Redemption or domination — the different paths Purdue and UConn took to meet up for the title

GLENDALE, Ariz. — The two biggest bullies in this Final Four city, the two juggernauts with glittering numbers and renowned giants and promises to keep, clawed their way through Saturday night and on to the final showdown. The one everyone wanted to see, except for maybe Alabama and North Carolina State.

Purdue went first, grinding its way past NC State 63-50 even when the shots didn’t fall and the turnover total edged into the red zone and the normally steady point guard had a night from Final Four hell. The Boilermakers leaned on one another and found a way.

“That,” Mason Gillis said afterward in the locker room, “was the epitome of us.”

Connecticut came next and while Alabama did not go gently, it ended 86-72, meaning you could throw an 11th consecutive NCAA tournament victory by double digits on the pile. The Huskies are but 40 minutes away from possibly becoming the first repeat champions in 17 years and second in three decades.

“This is why everyone, including me, came to UConn,” said Donovan Clingan, who tormented the Tide with 18 points and four block shots. “To try to be a part of history.”

So after five months of winding roads in college basketball, it has come to this in the desert. A classic duel anchored around two towers. On one side, what many consider to be the best team. On the other, who many consider to be the best player. On one side, a defending champion eager to, as its coach has said many times lately, “make history in a place where it’s hard to make history.” On the other side, a program that has waited through 85 years of the NCAA tournament to be the last team standing at the end. Waiting most especially the past 12 months.

Monday night could be a rather remarkable display of déjà vu. Is it really possible that Virginia would be the first No. 1 seed to suffer the indignity of a loss to a No. 16 seed in the first round, then turn it into national championship redemption the very next season, and then five years later Purdue would do exactly the same thing?

The 2024 Boilermakers look more like the 2019 Cavaliers by the day, and sound like them, too. Especially the veterans who lived through that Fairleigh Dickinson nightmare in Columbus, Ohio.

Fletcher Loyer did, so he knows what Monday night means. “It's everything. It's everything we've worked for, everything we thought about. A lot of late nights, can't even sleep because you're thinking about it. It's been tough. But we fought. We're going to keep fighting. We've got 40 more minutes until we're national champs. We're going to push everybody as far as we can, and we're going to play as hard as we can.”

Gillis did, so he understands what it has taken. “We didn’t run from it. We talked about how we felt about losing, we talked about how we were going to grow from it. We didn’t just talk about it, we walked the walk. I don’t want to say we wouldn’t be in this situation if we didn’t lose to them, but it definitely fueled us; sitting in that loss, seeing it on social media 24/7, seeing it on TV.

“Even throughout this year, everybody wanted to say yeah, they’ve done this, but they lost to FDU last year. Yeah, they did this but they lost to FDU last year. So we’re just proving everybody wrong and proving ourselves right,  having each other’s back and we’ll get the job done.”

Zach Edey did. He has felt deeply the drive to atone and knows there is but one acceptable ending. A Virginia ending. “No one's celebrating right now,” he said Saturday night.

It wasn’t exactly pretty, how the Boilermakers made it to the championship game. But who wants to try to tell a team that has infamously lost three consecutive years to double-digit seeds that any win at the Final Four could be ugly? Matter of fact, you could make the case Saturday night’s hard labor was a vivid example of Purdue’s growth since the disaster of 2023.

Turnovers have been known to be fatal to the Boilermakers’ cause. One of coach Matt Painter’s favorite stats to mention lately is how his team was 27-0 this season when making 13 turnovers or under. Purdue hit 13 turnovers Saturday night with 13 minutes left to play, and ended with 16. Point guard Braden Smith had five before halftime. You don’t see over-and-back violations often in a Final Four. Smith had two of those in the first five minutes. Not only that, he was 0-for-6 shooting at halftime. Edey was being kept from any paint explosion by the North Carolina State defense as well. He was on his way to 20 points, good, but not overwhelming.

“Every possibility in a game has happened to us the past two years,” Smith said. “When the shots aren’t falling and we’re turning the ball over you have to find a different way to win. We had to pick up the defense, rebound and push the ball.”

