Well done UCLA and Houston. Now can we please have Gonzaga-Baylor? Eamonn Brennan here’s his Twitter For the last two weeks, even by its own insane historic standards, the 2021 NCAA Tournament has been the hottest club in town. This place has everything: Oral Roberts shooting itself into the Sweet 16, Max Abmas forcing you to learn how to properly pronounce his name. Oregon State (wait, Oregon State?) surging to the Elite Eight. Ohio toppling poor old just out of quarantine Virginia. Abilene Christian grinding in-state giant Texas, and thus the Shaka Smart era in Austin, to a halt. North Texas kickstarting what would turn into a wave of Big Ten pain against Purdue, after which the best league in the country all season, the one with nine teams in the bracket when we tipped off, would more or less entirely collapse, its co-best team (Illinois) losing in comprehensive fashion to nightmare No. 8-seed Loyola Chicago, the rest of a conference desperate to win its first national title since 2000 slowly but surely melting away. When UCLA beat the Big Ten’s last holdout on Tuesday night, it not only twisted the Big Ten knife, or ensured that one other significant surprise of this NCAA Tournament (the Pac-12’s performance; Bill Walton was right all along) would earn deserved Final Four representation. It also set a record for upsets (as defined by the NCAA’s five-seed-lines barometer) in an NCAA Tournament. The previous record, set in 1985 and tied in 2014, was 13. UCLA over Michigan was 14. Two weeks in, that’s where we are. It is not hard to argue that this was the craziest, wildest, most random, most non sequitur Stefon-skit-worthy field of 68 ever. It has been nuts. It has challenged our assumptions. It has made us admit, even more than even your average ridiculously unpredictable NCAA Tournament, that we know nothing, and that that’s OK. Most of all, though, it has kept the dream alive: the Gonzaga vs. Baylor dream. It is the game any college basketball fan worth his or her salt has held in repose since the beginning of the season, or at least since the first matchup was canceled in December, when Gonzaga had to pull out of a No. 1 vs. No. 2 matchup in Indianapolis thanks to (what else) a positive COVID-19 test. By that point in the year, even so early, it was clear that Gonzaga and Baylor were the two best teams in the country, and probably in that order, but the game had been circled on any self-respecting fan’s calendar. The cancellation hours before the game was a harsh blow to hoops fans, and a pretty clear warning of what was to come: In the 2020-21 season, nothing could be taken for granted. So we all went back to wishing, hoping, knowing full well that the NCAA Tournament bracket rarely goes the way you want it to, and that was assuming we even had an NCAA Tournament. Yet here we are. Or, well, here we almost are. There is the small matter of those other two teams that are still alive, of course, and at this point would you dare count them out? At this point, will you really feel good betting against UCLA? Do you really trust the Bruins not to play spoiler one more time, against Gonzaga of all teams? UCLA, a talented group that won plenty of games but few against quality teams, entered the NCAA Tournament through the backdoor: ranked No. 42 in KenPom.com’s adjusted efficiency and having lost its last three regular-season games and its opener in the Pac-12 tourney to Oregon State, a bad loss that nearly kept the Bruins out of the bracket. They needed a second-half comeback and overtime to get past Michigan State, the First Four team more than a few would have thought was vastly more capable of a deep tournament run. They beat BYU and then throttled Abilene Christian. They went shot-for-shot with Alabama in the Sweet 16 — yes, the Tide went 11-of-25 from the free throw line, but UCLA’s combination of interior defense, minimal turnovers and onionsy shotmaking, not to mention resilience after Alabama sent the game to overtime at the buzzer, was especially impressive. So were so many of those elements again in play on Tuesday night: Michigan got the ball to good spots again and again but couldn’t score, UCLA mucking up the game enough to give Johnny Juzang the platform to win it with jumpers and runners. Forget what the oddsmakers hang: Having seen what you saw in the Sweet 16 and the Elite Eight — when the most decorated program in men’s college basketball became the singular chaotic force in the most upset-ridden bracket ever — do you really think UCLA won’t at least make it hard? And, sheesh, what about Houston? There’s no underdog narrative here. Sure, the Cougars have programmatically had a rough go of it since the early 1990s, and their presence in this Final Four — the first since 1939 without a team from east of the Mississippi, by the way — can feel a bit like gate-crashing, not least of all because the coach is Kelvin Sampson and the Final Four is happening in Indiana. To college basketball fans who dismissed Sampson after his five-year show cause back in the late aughts, seeing him back at this level might be somewhat disorienting. Maybe you just don’t keep up with the American Athletic Conference. It’s cool. But if you set all of that aside, well, look: Houston is just good. Has been all year. Go through the archives of this very site’s (and this very author’s) weekly college basketball power rankings: You won’t find a week when Houston wasn’t in the top 10. The Cougars have been great throughout, steadily and repeatedly doing all of the things you’ve seen the past two weeks. Hard-nosed, comprehensive first-shot defense that allows the lowest effective field goal percentage in college basketball. Offensive rebounding that creates second and thirds shots. Consistent, high-volume 3-point shooting. Quentin Grimes, the former McDonald’s All-American who struggled as a Kansas freshman, went home to Houston and found the right environment. The Cougars rank third in adjusted efficiency now, after their tournament run, and they haven’t ranked outside the top six since Jan. 23. Beyond being really good, they’re also a brutal matchup for Baylor. Like Houston, the Bears love to dominate the offensive glass, and they use those offensive rebounds to generate open looks from 3, which they take and make at a high clip. Like Houston, the Bears are not a particularly good defensive rebounding team on a per-possession basis. Indeed, Baylor ranked 273rd in defensive rebounding percentage this season, and it is not hard to imagine Houston doing a ton of damage, and generating a ton of second shots, in what will be the most challenging and physically demanding game Baylor has played all postseason — and maybe even all year. If Houston, and not Baylor, turns up for the finale Monday night, it would make the title game feel a little less epochal. But it would not be a surprise. To be fair, this Final Four would have a prospectively epic feel even if Baylor hadn’t gotten here. The stakes for Gonzaga are already as high as they can get. The Zags, as you might have heard, are unbeaten. They are two wins from matching Indiana’s 1975-76 achievement, a national championship with nary a blemish, an accomplishment that in some quarters over the past couple of decades has been decisively declared untouchable. No one would replicate it. College basketball was different now. Talent is too diffuse, spreading even to the mid-major level. Scouting and video analysis are too smart. The odds are too long. It simply can’t be done. Forget that Kentucky was two games away in 2015; if anything, the fact that team (with Karl-Anthony Towns and Devin Booker, and John Calipari rotating two squads of five in the single greatest flex in the past decade of college basketball) fell short was even more proof that this couldn’t be done.
