by John Walters

Final Fourgasm

1. Be True To Your School

I spent two hours before Monday’s game roaming the cavernous University of Phoenix Stadium, testing my cynicism versus the top row-of-the-stadium $107 seats. And this is what I found: the staffers, both for paying customers and those who assisted with the media, were ineffably helpful and friendly. Fire them a smile, and they fired one right back at you.

Related Content: JDubs’ piece on the game in Newsweek.

The students who drove from the North Carolina and Gonzaga campuses—I met 10 Tar Heel students from the same church who drove 35 hours together in a van, and on the off day, Sunday, they took a side trip to the Grand Canyon, five hours away—were infectiously enthusiastic and giddy and passionate.

The players and the coaches? Wonderful. From Mark Few and Roy Williams, to tall dudes in both locker rooms who were classy and helpful and humble. Loved them all.

(The gang from Summit Church in Chapel Hill. Safe travels home, kids.)

The only things that made me cynical? Some of my fellow media and the way the NCAA is happy to ruin something as simple as playground hoops by over-officiating the game and by compelling teams to play in an environment that is so foreign to what they practice and play in all year long.

On Saturday I watched a writer trying to take his soda out onto press row—which he is permitted to do, and he had it in the proper NCAA-designated cup—but the staffer made an honest mistake and asked him to stop. She was confused and she wasn’t belligerent, but it took all of five seconds to sort out. And this was before tip-off. As the writer walked away, hardly under his breath (hell, I heard it), he muttered, “Retard.”

Huge turnoff.

And then, after properly officiating the game in the first half Monday night, The Ref Show began in the second half. Of course we fouled out Zach Collins and made Przemek Kanowski and Kennedy Meeks spend the final eight minutes playing on pins and needles. Because that’s what 76,000 people had paid to see, no? At one point we even got dueling free throws between Kanowski and Joel Berry II—the game had literally devolved into a free-throw shooting contest.

(Objects in photo are even farther than they appear.)

But for all of that ugliness, in the final two minutes, when Meeks clearly had one hand out of bounds while tied up with two Zags and the ball on the floor, and with a ref two feet away, the officials ruled jump ball (possession, Carolina). And nobody reviewed it. So what’s the purpose of all this punctilious adjudication if you miss the biggest call of the season? Or is someone emailing the NCAA this morning to have that call overturned and penalize Carolina four strokes?

Kind of a big deal