So they did. They got some big shots from Lance Jones — 14 points, four 3-pointers — who was a million miles away from the Final Four last year at Southern Illinois. “The moment wasn’t too big for him,” Painter said. The defense held the Wolfpack under 29 percent shooting in the second half.

“You got to give our guys credit for hanging in there and grinding one out,” Painter said. “When it's freewheeling and you're scoring the basketball, it's more enjoyable to watch, more enjoyable to play, more enjoyable to coach. To be able to win six games, you're going to have a game in there, a game or two, where you don't play as well offensively. You got to find a way to win.”

There was something else that got Purdue through; the chemistry of a team glued-together by adversity. As Smith’s woes grew, his teammates rallied around. “I was just trying to stay in his ear the entire game,” Gillis said. “We have a little phrase, strong face. Whether things are going good for you or things are going bad for you, we have to maintain a strong face. It’s body language but we say strong face. I just kept telling him strong face, remember what you’ve done all year.”

Smith’s shooting never came back, finishing 1-for-9. But he didn’t have a single turnover the second half, and afterward he spoke of how good it was “just having a group of guys like that around you when a night like this does happen.”

And what of Monday's opponent, the No. 1 ranked team that was coming off a two-week pleasure cruise through the bracket? Apparently Alabama didn’t get the memo that Connecticut is supposed to win all its NCAA tournament games by 30. The Tide led for 4:18 seconds in the first half, which was 3:50 longer than the Huskies had trailed in their first four tournament games combined. Still, it had to be a little discouraging to shoot 73 percent from the arc and still trail by four at halftime. Besides, the Huskies weren’t fazed much.

“Shooting 73 percent is not sustainable,” Clingan said.

“I think the feeling just with the group is it's body blows, it's body blows, it's continue to guard, continue to rebound, execute our offense,” coach Dan Hurley said. “Eventually there will be a breaking point opportunity that will present itself, especially in this tournament.”

The Tide didn’t go away, especially Mark Sears, one of those former mid-major transfers on the Alabama roster who was here to prove a point. He scored 24 of them actually. They were tied with UConn 56-56 midway through the second half, thinking if they pushed along enough, maybe Connecticut might give a little. Hardly. The Huskies had one of those little bursts that have been so lethal — this a mini version at 8-0 in 97 seconds — and they were in front to stay. Alabama had made a valiant effort, especially Sears, but it all seemed so . . . inevitable.

“We don’t crumble,” Clingan said.

“I think we've got a lot of confidence,” Hurley said. “There's a factor with teams now that they've seen us play, where we get on a run, I think it's disheartening for the other team because they've seen it, they've seen us do it a lot.”

So Connecticut is back in the title game and nobody has done that since Florida in 2007. Some of the faces have changed from last season, but not the tenor of the program. “The culture, the preparation, the commitment to every aspect of the game so that we keep ourselves as bulletproof as possible in this tournament,” Hurley said, “which we make a hard tournament look easy. It's crazy.”

Only Purdue is left to face. Which means the 7-2 Clingan against the 7-4 Edey, a match made in TV network heaven. Clingan said in the locker room that he would be watching Purdue film on the bus on the way back to the hotel Saturday. He said the possibility of facing Edey has been in the back of his mind for a couple of weeks, “but I will say I’m pretty good at realizing what’s in front of me, one game at a time, realizing not to look too far ahead.”

But now it’s here. They’ve never met, Clingan said, though he does remember passing Edey at the Portland tournament last season. “I walked by him and I was like, wow. I’m excited for the matchup. I’ve got a lot of respect for Zach,” he said.

“It makes you want to go out there and give everything you have. On Monday night, I want to know in my head that I gave everything I’ve got. If I can’t walk off the floor, that’s all right.”

Edey, too. “The reason I came back is playing games like this,” he said.

Magic Johnson vs. Larry Bird? Maybe not quite that. But college basketball has hit the jackpot.