College basketball needed this. Badly.
On a legendary game, the most anticipated matchup in a decade and one, simple request.
Dec. 5th was the day it all went haywire.
I remember exactly where I was when I got the text.
I was standing in my kitchen, right next to the island, in a shitty old pair of UConn shorts and a ratty old t-shirt I had long ago cut the sleeves off of. I was getting ready to patch the hole in the ceiling that was the result of some faulty sealant in our master bathroom. It was 11:34 a.m. when my phone buzzed.
“Gonzaga-Baylor is canceled. COVID.”
We were 86 minutes away from the tip-off in the game that every single college basketball fan on the planet was pining for, and it went up in smoke.
It felt like an inflection point for the season. It was No. 1-vs. No. 2, so the casuals were paying some attention to a game that was never going to be played. Suddenly, the validity of a college basketball season was being called into question. Suddenly, we had questions about whether or not this season would actually get completed. The narrative changed.
If we can’t find a way to make the biggest non-conference game of the year happen, will it actually be possible to play for four more months?
The shot is the moment that everyone is going to remember.
In the history of the NCAA tournament, only three buzzer-beaters have been deeper than the game-winning three that Jalen Suggs hit in overtime to beat UCLA in the wee hours of Saturday night.
And, I mean, look: That shot deserves to be remembered. When you end one of the greatest games in NCAA tournament history — and yes, that was one of the greatest games we’ve ever seen in this event — with a 35-footer at the overtime buzzer, you will be remembered for ever. It’s not quite at the same level as Kris Jenkins for the championship in 2016, but I do think that it’s a cut above Christian Laettner’s shot to send Duke to the 1992 Final Four. The fact that we are even having this conversation says everything that you need to know about what we just witnessed.
But that’s not the moment that stood out to me on Saturday, because that shot never happens if Jalen Suggs doesn’t piece together one of the most incredible sequences that you are ever going to see on a college basketball court.
With two minutes left in a tie game, Jalen Suggs (a point guard) comes out of nowhere to get a block on Cody Riley (a center) on what should have been the easiest two points of Riley’s night. He tracks down the loose ball, and then somehow manages to throw a bounce pass from the other side of half-court, between four UCLA defenders, that leads directly to a Drew Timme dunk.
I mean, this is just insane:
These are the things that make Suggs so special. These are the plays that he makes that make me question whether or not Cade Cunningham really should be a lock as the No. 1 pick in the draft. The instincts are ridiculous. The ability to actually pull off the things he tried to pull off in this sequence are on another level. I don’t know if there is another player in college basketball that can make this play.
And what makes it even more impressive is that it was literally one possession after Suggs did something dumb enough to make me wonder if Gonzaga can actually win a title with him at the point. Johnny Juzang hasn’t missed a shot in six weeks. With the Zags up by one, Suggs not only doubled off of Juzang onto Riley in the post, but he did it from the strong side. Just an absolute no-no. Of course, Juzang buried the three to give UCLA the lead. There was never any doubt.
So while the shot is going to be replayed over, and over, and over again for the next 50 years, this is the sequence that I’m going to be replaying in my head forever.
Saturday night was an all-timer.
This is the game that will be played on ESPN Classic a thousand times. I don’t know that I can remember seeing an NCAA tournament game that lived up to this. UCLA scored 1.33 points-per-possession on Saturday night against the best team in college basketball, and they lost in overtime. Gonzaga put on a clinic of modern basketball, playing in transition, surviving on threes and layups and running ball-screen after ball-screen after ball-screen as they looked to get a matchup they could take advantage of.
UCLA?
The plucky, cinderella 11-seed scrapped and clawed their way into contention by doing the things that analytics will tell you that you cannot do and win games. Their entire game-plan was built around the idea that Johnny Juzang and Jaime Jaquez could get to their spots and hit tough shots. Gonzaga gave up 90 points, and I think, when Mark Few watches the film, he’ll actually be fairly satisfied with how his team played defensively. When the Bruins are going to go 9-for-9 from 15-19 feet between the elbows extended, there’s not much you can do. When Cody Riley is going to bury four deep twos, there’s not much you can do. Those are the shots that you live and die with.
