INDIANAPOLIS — The End presented the antithesis of the perfect season, when everything that had gone right for Gonzaga for six months went horribly wrong instead. Here were the Bulldogs, after the global pandemic canceled the NCAA tournament in 2020, after the most-talented recruit in program history joined the fold and an elite point guard transferred in, shrugging off COVID-19 cancellations, logistical challenges and the typically burdensome weight of history. The Zags held the No. 1 ranking for every day of this men's college basketball season, winning 31 times, with 29 of those victories coming by double digits.
Every day, that is, except the last one.
The End came quickly, like an overhand right to the chin of a face turned the other way. Baylor led the NCAA final 9–0, 11–1 and 16–4. Jalen Suggs, the elite recruit that Coach Mark Few landed with frequent visits to Minnesota, the hero of the semifinal with an epic 40-foot-bank shot to topple pesky UCLA, picked up two quick fouls and took a seat on the bench. Sharpshooter Corey Kispert struggled to make shots. Normally fluid Joel Ayayi threw one pass so far out of bounds it might have hit one of the cardboard cutouts. Drew Timme played his worst game of a remarkable tournament. The Zags even went to a zone defense in desperation— and it worked better than anything else on Monday night, closing the halftime gap to 10 manageable points.
The absolute demolition spoke more to Baylor than Gonzaga. Make no mistake about that. The Bears played defense so suffocating it was like they had placed five masks over the faces of their opponents. They knocked down triples as if trying to win a three-point contest. They swatted the Zags' shots and what they didn’t block, they altered. By the break, Few’s face had turned several brighter shades of red (think crimson). By that point, the Bulldogs trailed by the largest deficit ever overcome in men’s NCAA championship game history—and they would not join that club on Monday night, losing 86–70 in the end.
Afterward, over Zoom, Few lauded the Bears, their aggression, their NBA prospects and their absolute bludgeoning of his Zags. He said all the right things, because Few usually says all the right things. “It’s a really, really tough one to end a storybook season on,” he said. “But Baylor, they just beat us.” He wasn’t wrong, and yet, he wasn’t exactly right.
Moments before, inside the losing locker room, while yellow confetti fluttered all over the court at Lucas Oil Stadium, Few sold the same theme to his players. They had nothing to feel bad about, he said. They will look back on this nearly historic season for what it was, he said—strange and glorious and, almost for certain, unlike any they’ll ever experience again. All of that was true. But the part he left out lingered, because it had to linger, because Few has won 754 games as the head coach of Gonzaga but never this one, the final one, the one that would seem to matter most. The defeat that Baylor handed him marked his second title loss since 2017, which isn’t really a bad thing, being , except for a program that has ascended like the Zags. There’s simply nothing else left to win.
In the aftermath, Few and Kispert both sounded measured, almost relieved, definitely resigned to their first loss in 429 days. Both dismissed any notions of historical heaviness, the idea of an all-time, undefeated, perfect season hanging like a brick over their heads. “Coach said it a million times,” Kispert said. “We never really talked about it. That’s the truth.”
Instead, Gonzaga had attempted to embrace the possibility on Sunday night, when the players gathered in a ballroom at the Indiana Convention Center and saw a clip of a horse paused on a projection screen. There was Secretariat, in 1973, at the Belmont Stakes. The champion’s jockey wore blue-and-white silks, like Gonzaga. And there was Sham, the leading 3-year-old that year, its jockey clad, like Baylor, in yellow-and-green silks. Secretariat, of course, ran the greatest race in the history of horseracing that day, finishing 31 lengths ahead of his closest challenger to complete a Triple Crown bid. After the clip of the horse’s thundering, dominate gallop finished, Travis Knight, the Zags performance coach, told the players to “make your own masterpiece.”
In many ways, this season was with a giant smudge centered in the frame, added, unfortunately, on the final night. The 1975–76 Indiana Hoosiers remain the last undefeated team in men’s college basketball. Their streak will extend another season.
