The 2021 NCAA men’s basketball tournament probably should have ended Saturday night about the time Gonzaga’s ridiculously talented Jalen Suggs tossed in a banked 40-footer to knock off UCLA 93-90 in overtime.
As ESPN analyst Jay Bilas gushed afterward: “That was one of the best games I have ever seen.”
But could we get a better one Monday night when coach Mark Few’s Zags, seeded No. 1 overall in the tourney and now 31-0 in this pandemic-shortened season, meet the second-ranked Baylor Bears (27-2) for either program’s first NCAA title?
In a year of so much imperfection, isn’t it a perfect ending that these two titanic teams – they were supposed to meet back on Dec. 5 before the game was canceled hours before tipoff due to a positive COVID-19 test in the Gonzaga program – are now finally facing each other on the sport’s biggest stage for its biggest prize? Is it not the Godzilla-Kong showdown of the 2020-21 season?
After the Bears blew out Houston 78-59 in the first semifinal of Saturday’s Final Four in Indianapolis, Baylor coach Scott Drew was asked about the possibility of a title matchup with Gonzaga, which hadn’t tipped off yet against UCLA.