Ty Watches the 2021 Men's Final Four

Saturday night I watched the Final Four like I assume most sports fans did. I missed it last year, and this year I think we had three of the four best teams in the country, and the hottest team in the tourney, and I wanted to watch Gonzaga, who I have not seen an entire game of all year.

The first game was a blowout, and I did not see it coming. I figured Baylor would win. They have looked really good this whole tournament, and clearly I underestimated them. Houston has been great defensively, and they have done just enough on offense to get by. But they played all double digit seeds up to that point, they had blown large leads late only to pull away at the end, and they just seemed overmatched going into the Baylor game. That was all true. Baylor came out like gangbusters, they hit way more threes than they had all tourney, they locked down Houston's best offensive player right off the bat and rolled. The closest they got was 12, I believe. Baylor dominated, proved why they were a top two team all year and more than deserve to be in the title game.

The UCLA-Gonzaga game, at least I thought going into it, was going to be the same. I was very, very wrong. UCLA proved me very, very wrong in this game. They hung in the whole time. They probably should have won that game. They played the best they have offensively maybe all year. They slowed down two of the three stars Gonzaga has on their team. They never let Gonzaga pull away. They held the lead for most of the game. They looked like they more than belonged. This was one of the best college games I have ever seen, all time for me. This is how the final four games should be. This is what I look for during March Madness. I want these games to be back and forth. I like feeling invested even when I do not care who wins. This, this type of game, is what I missed so much last season when they rightfully canceled the tournament. It was back and forth. UCLA would build their lead, then Gonzaga would go on a run and take a lead of their own. And vice versa. When the best players on both teams needed to step up, they most certainly did. Johnny Juzang and Tyger Capmbell played amazingly. Jaime Jaquez was a key cog. UCLA let its stars shine their brightest, and they played up to the Zags level. And while Jalen Suggs, more on him in a minute, and Corey Kispert didn't have a great game, Drew Timme absolutely dominated in the low post. That kid has some of the best footwork in the post that I have ever seen. He looked like a mix of Tim Duncan and a slower Hakeem Olajuwon. He is going to have a long, productive NBA career based solely on his footwork. And he did everything he needed to for the Zags, which was almost everything. And as much as I dislike the charge/blocking call in every level of basketball, he took that charge near the end of the game, and it was rightfully called. He was outstanding.

The regulation 40 minutes wasn't enough, so this epic game got to go into overtime. Overtime was classic. Timme scored 6 quick points, but UCLA kept answering. Juzang was pulling up from everywhere, and it seemed to fall almost every single time. I even threw my hands up at one moment and asked my dad if he had missed at all during the game. Neither of us knew. Gonzaga led by 2 with 30 seconds left and UCLA had the ball. Everyone knew Juzang was going to shoot it. He got the ball, dribbled the clock down to about 12 seconds and drove. He took a contested floater, a shot I did not like at all, and he did miss it. But, Gonzaga didn't block out and he got his own rebound, extremely sound basketball, and made an uncontested layup to tie it with 3 seconds left. I assumed Gonzaga would call a timeout, try to heave a pass and we would go to double overtime. They didn't, and the rest is history. Timme took it out before UCLA could get ready and passed it in to Suggs. Suggs raced up past half court and put up what looked like a decent three. It was in Dame and Steph's range. And that ball banked in and Gonzaga won. I jumped off my parents couch, my dad was aghast, even my wife was pretty amazed by what just happened. I applaud Gonzaga for just going with the ball instead of slowing anything down. That was their best option all game, and when they needed it most, they used it and it worked. That shot by Suggs looked so pure and looked good the moment it left his hands. I believed Mark Few when he said he wasn't surprised when it went in because apparently Suggs does that in practice all the time. It was truly a once in a lifetime shot. It will be on replays and classic game showings for the rest of time. This was just an amazing ending to, by far, the best game of the tournament. This game truly had it all.

When that game ended, we were left with the title game, which is tonight, between Baylor and Gonzaga. This is the way it should be. They were the two best teams all year, their earlier game this season was wiped out due to COVID and now one of these schools will win their first ever college basketball title. I still think Gonzaga will win, but I wouldn't be surprised if Baylor finds a way to pull it out. In the end though, I hope it is half as good as what UCLA and Gonzaga gave us two nights ago.

Ty

Ty is the Pop Culture editor for SeedSing, the other host of the X Millennial Man Podcast, and the greatest basketball writer on the internet.

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