GLENDALE, Ariz. -- Forget the Redemption Tour for a moment, please.
Saturday night was a wash, rinse and (almost) repeat of the horror North Carolina had to be redeemed from in the first place in this Final Four.
The Tar Heels have had to live for three days short of a year with the memory of Villanova’s Kris Jenkins sticking that three-point dagger in their hearts.
If you watched Saturday night, it looked a lot like the Tar Heels turned the knife on themselves against Oregon.
It’s not often a team gets a collective lump in their throat so … collectively. It’s even more rare a team misses its final four free throws in the Final Four and survives, finally.
That’s how redemption turned into survival for North Carolina, 77-76 over the Ducks.
“I felt like our guys realized, ‘We’re not losing this game,’ point guard Joel Berry II said. ‘We’re not losing another game with a team hitting a game winner on us.’ ’’
For the record, Oregon had two glorious chances to do just that, to get to its first championship game in 78 years before the second-largest national semifinal crowd in history (77,612).
But the Ducks never touched the ball in the final 5.8 seconds despite Kennedy Meeks -- clank! -- missing two -- clank! -- free throws and Berry doing the same clankin’ thing.
North Carolina got both offensive rebounds -- one by Theo Pinson, the other by Meeks -- despite having the natural disadvantage on the block.
The Ducks didn’t do the thing they teach you since first grade, box out.
“To be on the other end of that sucks,” Carolina guard Nate Britt said. “My freshman year against Texas, Texas was shooting free throws. They missed and I didn’t get a good box out. They ended up winning the game.
“I know what it feels like to be on the other side of that.”
You can imagine what it felt like for Oregon, which trailed by nine with just under six minutes left and by six with 57 seconds left.
But they don’t ask how, they ask how many offensive rebounds you grabbed. North Carolina had a staggering 17. The last two have to be some of the biggest in the storied program’s history.
“Honestly, I thought they would do a better job of boxing out, but you got to give credit to Theo and Kennedy,” Berry said. “They didn’t just accept those box outs.”
Never mind getting a game-winning shot off, Oregon couldn’t get its hands on the ball after the misses. Following Meeks’ rebound, Pinson dribbled out the (F)inal (F)our seconds on the clock.
Isn’t that fitting?
“I wouldn’t call it redemption,” Pinson said. “I would call it executing what we practice. Those were the biggest plays of the night.”
You may recall after losing at the buzzer in that national championship game last year, the Tar Heels deemed this entire season as some sort of redemptive mission. A players’ group chat was simply titled “redemption.”
“I think you’re always going to have that in the back of your mind because it was a heart-breaking experience for us,” Meeks said.
But can we tear that label off North Carolina’s season? The Heels are in the championship game for the second year in a row. Good. Fine. But this was a repeat of last year’s close encounter of the worst kind.
“Every time we get to that moment, that shot always goes through my head,” Berry said. “I just don’t want to lose a game like that. You can’t go all that way and fight yourself back into the game and lead the whole game and just lose off of one-second shot.”
The result means the game will go down as the most wonderful 1-for-12 game in Isaiah Hicks’ life. There should be not debate on this topic.
We love to assign blame in this country, whether it’s the White House or the guy in the house next door. Hicks’ left hand just happened to be the last thing in the way of Jenkins’ game-winning three.
It (the hand) was short. Jenkins’ shot wasn’t.
“Isaiah took way too much responsibility,” Roy Williams told reporters earlier. “That shot was against North Carolina’s team.”
Yeah, well, maybe but all buzzer beaters hurt the same. To be fair, the worst shooting game of Hicks’ senior season was affected by a thigh contusion. He missed a lot of the second half being worked on by trainers and riding the bike.
Justin Jackson was out in no-Heels-land that night too, watching for afar as Jenkins’ shot went in. Berry was too. North Carolina’s point guard wasn’t so hot himself from the field Saturday. Unable to push off properly on two sore ankles -- or so it looked -- Berry went 2-for-14.
“First of all I’ve never been in a game where I missed so many free throws like that,” he said. “Secondly, I haven’t been in a game where we get the boards like that.”
As bad as Hicks and Berry were, they were bailed out by Meeks (25 points, 14 rebounds) and Jackson (22 points on only 13 shots).
And bailed out sounds a whole lot better than losing.
“That’s like the 50th time we’ve kind of answered a question about [Villanova],” Jackson said. “At the end of the day it’s a different team, it’s a different year. Gonzaga is a totally different team than Villanova was.”
That’s what lies ahead. North Carolina in its 20th Final Four against the Zags in their first championship game. One is a national power, a blueblood known for chewing up Tobacco Road.
The other, Gonzaga, is just cutting its teeth at this sort of thing.
Both are just glad to be there Monday night.
“We needed a last-minute something today,” Carolina’s Luke Maye said. “That was big. We almost blew it there at the end.”
For now, call it Chapel Healed.
