Reacting to UNC-Villanova

Okay. About the happenings of Monday night.

This story could have been about North Carolina’s three-point shooting. The Tar Heels were 7-of-9 from downtown in the first half. Joel Berry was playing the game of his life. Justin Jackson and Marcus Paige were playing like champions.

Then it was supposed to be Phil Booth’s night. The sophomore guard racked up a career-high 20 points and was making circus shots that pushed the limits of human physical prowess. As Villanova pulled away late, he was in line to be anointed a hero.

But then UNC came back, and Marcus Paige nailed a double-clutch three to tie the game with 4.7 seconds to play. It was the kind of shot that makes sedentary people jump up and emit primal noises.

Kris Jenkins rendered all of those things irrelevant.

The final shot (and play, for that matter) will follow the parties involved forever. It’s one of only two buzzer-beaters the championship game has ever seen, and is the farther shot by nearly 25 feet. It brought tears of joy to millions, and tears of agony to millions more (not to mention the virtual tears on the face of Crying Michael Jordan).

And the dude beat his brother. The parents of UNC point guard Nate Britt, who was on the bench for the final play, legally took custody of Jenkins while the players were in high school. They said they had talked about this game as a possibility, but now they’ll be talking about it as a reality for years and years and years to come.

This was a great game. If you want to sell it short, you call it “one of the best” college basketball games ever. If you like to overreact, there’s a reasonable argument to be made that it’s right at the top, and that nobody has ever made a greater shot than Jenkins.

But the whole thing was special. The entire tournament, 66 games of excitement and brilliance, built up to this. The national anthem was sensational. The player intros were over-the-top. Bill Raftery brought out the best of his memorable catchphrases.

Ryan Arcidiacono brought it to the biggest game of his career. So did Joel Berry. So did Phil Booth. So did Marcus Paige. And so did Kris Jenkins.

I was rooting for Villanova, primarily because UNC was my dream school until it was “unable to offer me admission.” I’m no longer bitter, because I ended up happy at Maryland, but I still spent the whole season dreading the possibility of a Tar Heel title. The last thing I wanted was to watch UNC’s celebration and think “I could be there, too, if I worked a little harder in high school.”

So as the confetti poured down from the rafters, the Wildcat team piled on Jenkins, I did feel some sort of relief. I also felt a little guilty seeing Paige and Brice Johnson and even Roy Williams truly heartbroken. How could I have wished that upon them?

But any personal vendettas took a backseat to what I had watched as a sports fan. This title game was exhilarating throughout, and in the end it was won rather than lost. I’ll never forget Monday’s contest. And neither will anyone else who saw it.

Sports are great.