Missed call helps UNC in final minute of NCAA title game

A boisterous, joyous crowd welcomed the 2017 NCAA Champion UNC men’s basketball team back to the Smith Center on Tuesday evening. After losing in the very last seconds of last year’s NCAA Tournament Championship, the University of North Carolina is crowned the champion of the 2017 tournament.

With about 30 seconds left and North Carolina clinging to a one-point lead, Kennedy Meeks and Silas Melson were scuffling for the ball under the basket when Meeks’ right hand slid over the baseline. Star guard Nigel Goss-Williams reinjured his sprained ankle with 1:25 left, and Gonzaga down a point.

But Williams-Goss almost carried Gonzaga home by himself.

It was, in North Carolina’s words, a redemption tour – filled with extra time on the practice court and the weight room, all fueled by a devastating loss in last year’s title game on Kris Jenkins’ 3-point dagger at the buzzer for Villanova.

“I think to be so close for us is a temporarily crushing blow right now”.

“Sure enough, I got on the bus and got my phone out of my backpack”.

The story of the game ended up being the referees. “The second half, they shoot 27 percent and we shoot 35 for the game”.

Along with the fact that the best players were forced to sit due to foul trouble and watch along with the rest of us, the game never hit a groove due to the disjointed feel.

At the outset of the game the Gonzaga Bulldogs looked like the better team. At one point, with seven minutes left in the half, the two teams had combined to shoot 11-for-42 from the floor. “Told him this morning, your last high school game you won the state championship”.

“It started in ’99 when they went to the Elite Eight and we just kept – the Zags keep breaking that ceiling. So we were at fault just as much as anybody else”.

Game changing call here, what a joke.

The Tar Heels regrouped, refocused and outplayed Gonzaga over the final 20 minutes to prevent any deja vu. But he made just 1 of 8 from the field against North Carolina.

But Hicks finally found the rhythm down the stretch.

“Isaiah just had a little more bounce to him than whoever was guarding him had”, Jackson said. And his toughness, I think, everybody on our club picked up on that.

This time, there was no last-second heartbreak for North Carolina.

Jackson scored 16 points, but missed all nine of his three-point attempts. Good three-point shooting by the Bulldogs (5-9, vs. 2-12 for the Tar Heels) helped give them the lead, but turnovers kept them from getting away.

“26-for-73, you’re not going to win many games; 57 percent from the free-throw line you’re not going to win many games”, Jackson said. I would like to see the kids decide who wins the game!

“This is what we worked for”, junior guard Joel Berry II said.

We said before the game that the worst thing for the Zags would be to get Zach Collins and Przemek Karnowski in foul trouble. If it wasn’t for his performance against Gonzaga, the other banner wouldn’t be going up with it.

Carolina shot 35 percent from the field, a percentage point worse than it did in Saturday’s semifinal win over OR, which stood, for two days, as their worst shooting night in a tournament win since 1967.