The championship game of the national men’s college basketball tournament Monday will feature a team most people expected to be there against a team that nobody expected to be anywhere near there, not even the good people of Provo, Utah.
BYU, which wasn’t ranked until the final month of the season and peaked at No. 14, will play the No. 1-ranked Kansas Jayhawks for the championship of our computer-simulated tournament aka Merc/East Bay Times Madness.
The Cougars, in the Final Four for the first time in the 82-year history of the tournament, routed 5th-seeded Ohio State 81-62 in the first game Saturday at Mercedes-Benz Stadium in Atlanta. Kansas defeated fourth-seeded Maryland 87-77 in the second semifinal.
Exclusive coverage of the championship game will be available Monday at noon (PDT) at mercurynews.com/sports.
Saturday’s games
BYU 81, Ohio State 62: The Cougars (29-8) won this game with a 20-2 run to close the first half. Trailing 25-15 with 8:19 to play, they started their comeback with two quick baskets from star forward Yoeli Childs. A pair of three-pointers by Jake Toolson, sandwiched around a layup by TJ Haws, tied the game at 27.Colby Lee’s old-school 3 made it 30-27. Toolson hit another three — his third in 4:43 — at the horn to send BYU into the locker room at halftime with a 35-27 lead.
BYU sealed the deal by hitting 5 of its first 6 shots in the second half to lead 47-29. The Cougars would go on to lead by as many 27 points, 72-45.
Ohio State went scoreless for the last 6:09 of the first half, missing 10 consecutive shots. The Buckeyes, who made just 21 of 61 shots (34.4 percent), finished the season 25-11.
Toolson became the third player in three games to lead BYU in scoring; he had 24 points and hit 6 of 7 shots from behind the arc. The 6-5 senior guard also had a game-high 11 rebounds. Childs had 14 points; the 6-8 senior had led the Cougars with 28 in the West Regional final against Gonzaga. Haws had 13; the senior point guard had scored 26 in the regional semifinal.
BYU’s chances of reaching the Final Four, an unthinkable notion when the brackets were announced, was helped significantly when the top two seeds in its half of the bracket — No. 2 San Diego State and No. 3 Seton Hal — were knocked out in the first round. Still, the Cougars, who advanced with victories over Indiana, Eastern Washington and Arizona, had to beat No. 1 seeded Gonzaga.
The Cougars (29-8) have lost only twice in their last 19 games, and both by one point to Bay Area teams: 83-82 at San Francisco and 51-50 to Saint Mary’s in the West Coast Conference tournament.
Kansas 87, Maryland 77: Sophomore Devon Dotson scored 23 points and two of his teammates registered double-doubles as the Jayhawks ran their winning streak to 21 games, one short of the school record.
Kansas (33-3) last lost Jan. 11 at home to Baylor, 67-55. Its other losses were to Duke 68-66 in the third game of the season and to Villanova 56-55 on Dec. 21.
The Jayhawks outscored Maryland 17-3 at the start of the second half to turn a 43-41 lead into a 60-44 blowout. Maryland’s only points in the four-minute stretch came on a 3 by Anthony Cowan Jr. The Terrapins fought back and cut the lead to 73-68 with 5:43 to play, but Dotson and Udoka Azubuike quickly answered with baskets to restore order.
Azubuike, the 7-foot senior, finished with 15 points and 14 rebounds. David McCormack had 13 points and 11 rebounds. Marcus Garrett, the only Kansas starter not to score in double figures, had 12 assists.
Jalen Smith led Maryland (28-8) with 20 points. Cowan scored 18 to cap a career that saw him make 135 consecutive starts and lead the team in scoring, assists and steals three years in a row.
