GLENDALE, Ariz. — Great players and great team.
The defending national champions will be looking to redeem themselves and make history for last March’s failure.
One side is Connecticut, the other side is Purdue and Zach Eady.
No. 1 opposite No. 2 on KenPom.com.
Monday night’s National Championship Game has it all. It’s a dream matchup for the No. 1 seeds at State Farm Stadium.
“This is the game that everyone wants to see,” said Eady, who was the first unanimous repeat winner of the National Player of the Year award since Ralph Sampson of the University of Virginia from 1981-83. “One for two. We’re not in the same conference. I mean he’s never played UConn before and they’ve never played us before.
“I think we’ve been the two best teams in this sport the last two years. It would be great to finally play them and actually play against them and see how we stack up.”
UW (36-3), the top overall seed, is aiming to become the team to win it all for the eighth straight year.
Florida was the last team to do that in 2006-2007.
The Huskies have won 11 consecutive NCAA Tournament games by double digits, with an average point differential of 22.2, but have never played a No. 1 or No. 2 seed during that time.
On Monday night, they will. On Monday night, UW tied Eady and the Big Ten champions, who became the second No. 1 seed to fall to No. 16 last March when they lost to FDU.
They responded the same way the first team to suffer a similar fate, Virginia in 2018, won it all the following season.
The night of the loss to FDU, coach Matt Painter received a call from Virginia coach Tony Bennett.
Like Bennett and the Cavaliers, Painter and the Boilermakers overcame their setbacks and came back stronger.
“You have to be able to accept that,” Painter said. “When you were a little kid, it was always the line, ‘You can take it out, but you can’t take it in, can you?'”
Purdue (34-4) has proven it can handle that.
There’s another hill to climb, and it’s huge.
Connecticut treated this tournament like its own invitational, defeating quality opponent after quality opponent.
And for Eadie, 7-2 center Donovan Clingan is the answer. He is considered to have a better future as a pro and is projected to be a top-10 pick.
“I think the word ‘dominant’ comes up at UConn,” Painter said. “They’ve dominated people. They’ve not only dominated bad teams, they’ve dominated some great teams.”
Klingan plays an important role in this.
He totaled 40 points, 15 rebounds and nine blocks in Connecticut’s past two wins over Illinois and Alabama, owning the paint on both ends of the floor.
UW outscored its five tournament opponents by an astonishing 103 points when its starting center was on the floor.
However, Klingan has never faced the likes of Edie before.
This will obviously be his biggest test. This will be the first time he can remember playing against a player taller than him. He is a player who averaged 28 points, 15.4 rebounds, 2.2 assists, and 1.8 blocks in this tournament.
“As much as I coached and played with him throughout my career, I may never coach or play against a player of his stature. Just a giant player,” UW coach Dan Hurley said. said. “[Clingan] played against some outstanding centers in [Joel] with Soriano [Ryan] Kalkbrenner. But this is a different animal and they use him much differently. ”
All of these factors – Connecticut chasing history, Purdue trying to drag Virginia down, two mid-major monsters, and the two best teams according to our analysis – make the final night of the season very interesting.
It has the potential to be a classic night and one that the sports world will remember for years to come.
“This is the matchup we wanted,” Eadie said. “We wouldn’t have wanted it any other way. This is a game we’ve all been looking forward to.”
he is not alone.
It was a match that everyone wanted to see.
On Monday night, that becomes a reality.
