INDIANAPOLIS — Twenty teams have entered the NCAA Tournament unbeaten.
Seven won championships. On Monday night, after spending 5 1/2 months and 31 games as America’s top team, Gonzaga headed home just the like other 13 — without the trophy.
Baylor’s perfect game upended Gonzaga’s perfect season and the 86-70 decision extended the 1975-76 Indiana Hoosiers’ streak as Division I’s last unbeaten men’s champion for at least another year. It’s the longest streak since the tourney began in 1939.
Perfection denied is a far more common theme in tourney play, though.
Six teams lost in the national semifinals, including two in Indianpaolis (UNLV in 1991 and Kentucky in 2015). Gonzaga becomes the third team to suffer its only loss of the season in the title game and the first since Larry Bird with Indiana State in 1979. The other was Ohio State in 1961 and Bob Knight played on that team, too, long before leading the Hoosiers to their crowing achievement 15 years later.
Gonzaga came into the game as the most efficient offensive team in the nation, taking on all comers along the way and winning their first four tourney games by double digits. They even survived Saturday’s back-and-forth contest against UCLA with an incredible heave by Jalen Suggs in overtime.
Then, in the matchup college basketball fans had eagerly awaited since the first matchup in December was canceled because of a COVID-19 test, the Zags didn’t look like themselves.
They struggled to score early, played catch-up all night and turned the ball over against Baylor’s stifling, in-your-face defense. And amid the chaos, they saw their dream of bringing home the school’s first national championship evaporate.
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