Virginia and Texas Tech needed to come a long way to get to the NCAA final

MINNEAPOLIS – On one bench Monday night in U.S. Bank Stadium sat Virginia, which 388 days earlier found itself on the wrong end of the biggest upset in NCAA Tournament history, an overall No. 1 seed losing to 16 seed UMBC that could have been a confidence crusher for the program.

On the other bench was Texas Tech, a relative newcomer to the party, a team that lost five of its top six scorers from the 2017-18 group that reached the Elite Eight and had to rebuild in a hurry in order to even match the previous season’s achievement, much less the Final Four.

The two teams met Monday night for the national championship. For the first time since the fabled Michigan State-Indiana State matchup with Magic Johnson and Larry Bird in 1979, two teams that never had made the final game before were playing for the title, and seeking to become the newest first-time winner since Florida in 2006.

Both teams needed to do some major rebuilding to get here. Virginia needed to boost its confidence after its historic fall in the first round, while Texas Tech had to reconstruct its roster after undergoing significant losses from last year’s Elite Eight team.

Virginia coach Tony Bennett realized the questions about what happened last year and whether the Cavaliers would bounce back were never going to end, so he and his players answered them in as classy a manner as they could while sticking to their process.

They went 34-3, pulling out an overtime win over Purdue in the Elite Eight and a 63-62 semifinal victory Saturday night over Auburn in which Kyle Guy made three free throws in the last second. And Bennett was gratified to come one game away from the ultimate college basketball honor.

“I’m just incredibly thankful,” Bennett said Sunday. “In a way, it’s a painful gift. It did draw us nearer to each other as a team. I think it helped us as coaches. I think it helped the players on the court and helped us in the other areas that rely on things that were significant.

“I knew it was going to be a significant year in all of our lives. I knew that going into this year, because of what was going to be coming at us because of that from a basketball standpoint. So I just knew we needed each other. Did I know we were going to be in this spot after last year? I didn’t, but I knew it was going to be a really important marked year for all of our lives, and it’s certainly playing out that way.”

The Red Raiders (31-6) were more of a longshot at the start of this season to get to this point after so many losses from last year’s team. They incorporated a pair of graduate transfers into the starting lineup and brought a key freshman and a junior college transfer into their rotation.

They were co-champions of the Big 12 and have won five straight games in the tournament while holding opponents to 55.8 points per game.

“Last year, that’s where it became reality, where we really thought, ‘Hey, we can play with the best teams in college basketball. We’re good enough to do this,’” said coach Chris Beard said, who is in his third season at Tech. “This year’s team really benefited from the culture we established Year 2. Vision and believe are everything.

“Sometimes it comes off as a little bit of arrogance, but you’ve got to be willing to tell people, ‘I think we can win championships and play on the last night of the season.’ The reason I say that is not arrogance, it’s just belief in what we do on a day-to-day basis.”

While each team doesn’t have a breakout star like Duke’s Zion Williamson, they have a player projected to be a top-10 pick in the next NBA Draft. Virginia’s De’Andre Hunter (Friends’ Central) is the ACC defensive player of the year who played a strong second half on the offensive end in the win over Auburn.

Jarrett Culver didn’t have a great offensive game for the Red Raiders against Michigan State but got hot at crunch time, scoring seven of his team’s last nine points in the 61-51 victory.