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MINNEAPOLIS (AP) – Strike the ground, bend your knees and raise your hands.
This national championship game will be a defense clinic.
Virginia and Texas Tech are the last two teams to compete in the NCAA tournament. They are here because they barely let their opponents breathe with the ball.
Two of the top three defenses in the country will compete for the title Monday night, the first appearance in the final of each program. So, after surviving a low-scoring semifinal Saturday, here are the Cavaliers and the Red Raiders for another clash between paint packers, ball peddlers and board defenders.
Virginia surprised Auburn 63-62, when Kyle Guy made three free throws in 0.6 seconds after a last-minute foul. Next, Texas Tech beat Michigan State 61-51, backed by Matt Mooney's 22 points, and boosted by coach Hunter Chris Beard's sultry defensive approach.
Regardless of the number of shots fired, the trophy will be lifted and the confetti will be dropped one way or the other at the Bank's US Stadium, where 72,711 spectators filled the three-year-old football stadium for half-time. finals. The last time the national title was awarded to Minneapolis, it was in 2001, when Duke had beaten Arizona at the Metrodome.
"I hope we will not have to play such a tight game on Monday, but if we do, we have made the experience and I feel we will be ready," said the Virginia goalkeeper, Andre Hunter, who had two of the nine Virginia blocks to go with 14 points on the other end.
The last big sporting event in this building was the Super Bowl, just 14 months ago, when the Philadelphia Eagles defeated the New England Patriots 41-33 in the NFL's second most successful game with the most marked title in the history of the league.
The chances of Virginia and Texas Tech setting a similar feat will be slim at best, given that the all-time combined points record in an NCAA championship game is 182, when Kentucky beat Duke 94 -88 in 1978. The Cavaliers (55.4) and Red Raiders (59.0) took part in the Final Four ranking respectively ranked first and third in the country, on average of the number of points awarded per match.
Unsurprisingly, the players grabbed the underside.
The total score projected for this NCAA Final was 121 and punters quickly reduced it to 117½ in one hour. Virginia opened its doors as a 2-point favorite and the first actions reduced the gap to 1 over Texas Tech.
"We just want to continue to be the underdogs," said Brandone Francis, backup goalkeeper for the Red Raiders. "That's what we kiss."
Virginia is in the top 10 of the defensive efficiency ranking of Ken Pomeroy, basketball data expert, since training his 2014 team by coach Tony Bennett. The Cavaliers entered the fifth national weekend with 88.7 points per 100 possessions, a measure that takes into account their slower offensive pace and a sharper performance measure than the depressed averages in low possession games. possession.
Texas Tech made a quick climb in three seasons under Beard, entering the Final Four with the best defensive efficiency (84.0) ever recorded in KenPom's ratings dating back to the 2002 season.
The Red Raiders had a 23-21 advantage at halftime on the Spartans, with 44 points combined in the first period, making it the second total in the national semifinal in the throwing season of the 1985-1986 season . Michigan State and Wisconsin had 36 points in the first half in their last game in 2000, when the Spartans beat a Badgers team led by Dick Bennett, father of Tony Bennett and creator of the pack line that the Cavaliers perfected.
Against Virginia, the Tigers shot only 9 against 26 on the field in the second half. Top scorer Bryce Brown finished the game 4 to 12 for the floor, but he was 1 for 7 until the 4½ final.
A few hours later, the Spartans left the field after tarnishing 8 of 24 shots after half-time against Texas Tech. Cassius Winston, the All-American leader of Michigan State's first team, had 16 points, but only 4 points out of 16 from the field. It was his third worst percentage of the season, the lowest in 13 games.
Virginia, the No. 1 seed in the South Region, gives the Atlantic Coast Conference a representative in the championship game for the fourth time in five years.
Even with this six-year run as one of the country's top teams, the Cavaliers do not have that Duke-North Carolina cachet. We remember better their loss against UMBC last season, the only seed No. 1 to have been beaten by a seed No. 16. It is also the program that is responsible for one of the biggest setbacks of the regular season of history, when the Cavs lost to the tiny Chaminade in 1982 as the No. 1 Associated Press poll team with the great Ralph Sampson under the painting.
Bennett teleported alongside guards Kyle Guy and Ty Jerome on the podium, remembering the pain felt a year ago.
"Now, sitting with them here gives me great joy, that's right, because it's good, that's all I can say and I'm very grateful," Bennett said. .
Texas Tech, number 3 in the West, has even less success.
"Why do not we? We have good players, we have a big university, we play in the best league in the country," said Beard, arguing that, of course, coaches from three or four other conferences would have. "We won the Big 12 regular season title. We are a good team."
Copyright 2019 Associated Press. All rights reserved.
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