Duke gives Krzyzewski his fourth national championship

The hard part about real life, as opposed to movies, is you can't edit film on the two shots star Gordon Hayward missed in the final five seconds that would have given Butler the NCAA title over Duke.

You can't let Hayward take the baseline jumper until he makes it, or do a dozen retakes on the hold-your-breath half-court heave at the buzzer that clanked off the rim.

That only works, most times, in your dreams, in the driveway.
OK, it worked once, in Butler's gym, for an underdog Indiana high school team, in 1954, and they made a movie, but when do sequels ever work?
Duke won, 61-59, not Butler, and it all came down, along with the confetti, in front of 70,930 fans at Lucas Oil Stadium.
Down by one in the end, Hayward's baseline shot was just long, bounding back toward him off rim.
That's the one he wants back.
"I thought it was a good shot for us," Hayward said.
Duke center Brian Zoubek was fouled with 3.6 seconds left, made one free throw, missed the second on purpose, and Hayward streaked upcourt and then let it loose.
Duke guard Nolan Smith's heart, at this point, was in his throat.
"I just thought, ‘please don't,'" Smith said. "It looked good. I was just praying it didn't go in."
Hayward's teammates also watched, and hoped. They were too young to remember an even longer shot Lakers star Jerry West made against the New York Knicks in the 1970 NBA Finals. That one sent the game to overtime, although the Lakers lost.
"I thought it was going in," forward Matt Howard said of Hayward's heave. "That makes it even a little more devastating. You think that shot is going, and then it rims out like it did."
Hayward knew the odds, but there was something about the shot when it left his hands.
"Felt good," Hayward said. "Looked good. Just wasn't there....Just didn't go in."
Butler didn't win its first national title.
Instead, Duke won its fourth championship under Coach Mike Krzyzewski, who passed mentor Bob Knight on the all-time title list and pulled even with Kentucky's Adolph Rupp.
Krzyzewski's voice was reduced to rasp afterward, barely able to convey what it meant.
"I've been fortunate to be in eight national championship games," he said. "And this was a classic. This was the toughest one and the best one."
It won't matter to Butler for a long time how close it came to actually pulling this off. Nor that the game will be compared to the 1992 regional-final classic between Kentucky and Duke.