GLENDALE — Apparently, redemption doesn’t have to be pretty.
A year ago, North Carolina lost the national championship to Villanova in a classic that will be remembered and replayed for years: A graceful, perfectly executed buzzer beating 3-pointer by Kris Jenkins.
It was an actual shining moment.
On Monday, UNC beat Gonzaga for the national championship and … somebody will probably scribble the 71-65 score into the NCAA record books somewhere.
It wasn’t a classic. It wasn’t graceful. Wasn’t really even a shining moment, even though the obligatory streamers and explosives fired out of the University of Phoenix Stadium scoreboard.
There was some ugly drama but, mostly, it was a game everyone outside of North Carolina will probably forget.
Or try to, at least.
UNC won the game despite shooting 35.6 percent from the field, hitting just 4 of 27 3-pointers and making just 57.7 percent of its game-delaying 26 free throws.
Gonzaga nearly matched that ineptitude while playing its first national title game, shooting 40 percent from the field, 27.6 percent from 3-point range and making 17 of its equally generous 26 free-throw attempts.
But the Zags also did themselves in by turning the ball over 14 times, leading to 15 UNC points off turnovers, and giving up 15 Tar Heel offensive rebounds that led to 20 second-chance points.
You can shoot pretty badly when you can make up for it with volume. And all sorts of things can happen when the refs call 22 fouls on each team.
“I’m gonna have to watch it, but I thought both teams played pretty well,” Gonzaga forward Zach Collins said.
“They did a good job on our bigs. It was hard to get in a rhythm offensively.”
Especially when it counted most. Gonzaga took leads of up to seven points early, and led by three at halftime, but let what was a tight game throughout the second half slip away in the final minute.
After Final Four MVP Joel Berry missed a 3 with 53 seconds left and the game tied at 65, an offensive rebound led to a short jumper by Isaiah Hicks that gave UNC a 68-65 lead with 22 seconds left.
Then, after Gonzaga’s Nigel Williams-Goss hurt his ankle, the Zags called a timeout. Williams-Goss stayed in the game and tried to drive inside, but his eight-footer in the lane was blocked by North Carolina’s Kennedy Meeks, and Justin Jackson threw down a dunk on the other end to make it 70-65 with 12 seconds left.
“Stepped on it wrong and rolled it,” Williams-Goss said of his ankle. “But my adrenaline was rushing. … There was nothing that was going to stop me from finishing out this game.”
But neither he nor Przemek Karnowski nor even shooter Jordan Mathews, could make anything happen in the final seconds. After Jackson’s dunk, Karnowski attempted to fire a halfcourt pass but it was intercepted by Meeks, and Joel Berry made 1 of 2 free throws on the other end to seal it at 71-65 with seven seconds left.
Mathews then threw up a desperation 3 with three seconds left and it was over.
The Tar Heels got it done, ugly.
“I don’t think either team played really well,” North Carolina coach Roy Williams said.
“But I told my team with three minutes left that on the first day of practice if you had told me we were going to be in this situation, I would have taken it.”
That they were in a close situation in last year’s title game may have helped, even if it wasn’t exactly a repeat.
“I think we were able to close out the game because of our experience,” UNC guard Nate Britt said. “We had some tough games in the tournament where it came down to the end of the game, where we needed to get stops and make plays. That gave our guys a lot of confidence and we were able to will ourselves a way to win.”
They did it in a foul fest that had Meeks and Hicks playing with four fouls at the end, while Gonzaga’s Zach Collins fouled out and Karnowski and Johnathan Williams each had four fouls.
Up 35-32 at halftime, Gonzaga had a disastrous first few minutes in the second half: Josh Perkins turned the ball over at midcourt after the inbound, leading to an easy UNC bucket and the Bulldogs missed their first five shots of the half while Collins and Williams picked up their third fouls.
Collins later was called for a fourth foul with 15:53 left, putting him on the bench until 8:03 — and he fouled out less than three minutes later with nine points and seven rebounds.
When Collins was asked if he would have preferred the officials let the players play, he issued a slight grin.
“Yeah, that would have been nice,” he said. “But you can’t look at officiating and say that’s why we lost the game.”
Instead, what several Zags talked about after was looking at was a bigger picture: One that had the Zags advancing to their first Final Four and taking a traditional blueblood down to the wire on college basketball’s biggest stage.
Within that lens, things maybe don’t look so bad. For North Carolina, getting the redemption it sought, and for Gonzaga, going deeper than it ever had before in the postseason.
“How many teams would take 37-2, league champs and national runner-up?” Mathews said.
“We broke that glass ceiling everybody said we couldn’t get over. Everybody was saying how the Zags couldn’t get to the Final Four. We did that.”
