Gonzaga will win the national championship because the Zags never stop coming

The Gonzaga Bulldogs will play North Carolina on Monday night for college basketball’s national championship. It’ll be the first such opportunity in Zags history. And it will happen because Gonzaga is so deep and so talented that even one of the ugliest, quickest collapses of this entire season wasn’t enough to kill them.

When Nigel Williams-Goss hit two foul shots with 10:55 left in a national semifinal against South Carolina on Saturday, his team had a 65-51 lead. What followed was remarkable — a 16-0 run over by South Carolina spanning 3:33 of clock time, staking the Cocks to a 67-65 lead that was their first since the score was 10-8. The country’s No. 104 offense by adjusted efficiency made eight of nine shots in a row at one point, all against its No. 1 defense by the same metric. Gonzaga had apparently collapsed on college basketball’s biggest stage, in the biggest game in the history of its program.

Great teams counterpunch. Gonzaga is a great team. The Bulldogs answered a 16-0 run with a 7-0 run of their own, staking themselves to a lead they wouldn’t give up. Their two 7-foot centers, freshman Zach Collins and Przemek Karnowski, keyed the response: Collins with a triple that stopped the bleeding, Karnowski with a dunk and a layup after that. Both players were critical all night. Collins played like the budding star he is.

South Carolina’s a great team, too, so the Cocks counter-counterpunched. They pushed both Collins and Karnowski, as well as guard Josh Perkins, to four fouls in the final minutes. They stayed within arm’s length to give themselves a shot at a dramatic finish. They would’ve gotten a tying shot attempt, too, if South Carolina hadn’t smartly fouled Gamecock star Sindarius Thornwell in the final four seconds.

The final score was 77-73.

Let’s start with their offense. Gonzaga’s other close brush with death came on March 23, when it faced West Virginia in a Sweet 16 game in the West regional. WVU almost knocked Mark Few’s Bulldogs out of a 19th NCAA tournament in 19 years. In the end, the Bulldogs prevailed by three points despite their worst offensive game of the year.

The problems Gonzaga faced against WVU were understandable. The Mountaineers play the country’s most aggressive brand of pressure defense. They forced turnovers on 28 percent of their defensive possessions this year, an astounding rate and the best in Division I. They gave Gonzaga little room to breathe, much less dribble, and the Zags looked overwhelmed on offense. They had their second-worst game of the season by turnover percentage (with 16 in total) and their third-worst by effective field goal percentage (at 45.5). They lost the ball a lot and missed shots when they got them.

Gonzaga’s 61-58 win that night was impressive, of course. There’s no such thing as an unimpressive win against a Bob Huggins WVU team. But it came by a hair, only because of the Zags’ own outstanding D. It also made me worried about what awaited the Zags in the Final Four, where their first opponent was South Carolina in a national semifinal. The Gamecocks are fourth in the country in defensive turnover rate, playing a similar (though markedly less severe) version of pressure defense to West Virginia. They’re WVU Lite. It seemed reasonable that Gonzaga would struggle to score again.

What actually happened: The Zags had a 55.9 effective shooting percentage, the best for any team against South Carolina since a first-round game against Marquette. Their offense declined considerably in the second half, but they still finished with 1.1 points per possession, the most efficient game against USC by any team since February. They turned the ball over on 17 percent of their trips, as opposed to 24 percent against WVU. They weren’t incredible, but they were downright good against a great defense.

That’s going to happen, I think. The Zags are the best team in college basketball, and they’re going to beat North Carolina.

They don’t have huge strength in numbers, but the Zags don’t give minutes to players who aren’t really good. Every player in their eight-man rotation has strong efficiency numbers on offense, and every one of them can play defense. Exhibit A: backup point guard Silas Melson’s ferocious block in the first half on Saturday.

The Zags have two elite centers. They have an elite point guard in Williams-Goss. They’ve got excellent supporting starters in Johnathan Williams and Jordan Mathews, and their bench had 22 points on Saturday. (Collins is the single most overqualified bench player in the country, which sort of juices the numbers, but still.)

Karnowski left the game after having his eye poked with five minutes left in the first half, and a 31-31 game became a 45-36 halftime lead for the Zags. South Carolina made the run of the season, and Gonzaga immediately shaved seven points right off it. West Virginia pressure made Gonzaga’s offense look like a shell of itself, and the Zags responded with a quality game against a similar defense.

The Zags will be champions on Monday night because they never stop coming.