1st-timers Texas Tech, Virginia face off for men's NCAA title

For Virginia and Texas Tech, doing something that had never been done before took hard work, dedication, determination — and vision.

The Cavaliers and Red Raiders meet in the men's NCAA Tournament championship game Monday night at U.S. Bank Stadium in Minneapolis. Neither program has ever been this close to a title, making it a rare matchup of first-timers to the final game of the college basketball season. The last time both teams in the championship game had never been there before was 40 years ago, when Magic Johnson and Michigan State beat Larry Bird and Indiana State.

Between the Red Raiders (31-6) and Cavaliers (34-3), a first-time champ is guaranteed. The last one of those was crowned in 2006, when Florida won the first of back-to-back titles.

College basketball's hierarchy, blue bloods in an array of shades from Duke to Kentucky, North Carolina to Kansas, is difficult to crack. Getting here started with Virginia coach Tony Bennett and Texas Tech coach Chris Beard believing it could be done.

"Then you've got to get people on board that really believe it and believe it in front of you, behind your back, believe it at 10 o'clock when they're out of town, on the road somewhere. Believe it in the morning, believe it when they're talking to their wife, their kid," Beard said Sunday at U.S. Bank Stadium. "They've got to really believe it."

In less than a decade, Beard has gone from coaching in the semi-pro ABA to Division III, then II, and then a couple of seasons at Arkansas Little Rock before landing in Lubbock. The Red Raiders basketball history is solid but unspectacular. Texas Tech was where Bobby Knight landed after the volatile Hall of Fame coach wore out his welcome in Indiana. He took Texas Tech to the NCAA Tournament four times in the 2000s. Pretty good, but Beard expected much more.

"Our goal has never been to make a tournament. It's been to win the tournament," Beard said. "It's easy to talk about, and really, really hard to do. But that's where we started this whole thing, was just trying to have the expectations and the vision where we could be relative."

Texas Tech reached the Elite Eight for the first time last season. This season, with a mostly rebuilt team around star Jarrett Culver, the Red Raiders shared the Big 12 regular-season title for the first time and are now on the cusp of an unlikely championship.

Bennett's belief he could challenge the Atlantic Coast Conference's Tobacco Road powers came from his father, Dick Bennett. The Badgers hadn't been to a Final Four in more than 50 years, when Dick Bennett coached them there in 2000 using a methodical style.

"Can you go and take a team and build your program in a way that you think is best and compete against the best?" said Tony Bennett, in his 10th season at Virginia. "There's a way that I know works — or that I believe works. So when you get in those spots, you hope, you have a vision and you hope, but you never truly know. When you come in and say, 'This is going to happen. We're going to be a Final Four team, or we're going to win the ACC.' You believe it, and you hope it, and then you just go to work."

Bennett took his father's blueprint and turned Virginia into a perennial ACC contender, going toe-to-toe with Duke and North Carolina, but not until this season were the Cavaliers able to break through — doing so on the strength of two improbable last-second plays. And just a year after suffering the most stunning upset in NCAA Tournament history, losing as the top overall seed to No. 16 seed UMBC.

Defense is the calling card for both the Cavaliers and Red Raiders, but Bennett is quick to point out, they are not similar when it comes to X's and O's, only results. By KenPom's points allowed per 100 possessions stats, Texas Tech is ranked No. 1 in the country and Virginia is fifth.

Maybe they're making defense cool again.

"I would like to think so," Tech's Brandone Francis said. "It's like I love eating ice cream, no different than playing defense."

This NCAA championship game might not lure in the casual fan, looking for one-and-done stars, iconic coaches and fast-paced 3-balling offenses like the ones Villanova used to win two of the last three titles.

"I think if you're a basketball fan you'll really enjoy the game," Virginia's Braxton Key said. "If you're just kind of a highlight fan this isn't the game to watch."

Fans flock to Minneapolis

No matter what kind of game it is, two groups of fans will be watching closely: Students and alumni from Texas Tech and Virginia, many of whom have made the trip to the Twin Cities.

Annie Walker is a senior at Texas Tech who has been to every one of the team's home games since she was a freshman. When she first searched for Final Four tickets and flights to the Twin Cities, it was way too expensive.

"I thought I wasn't going to be able to come, (but) then we got an email for student tickets. And I bought it without thinking about how I was going to get here or where I was going to stay — I was going to figure it out," she said Saturday.

Walker and her friends pooled their money, rented a car and hit the road at 3 a.m. Friday from Lubbock, Texas.

"So we drove 16-and-a-half hours to get here and we are cramming a bunch of students in a hotel room just to make it work," she said.

The Final Four has brought students like Walker, boosters on private jets, alumni who booked last-minute flights and longtime college basketball fans to Minneapolis. All cheered loudly through two games Saturday night, — and they are also staying at local hotels, eating at local restaurants and drinking at local bars.

"We have been extremely pleased with the attendance and the turnout from fans at all of the events," said Kathy McCarthy, a spokesperson for Meet Minneapolis, which is helping to host the Final Four weekend festivities that extend throughout downtown.

"I think anyone who has been downtown has been able to see that there are fans everywhere," she said.

Reggie Smith and a group of college friends have been going to Final Fours around the country since the early 1990s. This was his first in Minneapolis, which said he's enjoyed so far. He liked U.S. Bank Stadium ... kind of.

"This building is very beautiful," he said. "I'm in the last row, last seat at the very top. But you can still see. This is all right, but I wouldn't say it's great; it depends on where you're sitting."

But no matter the seats, the long drives, and the festivities outside, it all comes down to Monday night's game. And for the student athletes from Texas Tech and Virginia, that's top of mind.

Kyle Guy, the guard who won Saturday night's game for Virginia on three straight free throws with less than a second to play, was asked Sunday if he could visualize cutting down the nets after winning a championship.

"Every player and coach on every team has envisioned it, I'm sure," he said. "But I think it's important to realize that you don't get to skip the game and just go down and cut the nets. We gotta focus on what's in front of us — we're in for a battle and we're excited."