Can Donovan Clingan stop Zach Edey?

Yes, it's straightforward. But it is the only pre-tip question worth asking about Monday night's titanic title fight. (Plus: Coach Cal to Arkansas?)

Photo credit: Associated Press

First things first: There won’t be surprises.

Oh, OK, sure: bits and pieces, no doubt. The UConn staff will cook up a brand new half-court set with 16 off-ball actions that nobody has yet put to film. Matt Painter will install a new baseline out of bounds play to steal two points after the first under-12 timeout. Maybe Ethan Morton will hit several contested 18-footers. Maybe Dan Hurley will sit quietly on his stool for 40 whole minutes. It’s college basketball; crazy stuff happens; you never know; and so on.

Really, though: When was the last time a game this big felt this knowable in advance?

Connecticut and Purdue are the two best teams in the country. They rank No. 1 and No. 2 at KenPom.com. As programs, they have defined the past two seasons of the men’s game — UConn with its back-to-back title-level dominance, Purdue with its two-time national player of the year center and multi-season redemption arc. (It is here we pause and recall the existence of the Houston Cougars, who were a legitimate third wheel this season before wobbling off the axel in March.)

They are not off-the-radar mid-majors unknown to casual fans. They are not teams that have gotten hot late, or surprised anyone, or discovered something about themselves that wasn’t present in the data in January. Barring injuries and rotation changes at the margins, both teams have been almost exactly this good since November. There is nothing hidden here. UConn and Purdue do what they do. And what they do is basically always good enough to win.

It was in this somewhat perfunctory spirit that both head coaches handled their off-day press conferences Sunday. When he wasn’t discussing the broader story of his program, Matt Painter mostly spent his time talking about all of the obvious things Purdue will have to do if it wants to stay in the game, what he usually calls “being functional in what we do.”

“Handle pressure, take care of the basketball, make good decisions,” Painter said at one point, before noting in his next answer that the Boilermakers were able to turn the ball over 16 times against NC State because they also made a bunch of 3s, and that either limiting turnovers or making a lot of 3s — preferably both — would be key to their chances of winning Monday night. Which, respectfully, you know: duh. Later, talking about rebounding, Hurley said: “They're an excellent rebounding team. We're an excellent rebounding team. We both block out. A lot of the time it just comes down to tracing that ball and who's going to make that life-or-death pursuit to get it.”

It’s all vastly easier said than done, of course, but there is no great mystery here. For teams this good, this well-established, the 2024 national championship will not hinge on some unforeseen tactical masterclass, some sneaky coaching ruse. It will be decided by execution — the simple, unfussy effectiveness of two brilliant sets of college players, who wins their matchups and why.

You can make it even less complex, even more glaringly straightforward, than that: It will be about which star center, Donovan Clingan or Zach Edey, wins.

On Sunday, Edey said Clingan was a “unique” player, but also one he would be prepared for: