Arizona’s buzzer-beating epic win over Iowa State delivers Big 12 what it sorely needed: the Game of the Year
KANSAS CITY — Big 12 commissioner Brett Yormark made a tough decision Thursday night that guaranteed widespread reaction across the country, almost all of it glowing.
Less than 24 hours later, Yormark was rewarded for his gesture of goodwill.
Despite the hype, marketing and promotion surrounding the Big 12’s LED glass floor, the league and its commissioner have been the subject of regular mockery after sporadic slips and a legitimate injury hampered basketball during the first three days of the men’s tournament.
Yormark swallowed its pride and decided to pull the plug on the digital floor in exchange for some good old American hardwood.
“We have a great four-way final tomorrow night,” he told me Thursday evening. “This should be the story.”
Instead of a story, the Big 12 and college basketball delivered an epic in Friday night’s opening semifinal between No. 1 Arizona and No. 7 Iowa State. The Wildcats’ 82-80 victory was nothing short of arguably the best game of this splendid season. Jaden Bradley, Arizona’s Big 12 senior player of the year, hit a 17-footer from the wing at the buzzer thanks to a crisp defensive effort from Cyclones freshman defensive stud Killyan Toure. When the ball whistled, that shot and that play buried the previous three days of on-court chatter.
“It was a crazy shot,” Bradley said. “It was great defense.”
This is how you flip the script.
The lack of called timeouts in the frenzied final minutes, particularly in the final possessions, added to the frenzy and cosmetic appeal. Lloyd had several in his pocket and didn’t use them.
“It set the stage for something epic to happen,” Lloyd told me. “In these games, you feel like Will Ferrell in Old School, where he gets up there and he makes a political argument against like James CarvuCarver, or something like that, and he and he kind of fade away.”
Lloyd fainted a little. The game was so great, the moments filled with drama, the big shots happening at too fast a pace to take them all in properly.
Bradley being the hero was fitting. BYU superstar AJ Dybantsa led the nation in scoring, but the league’s coaches voted for who they considered the best player on the best team.
“I thought it was pretty tough for him the last few days to win an award like that,” Lloyd told CBS Sports in the coach’s locker room after the game. “It’s big, and he’s not a guy who’s trying to take up extra space in the room. He’s not interested in individual things at all. And then people come back to him and say, ‘No, you shouldn’t have had it.’ I think it’s a difficult space to put a young man. Even giving him the MVP trophy before yesterday’s game is a little weird. He’s never experienced anything like this and he just wants to be one of the guys. And then for him to come in and put his stamp on it, and a game like this, I think, is really cool.”
The frenzied finale that flooded Bradley’s winner was a work of art. Arizona and Iowa State combined to make their final 11 possessions, including seven straight 3-pointers. Arizona finished with 1.24 points per possession to ISU’s 1.21.
“It’s like shooting in the ocean, you feel like you can’t miss,” Dell’Orso said.
“I think it’s an incredible feeling,” Iowa State All-American Joshua Jefferson said of the 40-minute masterpiece.
The evening could just as easily have gone in favor of his team.
“They made one more play tonight,” Iowa State coach TJ Otzelberger said. “Just like they are Final Four contenders, so are we.”
The Cyclones got off to a 14-2 start and they also had a 9-0 run to end the joint-screaming first half thanks to three 3-pointers from Cyclones senior forward Milan Momcilovic.
“Larry Bird has arrived,” Lloyd told me. “Thank God half of it is gone.”
Momcilovic made eight 3-pointers, becoming just the fourth player in Big 12 tournament history to make that many triples in a single game.
“Great player, crazy shooter,” Bradley said.
Momcilovic’s 28 points were a game-high, but only two more than Arizona’s Anthony Dell’Orso, who had a career-high 26 points (including six 3s) after combining to score 23 in his previous four games.
“You get into this kind of flow state,” Dell’Orso said. “And the guys brought it all. There were several facets of the game other than just shooting that go unnoticed, but we really pay attention to them.”
It all built to a crescendo until Bradley’s buzzer-beater, the first by a Big 12 player in any game since 2022 (Kansas’ Bobby Pettiford vs. Wisconsin) and also the first game-winning shot as time expired in this tournament since Monte Morris beat Texas to the horn in the 2015 quarterfinals from damn near the same spot.
“They really made us dig deep for 40 minutes. We were just trying to hang on by a thread, stay in the game,” Lloyd said.
My God, it was awesome. The NCAA Tournament is the main event for clear and obvious reasons, but every year we’re reminded why March Madness is just as much the motto of the two weeks that fuel Selection Sunday. And this game was one of the best conference tournament battles of the last decade.
It was Arizona’s ninth victory this season against a ranked team (second in college basketball history). The only teams to get 10 were Florida 2024-25, Connecticut 2010-11 and Duke 2000-01. They all won the national title.
Arizona could well become the fourth/next to do so.
The result will not change anything for the selection on Sunday. Arizona is the No. 1 seed for the West and Iowa State will most likely be the No. 2 seed in another region of the bracket.
Sometimes a good game is all we want. Friday was what the Big 12 needed. Until tonight, the tournament tended to be remembered for a floor that lit up like a casino game and caused remarkable extracurricular slips while a basketball tournament tried to play out.
Lloyd made sure to thank Yormark and Big 12 basketball director Brian Thornton for not being too proud to stick to the glass floor. Lloyd and Kelvin Sampson in particular approved the change as soon as they were asked on Thursday.
These are the two coaches who will still be absent for Saturday night’s title game.
“He shows a lot of courage and great leadership,” Lloyd told me. “I mean, on two levels. The foresight and the courage to try something outside the box and then have it fail and take it away. It’s pretty special. The Big 12 makes basketball a priority and it’s pretty special to be a part of it. I don’t know if every power conference can say that, but we can certainly say it with our leadership.”
Arizona will be playing in a second straight league championship game, and it will be a rematch: Houston beat Arizona for the league championship in this building a year ago. Even today, the two best teams in the Big 12 will face each other for a trophy. Arizona won 73-66 in Houston in February.
Now it’s time for its Big 12 Tournament title. Houston is still in the running for the final No. 1 seed.
The issues are clear. And look at us now: we’re talking hoops. We return to basketball, to the tournament, to the teams. As it always should have been. The Big 12 is more than enough to sell the product on the field and that’s enough. Turn on the lights, let the coaches and players take care of the rest and who knows what they’ll give you?
Sometimes it’s one of the best games you’ve ever seen.