Except we’re now at the point that if Gonzaga doesn’t do it, it will be more of a surprise than if it does. None of this is fluky. None of it is luck. None of it is conference affiliation. You know this now; you don’t need a column to tell you. You’ve seen what Gonzaga has done in this tournament, on both ends of the floor. The Zags have scored 1.23 points per possession, which aligns nicely with their dominance all season; they’ve also held opponents to 0.89 points per trip on the defensive end. That efficiency margin of plus-0.34 would be off the charts for any other team, particularly in the do-or-die competitive hothouse of the tournament. For Gonzaga, it’s standard operating procedure. The Zags’ adjusted efficiency margin this season is plus-0.38, a number that ranks them among the best teams of the past 25 years. Only a very select few, including 1999 and 2001 Duke, reached those heights in the course of a season. What the Zags are doing is very real and totally unprecedented and not a little bit mind-blowing, even for those of us already on board. Evan Mobley looked like a really good matchup for Drew Timme, right up to the first possession of the latest blowout, when Timme began his two-hour barrage of layups and mustache-rubbing celebrations. It has been satisfying, as a year-round college basketball junkie, to see the world come to understand what we’ve known all along. What’s that, Twitter weirdo? You think Gonzaga was overrated? You think the West Coast Conference is blah blah blah? OK. Watch this. It shouldn’t have taken anyone this long to come around on Mark Few’s team being historic; we’ve been talking about it since November. But, hey, some of you needed a little more time. It’s OK. Go at your own pace. Unfortunately, there is a huge gulf between “getting everyone to begrudgingly acknowledge how good you are” and “winning the national title with an unbeaten record.” The Zags still have a long way to go. They have to beat a UCLA team that has just knocked off two of the best teams in the country in the matter of three days. And if Baylor gets to Monday night, Gonzaga will have just slightly further to stretch to finish undefeated. If there’s a team that’s equipped to beat the Zags, it’s Davion Mitchell and the Bears. (Jamie Squire / Getty) But make no mistake: That is the dream. This has been the situation all year long. Gonzaga 1A, Baylor 1B. It has ebbed and flowed, waxed and waned. Before a 21-day COVID-19 lockdown knocked the Bears on their heels, while they were cruising through a good Big 12 and playing top-three per-possession defense without breaking much of a sweat, the potential glory of this game was only further entrenched; it was worth asking whether Baylor was maybe the better team. Then the Bears went on pause, came back without legs, saw their defense go from top three to top 180, and have only in this tournament — and only in crucial spurts — started to look somewhat like what they were at their domineering, undefeated best. At Baylor’s best, no team in the country is more capable of beating these Zags. If anyone can do it, the Bears can. Either way, let’s just come out and admit it: It’s the only game we want to see. We’ve had our fun. We’ve had our crazy tournament. We’ve had a record number of upsets, a couple of which produced the most historically ill-fitting 11th-seeded underdog in NCAA Tournament history, a UCLA team opening as a double-digit dog to a small Jesuit school that has never won a national title. Weird, huh? Have we properly soaked up all the wildness an NCAA Tournament could possibly hope to offer? Have Stefan’s senseless non sequiturs cracked you up enough? Can we get down to business now? Sorry, Bruins fans. Great season, Houston. Do us a favor and let us have this one. We don’t care who wins. We just want to see the game. It’s all we’ve wanted all year. Gonzaga versus Baylor. No. 1 versus No. 2. The best of college basketball, on the biggest stage. And now, in this Final Four — somehow, after all that — is here. The flame still burns. It’s so close, it’s hardly even a dream anymore. It finally feels real.
In other news, the AAC might be considerably worst next season. Cinciy, Memphis, USF, and even ECU is getting killed by the transfer portal.
memphis is going to be good team next year. Probably top 25 for most of the season. they were in reality a tourney team this year. The committee got this one wrong
Memphis, IMO is the toughest team we have played this year. I agree, the committee was wrong not to include them in the tournament. Without those match-ups against them at the end of the regular season and in the conference tournament, I don't know if we could have developed the gut and grit that allowed us to fight like hell when we needed to along the way to our teams first appearance in the Final Four in 37 years.
I'm ok with losing to an all time great Gonzaga team in the championship. I am not ok with losing to Baylor
It does make you wonder, what are all of Sampson's game day ties thinking about right now, and what are they doing.
I really hope the Coogs can shoot better the rest of the way. They have been ice cold the last 3 games. Just keep dominating on the glass and limit TO and Coogs can get to the finals. Now for the longest Good Friday of my life. Go Coogs
