“To think this time last year we were starting our spring workouts,” Virginia’s Ty Jerome said, “and to still be playing at this point in the season with, after tonight, one other team in the whole country on the stage that you dreamed about since you were a little kid, it’s an unreal feeling. We’re going to do everything we can to finish the job.”

It is not an accident that Virginia won at a higher clip than any other team this year, even if it is infrequently pretty and never flashy, and even though, in its regional final against Purdue, Virginia’s win required an improbable buzzer-beating shot and overtime. That’s because Virginia does the boring things well: takes care of the ball on offense, stays disciplined on defense and does what it is supposed to do.

Guy’s late 3-point shot (the one he made) resulted from an elaborate play involving a series of screens. The even later 3-point shot (the one he missed while being fouled) came on an out-of-bounds play, in which the redshirt junior Mamadi Diakite was the first look inside for a lob — similar to the catch-and-shoot attempt with which he sent the Purdue game to overtime. When he was not open, the play turned into, as Diakite put it afterward, an informal play known as “Kyle Get Open.”

In their first Final Four, the Tigers (30-10) had acquitted themselves well. Coming out of halftime, Auburn led by 3. Virginia had been 28-0 when leading at the half this season, but only 5-3 when it trailed. Auburn was playing how it wanted to play, with guards Harper and Bryce Brown driving to the basket early in the shot clock and attempting to finish at the rim or kicking the ball out for a deep shot by a teammate.

But Auburn squandered that lead over the first five minutes of the second half, and it trailed by 10 when it called timeout with a little more than five minutes left after Jerome hit a jumper as the shot clock expired — the Platonic ideal of an offensive possession for Virginia’s deliberate offense — the sophomore De’Andre Hunter scored from the post and then Jerome hit his fourth 3-pointer of the game.