All Boilered up

 OK, then. UConn vs. Purdue, for all of it.

The defending national champions vs. a proud basketball school that somehow hasn't played in a national championship game since there were laces on the basketball -- and, listen, if you bleed black-and-old-gold and you're not invoking the spirit of Terry Dischinger or Rick Mount or the Big Dog or whoever, you just ain't tryin' hard enough. Because the only thing the proud basketball school is missing is a banner.

And I don't know if they get it this time, either.

I don't know if anyone beats UConn, which fiddled around with Alabama before turning it on late and winning by 14 in the Final Four semis. I don't know if you can beat a team with that kind of talent and that kind of drive and that many ways to murdalize you, which is why the Huskies have murdalized everyone who's stood in their path so far in this tournament run.

However.

However, what I just wrote about UConn you could write about Purdue, too.

The Boilermakers didn't bring their A game last night against North Carolina State, and point guard Braden Smith barely brought his D game, and still they wore down the Wolfpack in the second half to win by 13. Smith scored just three points on 1-of-9 shooting , but the "1" was a three-ball that gave the Boilers an 18-point cushion down the stretch.

And, yeah, you can say the Purdues got away with one, if only because North Carolina State was a 14-loss team and an 11-seed. But the Wolfpack won the ACC tournament by beating Duke and North Carolina, and then they beat 6-seed Texas Tech by 13 and 2-ssed Marquette by nine and 4-seed Duke again, this time by 12, to get to the Final Four.  So they weren't exactly pushovers.

And Purdue?

Well, Purdue did Purdue things. And by that I mean "things that win basketball games."

Smith, for instance, turned it over five times against the Wolfpack, a mortal sin for a point guard. But he also took eight rebounds and dished six assists, and Zach Edey dropped a 20-point, 12-rebound double-double on a North Carolina State front line with some beef to it, and Purdue made 10 threes on a night when it had to make threes.

Oh, and the defense harassed the Wolfpack into 36.8 percent shooting, including 26.3 percent (5 of 19) from the arc.

It wasn't pretty, but it never is because this is not a pretty team. It's a Purdue team, is what it is. It wins with less style than UConn does, but with every bit the will and passion.

In short, Monday night will be a Gene Keady kind of night: Two teams whose mantra was Keady's mantra. Play Hard!

And if you're looking for ultimately meaningless omens for this one, a couple of things to consider: The zone of totality, and 1969.

The first because Monday a total eclipse cuts a broad swath right smack through the heart of Indiana, and, well, everyone said the sun would go  black before Purdue ever won a national title.

And the second?

The second is that one previous national championship game appearance, won by John Wooden and his UCLA legions over Rick Mount, Billy Keller, Herm Gilliam and Purdue in a 92-72 rout. And it was UCLA who had dominant post player in that matchup: Lew Alcindor/Kareem Abdul-Jabbar. 

This time?

This time, of course, it's Purdue who has Edey.

Maybe it's karma. Maybe it's nothing. You decide.