But it was more than just the shot-making.
It was the drama of the moment, the pressure of playing for an undefeated season. It was the star power that was on the floor, the intensity that was on display, the incredibly high-level of basketball that we all watched. It’s not a secret that college basketball is hurting for marketshare in a sports landscape that is getting more and more oversaturated. It doesn’t help when there is an annual talent drain caused by these athletes being incapable of capitalizing on their Name, Image and Likeness rights. Combine that with the fact that the NBA is just such an incredibly entertaining product — both with the action on the court and the drama off of it — and I think that everyone would agree the sport needed a kick start.
This was it.
And the best part is that Saturday didn’t feature a title game.
On Monday night, we get the matchup that we have all been waiting for so patiently. Exactly four months to the day since Gonzaga and Baylor was cancelled, we get the most anticipated matchup in a long, long time. It’s the first time since 2005 that the top two seeds in the NCAA tournament will play for the title. It’s the first time since 2001 that the preseason top two teams in the country will play for the national title.
And while some may be overlooking Baylor, let me remind you of something: Before they went into their COVID shutdown, the conversation surrounding the best team in the country wasn’t just centered on Gonzaga.
To put this into context, let’s go back to January 28th, a Thursday. The night before, Baylor had beaten Kansas State by 48 points in Manhattan. That night, Gonzaga beat San Diego by 30 in San Diego. That morning, when Baylor woke up, the Bears were rated as the best team in college basketball, according to KenPom. That was before Gonzaga was able to feast on the dregs of the WCC, and before an 18-day COVID shutdown erased any and all momentum that the Bears had built.
That story has been told, over and over again.
We know about how long that they were forced into quarantine, about how many players on the roster contracted the coronavirus. We know about what that did to their conditioning, we know about that did to their ability to practice. I spoke with Scott Drew on Selection Sunday. He told me that, in the 21 days between returning the court and seeing their name slotted as the No. 1 seed in the South Region, they had had one regular practice.
One!
Everything else was a shootaround, or preparing for a game, or a day spent in quarantine at the Big 12 tournament, or a game itself. Combine that with the three weeks they spent in their pause, and Baylor effectively went a third of their season without so much as doing shell drill. There’s a reason why their defense fell off a cliff over the course of the last three weeks of the season. That’s it.
But this Baylor, the one that we saw on Saturday night against Houston, the one that showed up in the first half against Arkansas and in the second half against Villanova last weekend, this was Baylor at their peak.
Jared Butler was hitting shots, Matthew Meyer was hitting shots, Davion Mitchell looked like Chris Paul in his prime — 12 points, 11 assists and zero turnovers against that defense? Have a day, kid.
For my money, however, the difference maker for the Bears was Everyday John, Jonathan Tchamwa-Tchatchoua. He changed the energy of the game when he came in, setting excellent screens, rolling to the rim, hitting that little 12-foot push shot that had no business going in. All of a sudden, Houston — who hedges hard on ball-screens — was terrified of what would happen when he was rolling to the rim. Their taggers got sucked in, and it left skips passes wide-open.
Suddenly, the best three-point shooting team in America stopped missing threes.
And once that happened, once the floodgates opened, there was no stopping the onslaught.
Baylor was all the way back.
And it sets up the title game that all of us have been waiting to see, the clash of the titans that will be the most anticipated college basketball matchup since, what?
Since Kentucky-Wisconsin in the 2015 Final Four?
Since Illinois and North Carolina faced off in the 2005 title game?
Saturday provided us with the stuff legends are made of.
On Monday, I’ll settle for simply having a game that lives up to the hype.
College basketball needs it.