One team represents a Jesuit university in Spokane, Wash. with an undergraduate population of not quite 6,000.
The other represents a Baptist university in Waco, Tex., with almost 15,000 undergraduates.
Gonzaga’s only national championship, in anything, was a boxing title it shared with Idaho in 1950. That was the same year Baylor went to its previous Final Four, back in the days when the NIT was at least the equal of the NCAA tournament.
But then the Bears couldn’t be expected to make the Big Dance. Dancing itself was outlawed on campus until 1986.
To envision Gonzaga and Baylor possessing the best two basketball teams, if not programs, in America would have been a hallucination 25 years ago.
To watch Gonzaga and Baylor actually translate those regular seasons into Monday night’s championship game is nearly as fanciful, considering that North Carolina and Illinois, in 2005, were the last previous top-two seeds to get there.
No American sport is as hospitable to possibility as men’s college basketball. Its passion and emotion flow from the chaos, and they consume us, every March. It is played on a wooden magic slate.
The most gifted players stay one year and leave. Over 1,000 others have crammed into the “transfer portal” as if escaping a skyscraper fire. The NCAA is expected to do away with the sit-out rule and give transfers immediate eligibility. Those who graduate in four years already have that, and the “grad transfer” is a familiar phenomenon, squeezing out one more season.
Kentucky and Duke built NCAA championships on assembly lines of freshmen, one class after another, alighting in Lexington and Durham for one year and then joining the NBA. Both missed the 2021 tournament because their yearlings couldn’t dominate, couldn’t cope with a game that is getting older and more team-oriented by the year.
Gonzaga’s 93-90 overtime win over UCLA in the semifinals is the reason the DVR was invented, and the VCR before that. It was played at a staggering level, with only 20 combined turnovers in 45 minutes. There were 183 points on a total of 122 field goal attempts, and the Bruins put up two points per minute, none of them on fast breaks.
Better yet, there were only 39 three-point attempts, because of the fear of losing a possession or triggering someone else’s run-out. Neither team was shackled by a draconian system that lives on a spreadsheet and forbids “mid-range” shots, as if they count for minus-1 point, not plus-two.
The Zags ran their intricate sets so well that they scored 56 points in the lane. The Bruins cleared out space, without habitual reliance on high screens, and basically told their scorers, “You be you.”
What if the mesmerizing Johnny Juzang had pulled up in regulation for a 10-foot game-winner instead of charging into Drew Timme? Maybe he should have, but Timme’s decision to take that charge was a gamble, too.
It’s possible to appreciate pro basketball and college basketball for what they are, but the separation between the two is widening.
The NBA is ruled by individual princes who negotiate the outcome with each other. The most critical part of the NBA season is July free agency, when the alliances are made. Perhaps an organic squad like Utah or Phoenix will interrupt that trend, but don’t book it.
College basketball is more collaborative than ever. That leads to defenses that can frustrate the lone star, as Oregon State did to Cade Cunningham.
Baylor is the template. Four transfers play extensively, including DaVion Mitchell, formerly of Auburn. If Baylor wins Monday, Mitchell will likely be the Most Outstanding Player of the tournament. He averages 14 points.
In 2003, Baylor’s Patrick Dennehy disappeared from campus, and his car was found in Virginia and his body in a field near Waco. A teammate, Carleton Dotson, was convicted. This opened up a can of cobras that even got the NCAA’s attention. Coach Dave Bliss, a disciple of Bob Knight, even asked players to tell investigators that Dennehy had a drug problem.
When Scott Drew took over the basketball team, most legitimate players left and the Bears couldn’t play a non-conference schedule. He won 17 games his first three years but coached Baylor into the tournament in his fifth year. In his seventh and ninth seasons, Baylor got to regional finals, losing to Kentucky and Duke.
Now the Bears are 53-6 the past two seasons. Gonzaga is 162-13 the past five. Surely they can’t duplicate the heights of Saturday night. Since they are from college, they will try.
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