ATLANTA — This is exactly what you want out of a championship game, all of it, every bit of it. You had a No. 1 seed and a No. 4 seed, but on the final Monday of a season that’s just trivia. Louisville and Michigan were separated by a whisker, by a sliver, by a hyphen. That’s all. That’s it.
“Two great basketball teams,” Louisville coach Rick Pitino said, “trying to play a great game.”
Forty minutes of basketball reduced to one final-minute sprint to the end: Louisville trying to hang on, trying to make the seconds melt away so they finally might be able to make Michigan go away.
Michigan? The Wolverines had already absorbed one of those body-slam runs from Louisville at the end of the first half, a 12-point lead vanishing as if David Copperfield had his hand in it. About 10 different times in the second half, Louisville seemed primed to fulfill its manifest destiny. And 10 different times, Michigan kept chipping back, kept extending the game.
“We have a lot of fight in us,” guard Tim Hardaway Jr. said. “We don’t die easy.”
Finally, it was the last minute, the Wolverines hoping the Cardinals could make one mistake, miss one free throw, give them one opening to take the game back, Louisville having none of it. Louisville playing with the will and the strength and the stubbornness of champions.
And, as the buzzer groaned, earning the title.
This 82-76 victory didn’t have a buzzer-beater, didn’t have one particular image we’ll see 30 years from now, no Lorenzo Charles moment, no Christian Laettner moment. Instead it was a tower built of many moments, a series of interchangeable heroes.
There was a Michigan freshman named Spike Albrecht, who nearly hijacked the whole tournament by falling out of the sky to toss in 17 first-half points, nearly taking Louisville out by himself.
But the Cardinals had their own secret weapon, a sniper named Luke Hancock, a tough kid who has spent so much of his college career in pain and in traction, both of his shoulders nearly ruined, playing now for his gravely ill father, Bill, who managed to make it to the Georgia Dome to watch his son win the Most Outstanding Player Award after scorching the nets for 22.
“And still,” Pitino said, “they wouldn’t go away.”
Maybe Michigan, out of the big, bad Big Ten, isn’t your definition of a classic underdog, isn’t Wichita State or George Mason or Butler or Virginia Commonwealth, but the Wolverines had proved all across the brackets how tough an out they were going to be.
Ten days earlier, against Kansas, they overcame a 10-point deficit with under three minutes to play, finally winning the game in overtime.
And now they were threatening to stomp Louisville.
Except a team as strong as Louisville, as powerful, as relentless, is rarely stomped. Two months ago, the Cardinals lost one of the most amazing games you’ll ever see, in five overtimes at Notre Dame after having the game won no fewer than five times.
Afterward, Pitino gathered his team and challenged them: “Physically,” he said, “you’re a great team. But mentally … you’ve got to become a better basketball team.” And he challenged them: Close out the regular season with seven wins. Light up Madison Square Garden in the last Big East Tournament. Get a No. 1 seed.
And, what the hell: Try to close it out.
Damned if they didn’t close it out.
Michigan? The famous fight song urges “Hail to the victors gallant.” On this night, they were covered in even greater glory by losing, by refusing to go quietly, by staying in Louisville’s way, a pest that might have been more than that if a whistle or two had gone another way. (Yes, this is where Seton Hall alums groan, “Twenty-four years too late…”)
“The sun will come up tomorrow,” said Michigan coach John Beilein, providing one final dollop of perspective. “If my players aren’t smiling, I’m going to make them smile.”
No worries about the other side. There were smiles aplenty. Great team. Great game. Too bad we couldn’t make it best-of-3.
michael.vaccaro@nypost.com