North Carolina edges Oregon, advances to title game

North Carolina appeared to lose its shooting touch somewhere between home and Arizona. With a win over OR in the Final Four on Saturday, the Tar Heels (31-7) will be back to the title game, where, last year, Villanova unraveled their dreams with one dagger of a shot – a game-winning 3 with the buzzer sounding.

Meeks followed with a basket for OR before Dorsey hit two free throws. SC had rallied from a halftime deficit to win in four of their previous five tournament games.

Never happened. And after Keith Smith’s layup pulled OR within one with 7 seconds left, it looked like it would come down to free throws. If only it were that easy for the Tar Heels. “Put it all out there on the floor”.

Clinging to a one-point lead with 5.8 seconds left, the Tar Heels missed four straight free throws, but grabbed the rebounds after both of the misses on the back half. But now, they’re two wins away from the team’s second championship.

When another person asked Lunardi to give examples, he cited the seed total for teams beaten on the way to the final for the Bulldogs was 46.

That’s the way it’s been lately for the Tar Heels, who advanced to play Gonzaga in Monday’s NCAA title game.

That didn’t happen. Senior Isaiah Hicks continued his abrupt late-season fade by missing 11 of 12 shots and finishing with 2 points.

“This is our season”, they’d text their teammates.

It’s clear the Tar Heels need him. “We’re one of only two teams playing Monday night”. Just getting to the Final Four was a first, and now they are one victory from lifting the trophy.

“I’m still battling my injury”, Berry said, candidly rather than to excuse his shooting.

North Carolina will stand a good chance at giving Williams his third national title if Meeks and Jackson perform even close to as well as they did Saturday. Gonzaga lost one game all season to enjoy the top campaign in program history while the Gamecocks overcame a poor end to the regular season with an electric tournament run that included an upset of Duke. “I’d tell all of them, ‘Imagine if you were out there'”.

“We talked all year about getting back here and getting another shot at it”. “I wish we would have closed it out”. “When things got tough, we banded together”. “Well, that still makes it even more incredible kind of thing”.

“He was the main guy that kept on playing”. Luke Maye, who had become a folk hero around Chapel Hill after making the last-second jump shot to beat Kentucky in the Elite Eight, didn’t make a shot from the field and got in foul trouble.

“He just took it from me, ” Bell said of Meeks. “I’m sure (Bell) wished he’d boxed out right there”.

Jackson has been sensational all tournament and finished with 22 points off four three-pointers Saturday, while Meeks was the key player in the game with 25 points and 14 rebounds.

Despite palpable excitement in the arena, the game felt a bit like an appetizer before the second semifinal – with the explosive, athletic Oregon Ducks (splendiferous in their dark green uniforms) taking the stage against the classic powder-blue-and-white North Carolina, with its 5-time championship pedigree.

When Gonzaga meets North Carolina for the NCAA national championship on Monday night, it could be quite a brawl. North Carolina won, but it’s hard to not look at it from the lens of OR losing it there at the end and on the glass. They understood the pressure but never let it crush them.

Roy Williams could hear his own footsteps as he padded through the near-silent locker room, still trying to wrap his mind around a question that couldn’t be answered: What do you say to a group of players who did nothing wrong, but lost anyway?

“I’m really, really proud of our guys and our late-game execution”, Gonzaga Coach Mark Few said. “I’ve never won a game from the bench”. “I think the respect thing has to go out the window”. And I just wanted to come in and hit a shot. We don’t want it to end. “For him to have a night like he did tonight for us is pretty unbelievable”. “And now we get a chance”.