Did the Right Team Win?
Do we need to dust off the Sports Time Machine to reverse last night's outcome?
Last night Florida beat Houston 65-63 to conclude a thrilling Final Four. As with the two semifinals on Saturday, the team that was trailing at the final media timeout found a way to pull out the win. After a fairly anti-climactic first few rounds of the tournament, the Final Four came through by providing three thoroughly entertaining games.
And yet, I have a gnawing sense of dissatisfaction with how this one played out. This is not meant to be a knock on Florida and anyone who attended Florida or had Florida winning it all on their bracket should absolutely be thrilled with how this played out. The Gators only had the lead in this game for 64 seconds but they had the lead when the clock hit zero and that’s what matters. It’s the fourth time this tournament that they’ve had to overcome a second half deficit (as they did in wins over UConn, Texas Tech, and Auburn) and they have some really great personal stories.
They’re a team of the modern era which means they have several players who made their way to Gainesville by way of the transfer portal. While some critics of the current system despise how the portal has made players into permanent free agents, I look at the players on this Florida team as wonderful examples of how the portal can help open doors that previously were closed. Take Florida point guard Walter Clayton Jr, the best player in the 2025 NCAA Tournament. Clayton was a highly recruited football star coming out of high school, but passed up a scholarship offer from Notre Dame to play basketball at Iona and did so well for the Gaels that when he put his name in the transfer portal, he was recruited by a number of basketball powers that didn’t pay attention to him in high school. Walter Clayton bet on himself in a major way and it was cool to see that belief manifest into something extraordinary.
So I’m not a Florida hater. Yet I really really thought this was Houston’s year. For one thing, Houston’s thrilling comeback win over Duke was the best moment of the tournament and I don’t like it when the team who has the signature moment of the tournament isn’t able to close the deal. Other examples of this included the 2015 Wisconsin team who beat an undefeated Kentucky in the semis and then lost the title game to Duke, or 2021 Gonzaga who beat UCLA in one of the most entertaining games in tournament history and then got hammered by Baylor in the final.
But my preference for Houston over Florida wasn’t just based on how this past weekend played out. It was also the fact that Florida has already won multiple basketball titles in recent memory, while Houston is still looking for their first. It was the fact that Hakeem Olajuwon, the best player in school history and a two-time national runner-up in the early ‘80s, was in attendance, As was Jim Nantz, the retired broadcaster who called the Final Four for 32 years and was now able to attend as a fan of his alma mater and was brought to tears of joy by the conclusion of that Duke game. There was also a sense that this was head coach Kelvin Samspon’s time, after 36 years as a head coach for Montana Tech, Washington State, Oklahoma, Indiana, and now Houston. Sampson’s coached about 1,000 more games than the young Florida coach Todd Golden and while I’m not opposed to a young wunderkind taking the college basketball world by storm, Todd Golden isn’t exactly a feel-good story due to some unseemly off-court baggage that cast a shadow over this season.
As much as Houston seemed like the team of destiny, all of that proved moot during a disastrous final minute as the Cougars failed to get a shot off on their final three possessions and squandered their chance at history in much the same way Duke did two nights earlier. While Florida is a deserving champion who made the winning plays down the stretch, I found myself thinking this game was a perfect candidate for The Sports Time Machine.
Several years ago, while recording a silly podcast, my buddy Jake and I came up with The Sports Time Machine as a means to right some historical wrongs in the world of sports. Here’s the basic premise.
The Sports Time Machine is equipped with a magic wand which allows us to change the result of a single moment which can alter the destiny of a game or a season. We can turn a missed shot into a made shot, a dropped pass into a caught pass, etc.
We cannot change a blowout loss into a win. The Sports Time Machine is unable to keep Gonzaga from getting hammered by Baylor.
It’s fun to think about how changing the results of one moment might change the results of future seasons but we’re really just focused on the immediate change of destiny in that single moment for the two teams involved. The Sports Butterfly Effect is a different concept.
The change needs to be an objective improvement to sports history. For example, a Kentucky fan can’t use the Sports Time Machine to make Christian Laettner miss his iconic shot.
This last qualifier is worth remembering. In the history of the tournament, there are two gaffes that have taken their place as iconic moments right alongside Laettner’s shot or Jimmy V running around looking for someone to hug. The first is Fred Brown of Georgetown passing the ball to the wrong team at the conclusion of the 1982 National Championship and the second is Chris Webber of Michigan mistakenly calling a timeout at the conclusion of the 1993 National Championship.
Should the Sports Time Machine be used to reverse these moments? I’m not so sure. Brown’s error cost Georgetown the championship but also led to the endearing image of coach John Thompson wrapping his arm around the kid and it’s the best example I can think of a coach supporting his player in their lowest moment. Similarly, Chris Webber’s error taught a generation the important lesson that calling a timeout when your team is out of timeouts results in a technical foul and seeing Webber reflect on this moment over the years has been an inspiring example of a superstar athlete coming to terms with their own mortality.
