Some college basketball games are ruled by incredible feats. One player, perhaps multiple players, going numb to the world and playing unbelievable basketball for 40 minutes.
Those games are incredible in their own right. One can simply point to the Elite Eight game against Purdue to prove this point. The Carsen Edwards-Kyle Guy shooting contest was fantastic to witness. It made for a great, great game.
But there are things other than unbelievable play that can make a game memorable. Virginia vs Auburn embodied this.
As far as individual play is concerned, it was an unremarkable game. Yes, Ty Jerome played really well, tallying 21 points, 9 rebounds, and 6 assists. And there were a couple of spurts from other players in the second half. Yet none of those things were what gave this game its lasting legacy.
When Bleacher Report ranked it as the best Final Four game of the decade the other day, they didn’t talk about Jerome’s performance. They didn’t even mention the three threes that Bryce Brown hit to pull his team back from the dead. No, this game was about something else.
It was about the mental aspect.
That part of the game was shaping it well before any of the two teams stepped foot on the court. In fact, it started doing so eight days prior, in the Sweet Sixteen.
Auburn’s Chuma Okeke went down with a horror injury in their game against North Carolina. That would prove to play a large role in their following two games.
Auburn players and coaching staff constantly remarked on how they were doing this “for Chuma”—avenging, in a sense, the loss of a respected and well-liked teammate. While not having him on the court may have hurt in a purely physical sense, it also served to drive the Auburn players.
And while they may have had plenty of motivation coming in, it appeared that De’Andre Hunter did not. He was a measly 2-4 from the field for 4 points in the first half. Dre just looked so passive out there.
And then, out of the halftime locker room came aggressive Hunter. Going to the rim, getting hard buckets, out-working Auburn. He was great in the second half, not missing once on his way to a 10-point half.
And all of it because of a change in his mindset. This wasn’t a player going crazy and hitting ridiculous shots. No, this was a young man deciding that he was going to come out and be what his team needed him to be. Boy, was that one simple decision huge.
In a game so slow such as this one, any little edge—whether real or imagined—made a difference. The clichéd “every possession felt like it would decide the outcome” phrase was as applicable here as it is in any situation. As both teams slugged their way through the game, every bucket did feel all-important.
So when the Hoos grabbed hold of a 10-point lead with 5:24 remaining, it felt like an insurmountable advantage. Auburn had struggled mightily shooting the ball all night, finishing 29% from three and 38% from the field.
Which just served to make the mental toughness they showed in the following few minutes all the more impressive.
While maybe this is an example of incredible individual play, it is just as representative of how the mental side was so important. It took that mental side to weather a large deficit rather than shrinking away from it. Credit to Auburn, and specifically Bryce Brown, for doing so.
On the other side—and it pains me to say this—you have to also direct some of the blame onto the Virginia players for allowing Auburn to do so. Maybe it was just great playing and fortitude from them, but the Hoos had opportunities to put the game away themselves and seemed rather tentative at taking them.
Either way, the Hoos are definitely at fault for the massive errors that followed that comeback. Honestly, it can just be described as stupid. Ty Jerome, great player that he is and great game that he was having, became an impulsive freshman for a minute.
He took two awful threes in a row on consecutive possessions. Both from four or five feet behind the arc, the first with 1:29 remaining and the second with 0:33. They were shots that, had they gone in, would have been celebrated for the rest of time.
Yet as a player in his third year in Tony Bennett’s system, Jerome had to know that he had better options. Jerome did a lot of things right in this game, don’t get me wrong. He was the best player on the court for most of it.
But the mental aspect failed him for a crucial minute, and that almost cost the Hoos a National Championship.
But hey, it didn’t, so it’s all good.
Plus, what would happen next would erase any memory of any wrongdoing on the part of Wahoo players.
As the clock hit one minute, Jim Nantz proclaimed excitedly, “ready for a thrill-packed final minute!” Oh, if Nantz had any inkling of just how right he was in that moment.
Following the second of Jerome’s two ill advised threes, the Hoos fouled Anfernee McLemore, a 60% free throw shooter. Ironically, he would make both as his 85% teammate Jared Harper would miss one. Regardless, it put the Tigers up by 4 with 17 seconds to go.
Ty was the one tasked with bringing the ball down the court. As he went, he stopped from ten feet inside midcourt as an Auburn player stepped out to guard him.
Instantly, in a fashion that would have been almost comical in any other situation, Virginia fans in the stands implored him to move. Jerome complied, and passed to Guy in the corner.
The ensuing fake and shot made up the most overlooked, yet important play of the game. Guy drilled the three from the corner with not just a hand in his face. He had a whole player in the way as well. The shot was massive, and made it a one-point game.
The composure of both Guy and Jerome in that situation cannot be overstated. First, of Jerome to trust what he’s been taught and look for the best shot. And second, Guy’s patience to fake before shooting was tremendous. Of course, the shot itself was incredible as well.
But the composure that they showed here paled in comparison to what was come.
Before that was to happen though, came the first of the controversial calls—or no calls. When Jerome dribbled the ball off of his foot and then picked it up again and started his dribble, it should have been a double dribble. Yes, that would have been true under normal circumstances.
But what Auburn devotees and broadcasters alike failed to note was that Jerome had been slapped across the chest by Samir Doughty a moment before. To give credit where credit is due, Jay Williams did indeed take note of this postgame on ESPN.
If that wasn’t a foul, then a double dribble that nobody noticed until after the game certainly wasn’t.
Whatever your position, nothing was called, meaning that UVa had the ball side out-of-bounds with 1.5 ticks remaining. And so the play unfolded.
Ty, to Kyle in the corner. Kyle, turning and going up to shoot in one motion. Doughty, bumping into Kyle just as he made to release the ball. And finally, the referee, turning his three fingers into a fist to signify the foul that would decide the game.
Some—notably Auburn fans—like to choose the view that it wasn’t a foul. I prefer to think that Doughty, by bumping Guy, robbed Virginia fans of a second straight unbelievable buzzer beater.
Regardless, there was Kyle Guy, standing at the charity stripe, the weight of a fanbase on his shoulders. The three most pressurized free throws of the tournament, maybe ever, and there he was looking like he was out in the driveway practicing his form.
The first one hit nothing but nylon.
The second did the same. Bill Raftery, summing up the moment in simple terms, told the millions of viewers that “this is unbelievable.”
And the third, drawing yells of elation, delight, and disbelief all in one from Wahoos, dropped through the net just the same. “Onions!” yelled Raftery.
It was truly remarkable, what Guy had managed to do under such circumstances. To stand there, alone in a field of boos, and deliver. . . It really is the stuff of legend.
Virginia 63, Auburn 62. Auburn fans were mad, impartials were all over the place, and Virginia fans were ecstatic. But on the court stood Tony Bennett, who just shook his head and said “oh my.”