That’s the moment you dream of when you’re a little kid, just stepping up and making a play.” – Duke’s Tyus Jones.

There are definitely times when the NCAA men’s basketball championship fails to live up to the hype created by three weeks of exciting action. While some pundits were looking for a Kentucky / Duke matchup in the 2015 version of the contest, Wisconsin / Duke prevailed.

Both #1 seeds, the Badgers and Blue Devils overcame their share of adversity to reach the championship game.

Wisconsin needed late-game heroics in 4 straight wins over Oregon, North Carolina, Arizona, and Kentucky just to reach Monday’s matchup while Duke had last year’s first round upset loss to #14 Mercer in the back of their heads the whole tournament.

In the long run, last year’s loss might have created the basketball mental toughness for Duke to eventually overcome Wisconsin 68-63 to become the 2015 National Champions.

To be fair, the outcome of the National Championship could have gone either way. It was the perfect example of physical toughness from the opening tip until the final.

Wisconsin struggled with shooting early at 38.7% in the first half but was led by their senior leader Frank Kaminsky and the team’s hustle to grab 8 offensive rebounds to force a 31-31 tie at halftime.

Duke faced adversity with tournament stars Justice Winslow and Jahlil Oka for battling foul trouble pretty much the whole game.

The Badgers raced out to an early second half lead and were seemingly in control 48-39 with 13:23 left in the game. Wisconsin’s run was especially impressive with their own star Sam Dekker having an uncharacteristically off night, going 6-15 from the floor and 0-6 from three-point land to finish with just 12 points. Even so, Dekker showed some mental toughness down the stretch hitting a big layup to put Wisconsin up 58-56 with 4:24 left despite playing the second half of the game with a possible concussion after receiving an elbow from Okafor.

Despite being down by 9 points and having two stars with three fouls and over 13 minutes to go Duke never wavered. In pressure situations like this you’d expect the upper-classmen laden Badgers to use their experience to close out the game but it was the unheralded young guns of Duke that decided the outcome.

Freshman Tyus Jones flexed his mental tough muscles and notched 19 points in the second half. Fellow freshman Grayson Allen averaged only 4.0 PPG the whole tournament but stepped up huge with 16 points off the bench in what was the deciding factor picking up the slack for the foul-troubled Blue Devils.

In the end, Duke’s win was a perfect metaphor for the mental game of basketball.

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