From the Archives: Villanova’s Reality-Melting Buzzer Beater

The best finish I’ve ever seen

I’ve been writing all day, every day, for about 25 years now, so it turns out that a lot of topics that come up in the news, I’ve written about before. So we commence an occasional series — to be prescribed solely as directed — called From the Archives, which republishes old Will Leitch writings when they are relevant to the news of the day. With the first NCAA Tournament in two years commencing, I thought I’d republish my writeup of the end of the legendary Villanova-North Carolina game of April 2016, which remains the greatest ending I’ve ever seen.

HOUSTON — So everybody who paid for a ticket to the national championship game between North Carolina and Villanova got a seat cushion. It was just sitting there waiting for you when you showed up. It was the color of a basketball, and it had the Capital One logo all over it, because Capital One is a corporate champion. The cushion probably cost about seven cents to produce, which is almost certainly the only reason the NCAA would give it away for free.

With 4.7 seconds left in that national championship game, and Villanova leading 74–71, five seconds away from their first national championship in 31 years, North Carolina guard Marcus Paige grabbed a loose pass and, in a panic, jumped into the…