San Francisco Chronicle - (Sunday)
Overtime stunner:
Freshman Jalen Suggs hits winner from near half court at buzzer to lift Gonzaga over UCLA.
At halftime Saturday night, UCLA coach Mick Cronin challenged his team to keep it close 10 more minutes and that they should then crank up the pressure on unbeaten Gonzaga.
The flawless combination created a masterpiece of a college basketball game. It just didn’t lead to a win for the upstart Bruins in Indianapolis.
After UCLA’s Johnny Juzang scored with 3.3 seconds to go in overtime to tie the game at 9090, Jalen Suggs answered with a buzzerbeating 3pointer to send the unbeaten Bulldogs into their second national championship game and the Bruins home to think about how close they came to adding another memorable chapter to school history.
“When Johnny got the putback, I didn’t have a timeout left so I was running at my guys to get their attention to trap the ball and they got there late,” Cronin said. “It’s not their fault because we trained them to get back because Gonzaga is so fast. If you look at the film I was trying to get them to come up so he (Suggs) couldn’t get into that shot. Still, it was a bank shot from halfcourt.”
UCLA (2210) played this one in a decidedly different way than it had through its incredible tourney run that started in the First Four.
The Bruins often traded baskets with Gonzaga (310), one of the nation’s most prolific scoring teams, and didn’t allow the Zags to go on one of their trademark runs. The Bruins kept things slow, deliberate and tense.
It was almost enough. Juzang finished with 29 points to lead the Bruins, trying to become the first No. 11 seed to reach the championship game. Afterward, the stunned UCLA players gathered around as the officials looked at a replay review to make sure the shot was off in time. It was.
“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.”
UCLA can take solace in doing something no other team did this season by forcing the highscoring Zags into overtime. It just couldn’t finish the job and continue an incredible NCAA postseason run in which they had already beaten Michigan State and Alabama in overtime, ran away from BYU and Abilene Christian, and then held off topseeded Michigan to join VCU as the only teams to go from the First Four to the Final Four.
Baylor 78, Houston 59: Nearly two decades ago, Scott Drew decided to leave his comfort zone at tiny Valparaiso for the scandalplagued basketball program at Baylor, explaining to his father that the Bears could only go up.
Now they’re one win from the top.
Led by Jared Butler and the rest of their brilliant backcourt, a defense that refused to give Houston an inch, and a coach intent on making the most of his first trip to the Final Four, the Bears roared to a victory in their first appearance in the NCAA Tournament semifinals in 71 years.
Butler scored 17 points, but just about everyone from Baylor (272) got in on the act. The Bears had five players score in double figures. They built a 4520 lead by halftime and coasted the rest of the way to their second title game.
They’ll face Gonzaga on Monday night for their first national championship.
Marcus Sasser had 20 points for the coldshooting Cougars (284), whose dream path to their first Final Four since 1984 — they faced teams seeded 15th, 10th, 11th and 12th along the way — ended with a whimper against a team focused squarely on this day since last year’s tournament was canceled because of the pandemic.
Coaching move: Cincinnati put coach John Brannen on paid leave pending an investigation after six Bearcats players decided to transfer. The Bearcats finished 1211 in Brannen’s second year at Cincinnati after a 2010 season in 201920.