’s story, well, maybe that will work for them.
That’s the flip side of all of this being about Bulldogs: the pressure is all on Mark Few’s team. Gonzaga spent most of his life as a midfielder who could never win the big game, always wavering at the most important moments. Until this race, his most memorable moment was Adam Morrison bursting into tears on the court as they were crushed (from all teams) by UCLA. Literally unbeatable throughout the season, there is a very real chance that if they don’t win the final game, the time will never come. They almost saw everything fall apart on Saturday and if they have any difficulties today, well, Baylor is going to start smelling blood. Maybe it goes according to the script, with Gonzaga dealing easily with Baylor or maybe … or maybe it depends on who gets the ball last.
That’s how it should be, of course, it all depends on the players on the court. We talked about the programs, the coaches, the seeds, the keys and everything that surrounds the tournament, but it all comes down to the athletes on the court. They are the reason why we watch and, ultimately, they control the outcome. Okay, that sounds a little too much, but that’s what college basketball does even for those of us who remain extremely cynical about everything that is going on behind the scenes.
If you want to join today’s liveblog, feel free to email your opinions to [email protected] or tweet to @HunterFelt. It is the game of the NCAA national men’s basketball championship at Lucas Oil Stadium. They say we’ll start around 9:20 pm EST, but we’ll be back here well before that.