LOS ANGELES, (MILLAT ONLINE/APP/AFP): The University of North Carolina Tar Heels, who fell agonizingly sort of the goal last year, beat the Gonzaga Bulldogs 71-65 on Monday to claim the coveted US collegiate basketball crown.
The Tar Heels won their sixth national title with the triumph at the
University of Phoenix Stadium, where center Kennedy Meeks’s block of a shot by Gonzaga’s Nigel Williams-Goss set up a fastbreak dunk by North Carolina’s
Justin Jackson with 12 seconds to play that sealed the win.
It was coach Roy Williams’s third national title at North Carolina, but the first since 2009.
Last year the Tar Heels’ title bid was sunk by a last-second shot by
Villanova’s Kris Jenkins in the title game.
This year’s championship showcase featured a welter of fouls and missed shots by both teams.
But it offered plenty of drama, with the outcome in doubt in the final minute.
Forward Isaiah Hicks’s jump shot with 26 seconds left gave North Carolina a 68-65 lead before Williams-Goss, who had scored eight straight points for Gonzaga, was blocked on the other end.
North Carolina point guard Joel Berry, who was named Most Outstanding
Player of the Final Four, made two free throws with seven seconds remaining to finish with a game-high 22 points.
Gonzaga, the small-school perennial contender who had made it to the Final Four for the first time in their 19th straight appearance in the national tournament, missed nine consecutive shots in the second half, going more than eight minutes without a basket.
North Caroline still couldn’t deliver a decisive run, and it was a
one-possession game for much of the second half.
Foul trouble dogged both teams in the second half.
Meeks was whistled for his fourth foul with 9:42 remaining.