On brink, then to the bank
Freshman Suggs drains 3-pointer at buzzer to keep Bulldogs on pace to finish undefeated
INDIANAPOLIS — Just as one of the most riveting, pulsating games in the whole lunatic history of March Madness seemed bound for a second overtime, and just as Lucas Oil Stadium seemed primed to witness five more minutes of basketball of rare caliber, a charismatic Gonzaga freshman crossed the half-court line but not by much. He let one fly, Stephen Curry-style. As the ball traveled, the red lights squared the backboard, and the horn sounded.
Then it became disorienting to figure out the ending. Did Jalen Suggs’ shot kiss off the glass and go through the basket? Did the impossibly smooth player who came to Spokane all the way from Minnesota really charge over to the table and jump on that thing for a mad celebration?
He did, and soon the Gonzaga and UCLA players and coaches began greeting each other in congratulations, consolation and confusion. Gonzaga’s 93-30 overtime win over UCLA on Saturday pushed the Bulldogs
(31-0) to a perch none of the thousands of men’s college teams since 1979 had accessed. It meant Gonzaga will tip off in the final Monday night of everybody’s daydreams with an unbeaten record of which most don’t dare daydream.
“Every day in shootaround before the game we shoot half-courters,” Suggs said. “I haven’t been making my half-courters, but I got it with confidence, put it up. It’s crazy. I can’t come to words right now.”
Yet, before Gonzaga would tip off against Baylor in a case of the top two teams all season managing to become the last two standing, everyone would have to relive what happened when the Bruins (2210), who had charged all the way from the First Four, gave the Bulldogs their most persistent trouble of the season.
In a game of high quality in which both teams hovered in the high 50s in shooting percentage, UCLA got 29 points from Johnny Juzang, that magnificent force whose follow of his own miss with three seconds left had made double overtime look nigh. It got 19 sturdy points from Jaime Jaquez Jr., and a strong 14 from Cody Riley, and expert direction plus 17 points from Tyger Campbell.
It got all of that, then succumbed only to one mad, jarring shot.
“We went out fighting,” Juzang said. “We went out, there’s no better way. There’s no regrets. Everybody fought to the last play, and the last shot is the last shot.”
Through all the joy and misery in all the brackets through the post-disco decades, nobody since Larry Bird’s Indiana State 42 years ago had gotten to the final game without losing in that particular season. The Sycamores and their enviable nickname stood 33-0 that time before they slammed into Magic Johnson’s Michigan State. Now, the Bulldogs come up alongside Indiana State, and they will play Baylor in a matchup the coronavirus scuttled last Dec. 5, and they will continue in the pursuit of the sport’s first perfect season since Indiana in 1975-76.
They had hauled around that heaviness with a marked lightness until Saturday. UCLA, which bested Michigan, 51-49, with defense, almost bested Gonzaga with offense. The Bruins managed to reach halftime without the psychic and scoreboard damage dealt so many other Gonzaga opponents. They trailed only 4544, which accounted for a smallish victory worthy of a smallish trophy. The Bulldogs had shot 60.7 percent (17-for-28) yet hadn’t managed to shake a UCLA team that scored barely more than that halftime total in the 51-49 win over Michigan that brought it to the Final Four.
That’s largely because it became another game when nobody could do a bloody thing about Juzang, the Los Angeles native who got to UCLA via Kentucky and via transfer. As Juzang continued to sprout into one of the most unstoppable players in the event, he often took the ball and did pretty much what he wanted, making six of eight field goals and getting 15 points by halftime.
Of course, with Gonzaga, there’s always somebody to one-up you offensively, so Joel Ayayi, the Frenchman who makes the Zags go, went 6 of 6, including two from 3-point range, for 16 points. UCLA did have a 3630 lead but Gonzaga showed just how rapidly it can brush aside such matters, catching up and going ahead partly through a hard 3-point shot from the middle of the right part of the arc from Corey Kispert, a 3point swish from the left from the Suggs, and Kispert going around a screen to nail a 17-footer to close the firsthalf scoring.
It served as the closest thing to a halftime puzzle since the Bulldogs trailed 5339 in the closing minute of the first half against BYU on March 9, and technically, Gonzaga still led. But with each chunk of time in which UCLA had not gone smushed into the floor, the Bruins could sustain hope without delusion.
That led to a ferocious fight of beauty against beauty through the end of regulation. Juzang splashed down a 3-point shot for a 77-75 lead with 2:57 left, then Suggs hit a sweet 12-foot turnaround at 2:27, then a Suggs block of a Riley dunk fueled a Drew Timme dunk at 1:55, then Juzang hit a pull-up, and Kispert made a second-chance basket, and Jaquez made two free throws, all by the 0:43 mark. Then they stopped each other and went to overtime.
Then they headed for a second overtime.
Then they didn’t.