In addition to these notes of inspiration, these two moments both led directly to national championships for North Carolina and I’m not taking anything away from the great Dean Smith. Reversing Brown’s error in 1982 also runs the risk of mitigating the game-winner from a freshman named Michael Jordan. I’m leaving these two moments alone.
There’s plenty of other moments where the Sports Time Machine can improve things. Here’s some that immediately come to mind:
1999 National Championship- Duke vs Connecticut: In an anti-climactic finish to a great game, Duke’s Trajan Langdon was called for traveling with 5 seconds to play with Duke trailing UConn by one point. I’m ok with UConn winning a classic but winning on a traveling call? That’s pretty lame. That Duke team would have finished the season 38-1 with a win and would be remembered as one of the all-time great teams and a season like that is not meant to end on a traveling violation.
I’m immediately seeing a need to impose a limit of one use per team. So by using the Sports Time Machine on Duke’s behalf in this game, I can’t use it in their 2002 Sweet Sixteen loss to Indiana (when Jason Williams missed a game-tying free throw and Carlos Boozer missed a game-winning putback) or their 2004 Final Four loss to UConn (when JJ Redick was stripped of the ball on his drive to the basket and later missed a game-tying three at the buzzer) or their Final Four loss to Houston a couple nights ago.
2003 National Championship- Kansas vs Syracuse: Kansas had two different three-pointers from the left corner to tie the game and both were blocked. As a result, two beloved seniors in Kirk Hinrich and Nick Collison lost to one-and-done freshman Carmelo Anthony in what would end up being Roy Williams’ final game at Kansas. History is much more interesting if Kansas sends this game to overtime.
2004 Elite Eight- St Joe’s vs Oklahoma St: That St. Joe’s team entered the tournament 27-1 and earned a 1-seed, only for CBS analyst Billy Packer to suggest they weren’t deserving of the honor based on their mid-major status and their conference affiliation. Then Packer was on the call in the Sweet Sixteen when Jameer Nelson and Delonte West beat Chris Paul’s Wake Forest team. Packer, a Wake Forest alum, was forced to eat his words to some extent. But it could have been so much better if Jameer Nelson’s game-tying jumper had fallen in the closing seconds of the Elite Eight matchup with Oklahoma State.
2005 National Championship- Illinois vs North Carolina: Another all-time great team that fell just short in anticlimactic fashion. Illinois rallied from 15 points down to steal a win against Arizona, then rallied from 15 points down to tie the game against North Carolina. After a back-and-forth final few minutes, Luther Head missed a three-pointer to tie the game in the final thirty seconds. Using the Sports Time Machine to make that shot go in doesn’t guarantee a win for the Illini, but at least makes the game more interesting. Illinois would have finished the season 38-1 if they had managed to beat Carolina.
2008 Elite Eight- Davidson vs Kansas: I’m hesitant to include this because the 2008 Kansas team ended up beating Memphis in an awesome title game in which Mario Chalmers made one of the greatest buzzer beaters in tournament history. But if we use the Sports Time Machine correctly, we get a buzzer beater from Jason Richards to send Davidson to the Final Four and then we get Steph Curry, a Charlotte native, in the Final Four against North Carolina. That’s a no-brainer.
2010 National Championship- Butler vs Duke: The Sports Time Machine was basically created for Gordon Hayward’s half-court buzzer beater against Duke. It would have been the greatest moment in tournament history if it went down.
2014 Second Round- Wichita St vs Kentucky: Wichita State had an undefeated regular season, pulled a number one seed, then had to play an 8-seed Kentucky with multiple lottery picks in the second round. It was an awesome game and Fred Van Vleet had a three to win that just missed. Kentucky would go on to lose to a pretty unlikeable UConn team in an uninspiring title game. Does changing this game springboard Wichita to a title run?
2017 National Championship- Gonzaga vs North Carolina: The Oregon fan in me wants to use the Sports Time Machine on the Duck’s Final Four matchup with the Tar Heels from this same season. Oregon trailed 77-76 with 5.8 seconds left when North Carolina’s Kennedy Meeks missed both free throws yet Oregon failed to secure the rebound. Carolina went to the line and missed two more free throws and again Oregon failed to grab the rebound. It was excruciating.
Yet I’m setting my Oregon fandom aside to instead focus on the championship game between Gonzaga and Carolina. Specifically, I’m focusing on a moment with 49 seconds left and Carolina leading 66-65 when a scramble for a rebound led to a jump ball but Kennedy Meeks had his hand out of bounds for a moment and the ref missed it. Carolina then scored to go up 68-65 with 30 seconds to play and Gonzaga was unable to answer. We’re using the Sports Time Machine to correctly call Kennedy Meeks out of bounds and then letting the game play on from there.
If North Carolina still wins in this scenario, then we use the time machine to double back and help Oregon grab one of those rebounds. We can’t let Kennedy Meeks get away with this!
2025 National Championship- Houston vs Florida: Instead of Houston not even getting a shot off last night, can anyone really argue that it wouldn’t have been a better finish for Houston to hit a game-winner so that we could see Hakeem Olajuwon and Jim Nantz tearfully embrace? I’m sure glad there’s a Sports Time Machine to make things like this possible!