Gambling has made ends of games miserable for benchwarmers

GLENDALE, Ariz. — With exactly six minutes left in Monday night’s national championship game, UConn guard Tristen Newton zoomed a pass to a cutting Stephon Castle, who skipped past Zach Edey in the paint and laid in an ordinary layup. Except, it was only ordinary in execution — because that basket put the Huskies up 17 points, their largest lead of the night.

Consider that the moment the hourglass flipped, and time started ticking until UConn’s looming championship celebration.

Minutes later, the confetti cannons inside State Farm Arena erupted, finalizing UConn’s 75-60 win over Purdue in Monday’s national title game — and immortalizing Dan Hurley’s Huskies, who accomplished what no college basketball team had since Florida in 2006-07: winning consecutive NCAA championships.

That feat alone is historic. Other than Florida, only Duke in 1991-92 had gone back-to-back since John Wooden’s UCLA dynasty in the 1960s and 1970s. But it’s the way that UConn won its 12th straight NCAA Tournament game — by, effectively, turning into the basketball version of a wood chipper — that lifts this two-year stretch to legendary status.

Last season, UConn won its six games in the Big Dance by a staggering average of 20 points per contest … yet somehow Hurley’s encore squad was even more dominant. After UConn’s 15-point victory over the Boilermakers, who were playing in their first national title game since 1969, the Huskies’ average victory margin this tournament? A whopping 23.3 points per game. That not even the Boilermakers — a No. 1 seed with two-time Wooden Award winner Zach Edey — could keep the final score to single digits speaks to UConn’s overwhelming dominance. The 7-foot-4 Edey finished Monday’s game, likely his last in college, with 37 points and 10 rebounds… and it mattered little.

And if this wasn’t already the case, go ahead and formally welcome UConn’s to the blue-blood club. Monday’s win was the Huskies’ sixth NCAA title, pushing them past Duke — which has five — and into a tie for third all-time with North Carolina; only UCLA (11) and Kentucky (eight) have more. That all six championships have come in a 25-year span since 1999, and under three different coaches, only further validates Connecticut’s place in college basketball’s historic hierarchy.

The same can be said of Hurley; the 51-year-old is now only the third active Division-I men’s coach with multiple national titles, joining Bill Self and Rick Pitino.

And it’s Hurley who deserves plenty of credit for UConn’s masterful game plan Monday night. Stopping Edey is an impossible task. Even in a battle of the two best bigs in America — Edey vs. 7-2 UConn’s center Donovan Clingan, who managed 11 points and five rebounds despite foul trouble — the Big Maple was always going to get his. He scored 16 of Purdue’s 30 first-half points, especially early on, when he feasted with his patented array of hook shots. But UConn countered well late, holding Edey without a basket over the final 5:47 before halftime — and during that stretch, the Huskies stretched their lead to six.

At the same time, UConn completely smothered Purdue — which entered as the second-best 3-point shooting team in America, making 40.6 percent from deep — from behind the arc. Hurley’s strategy of not having UConn’s guards help when Edey got the ball inside meant Purdue’s perimeter players had no breathing room. Case in point: Purdue only attempted one 3-pointer in the first 17 minutes of the game; it wasn’t until Braden Smith canned a fadeaway 3 with the shot clock expiring, 2:17 before intermission, that the Boilermakers actually made a triple.

Offensively, the difference between the two teams’ philosophies couldn’t have been more pronounced. Edey took 12 of Purdue’s 28 first-half attempts, making more shots than the rest of the Boilermakers did combined. On the flip side, while Cam Spencer scored seven of UConn’s first 11 points, the Huskies leaned on their balance and depth. Four different Huskies — Spencer, Clingan, Tristen Newton, and Hassan Diarra — had at least three made shots before any non-Edey Boilermaker did so.

That dichotomy became untenable for Purdue from the very first possession of the second half. Edey missed a bunny inside, and UConn turned it into a Newton 3 on the other end — a critical five-point swing that pushed Purdue into an early danger zone. From then on, what had been a back-and-forth battle between KenPom’s No. 1 and 2 teams — only the fourth time that’s happened since 2005 —became a lopsided, 20-minute-long UConn’s coronation. A surprise putback dunk from freshman Camden Heide, off another Edey miss, only briefly revived the Boilermakers’ hopes… until, soon after, they went 4:29 without a made field goal, during which UConn pushed its lead to 16. Newton — who finished with 20 points, seven assists and five rebounds — was the maestro making it all happen.

The last made shot of that run was a Diarra layup in transition; Purdue coach Matt Painter couldn’t have called timeout more quickly, sensing the game getting away from his team.

And he was almost right.

Except the game wasn’t getting away by then; it was gone.