Joel Berry told the official he needed a break, then told North Carolina head coach Roy Williams he couldn't hold it together.
Just seven seconds were left on the clock, Berry had two free throws to take and the Tar Heels had a four-point lead. But the 2017 NCAA National Championship's Most Outstanding Player already had tears in his eyes.
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"I told the ref 'Yes, I need a timeout,' and I went over there to the side and I told coach 'I needed that, I'm about to lose it,'" the point guard said. "He was like 'Don't lose it yet, knock these free throws in and we can celebrate.'"
"I knocked the second one in and then I was running down the court and I was crying."
The tears Berry could barely hold back were tears of relief.
Those tears filled his eyes before the 71-65 final score was official, and with more time left on the game clock than was on the scoreboard in Houston 364 days earlier when the two most dramatic plays of that season happened, but this time Berry and his teammates were undoubtedly in control: they were National Champions.
Buried beneath Berry's MOP Award
The junior's relief was personal just as much as it was team-wide.
Berry played the First and Second Rounds of the NCAA Tournament, plus the Sweet Sixteen game, on a sprained right ankle. The guard played in the Elite Eight and Final Four wins on a sprained left one, too.
"The fact that his jersey's going up next to mine, I couldn't be any happier to share it with someone else," Justin Jackson said.
Needless to say, not being at 100 percent hurt physically, but it also frustrated Berry as he struggled to find his shot through the most important part of the season. As he put it, earlier in the year he saw games from the bench because of a similar injury, but in the NCAA Tournament, that's not an option.
"I felt like I just had so much pressure on myself," he said. "People don't realize how much a point guard has to do on the court. I'm just emotionally drained.
"I put it all out there (Monday) and I'm glad I did because now we're National Champs."
A team-high 22 points earned the pressured PG the game's highest individual award, but he said the production came from the fact that he told himself he had to play that way.
True to who this Tar Heel team is, though, Berry's teammates made the biggest plays of the night in the final minutes.
The ugly, ultimate end of the road
North Carolina shot just 35.6 percent en route to the program's sixth national title, Williams' third. Gonzaga shot an even worse 33.9 percent from the floor.
It was never a beautiful, glorious game, but a foul-ridden, drag-out, physical game that seemed to show just how badly both the Tar Heels (33-7) and the Bulldogs (37-2) wanted to win, and how exhausted both teams were.
"I don't think either team played really well," Williams said over the loudspeaker in the University of Phoenix Stadium after his team was presented with its trophy.
The difference, he believed, was in the final minutes.
Nigel Williams-Goss sank a three-pointer with about four and a half minutes to play giving Gonzaga a 60-59 lead, but Berry answered with a three of his own.
Mark Few's team took the lead twice more, and the game was tied twice, after the final media timeout of the game.
But Jackson orchestrated a three-point play with 1:40 to go, and UNC held on from there.
Theo Pinson's defensive rebound on the other end sent the ball Carolina's way with an opportunity to grow its one-point lead, with 49.1 seconds to play. Berry missed a three and Kennedy Meeks wrestled for the rebound.
To Meeks' surprise, the possession arrow pointed his team's way. Isaiah Hicks scored on the inbounds play as Pinson threw the ball in from the right side of the goal and Hicks scored on the opposite side of the basket: 68-65, UNC.
Gonzaga used its second timeout in about a minutes with 21.9 seconds left, but Meeks shut down Williams-Goss' last attempt to score more than his 15 total points. Jackson finished the play on the other end after the blocked shot with an emphatic dunk.
Meeks stole the inbounds play in sprightly fashion, truly sealing the deal.
"I do that all the time in practice where I hide, I guess you could say," he said. "I'm a pretty big person, so for me to hide behind somebody is saying a lot.
"But I hid and got the steal and kicked it up the court as fast as I could."
Then, Josh Perkins sent Berry to the charity stripe with seven seconds left and the point guard's emotions got the best of him.
Many of the right moments
Just as Meeks can't remember executing his sneaky steal anywhere other than practice and Berry turned his pressure into points this time, Hicks believed he was due.
Pinson gave the ball back to his team and Jackson finished in transition.
Not to dismiss any of the contributions from North Carolina's bench, but the Tar Heels' starting five put it all together when it mattered most.
"For me to have (that play) in a game on the biggest stage says a lot," Meeks said.
That's true of Berry's will to win in spite of his own rough month, of Hicks breaking out of his funk in his last game as a Tar Heel and it's the case for UNC's not only returning to the National Championship, but doing exactly what it said it would do immediately after losing last year.
Gonzaga controlled the first half in Phoenix, then coaches Williams and Steve Robinson let the Tar Heels have it at halftime. But the team didn't need to hear it, really.
"That's the thing I think people underestimate, we're veterans, we've been through a locker room in the halftime of a National Championship game before, look at all we've been through in the tournament already," Pinson said.
"We bounced back really quick, punched them in the mouth early. We knew they were going to come back, it's for the National Championship, we knew it was going to go down to the wire and it did."
An 8-0 run to answer to a three-point halftime deficit wasn't enough for UNC to avoid the late-game drama, but once UNC played for what was at stake, the experience showed.
"After halftime, we thought 'Why not win it? Why not be the last team standing?,'" Meeks said. "Why not give great effort to lead to something we'll never forget."
As the clock wound down, then the buzzer sounded, Chapel Hill's team finally got the redemption it wanted a year ago and the win it wanted for itself this season. The balance of remembering the past but not dwelling on it, of playing for this season, worked for the team in the end.
The first thought in Berry's head as UNC's National Champion status became official proved that the shot that hung over North Carolina's head and helped it to this point is replaced by something bigger.
"I can forget about that shot from last year and forget about what happened," he said. "Because when we wake up in the morning, it's going to be us on the front of the newspaper."