Trailing by 2, Gordon Hayward came galloping upcourt, came hard off the dribble, and launched a running bomb from just past midcourt. Halfway there, it didn’t look bad. As it approached the goal, it looked as if it had a chance. The ball hit the square above the backboard, hit the front rim . . . and fell off.

“Felt good, looked good,’’ sighed Hayward. “Just wasn’t there.’’

No NCAA championship for Butler.

Nope, it was Duke 61, Butler 59 for the championship of the college basketball world. It was the fourth title for coach Mike Krzyzewski, and it had to be the most satisfying one since the first, 19 years ago.

That’s because this was not supposed to be a championship year for Duke, and because Butler made the Blue Devils earn it. Duke huffed and puffed all night long, and Butler just would not go away. Duke never led by more than 6, and after going up by 5 (60-55) with 3:16 to go and seemingly on the verge of putting it away, Butler scrapped back one more time, cutting it to 60-59 on a Matt Howard basket with 54.9 seconds left, and then giving themselves a chance to win by stopping Duke on the ensuing possession.

It was right there for the Bulldogs, who were down 1 and in possession of the ball with 33.7 seconds remaining. The unthinkable, the unimaginable, the miraculous actually had a chance to materialize. Butler was one possession away from winning the NCAA championship.

But the opponent was Duke. The guys with pedigrees have dreams, too, and nobody outworks this Duke team. Butler had not gotten anything easy all night and it surely wasn’t going to change with the national championship at stake.

A pass by the Bulldogs’ Shelvin Mack was knocked out of bounds with 13.6 seconds to go. Butler called time. Hayward tried to make an inbounds pass and had to call time when he couldn’t find anyone open. Howard replaced him as the inbounds man, and he got it to Hayward, isolated with Kyle Singler at the top of the key. He tried to get into the lane. Nope. He wound up taking a tough right corner fadeaway, which, had he hit it, would have represented his first outside shot of the night. It hit the far side of the rim and bounded away.

Duke’s 7-foot center, Brian Zoubek, grabbed the rebound, and of course he was fouled. The big guy swished the first one and deliberately missed the second. But Hayward grabbed the rebound and started toward the other basket. This is where we came in.

“I can’t really put it into words, because the last couple of plays were just not normal,’’ said Singler, the deserved tourney Most Outstanding Player with 40 points, 18 rebounds, 7 assists, and some very timely baskets in the two Final Four games. “It could have gone either way, and I am just glad we came out with a victory.’’

It was a great game and it was an absolutely wonderful ending to one of the great NCAA Tournaments ever. Things were set in motion back on the afternoon of March 3, when, in the first game of the first conference tournament, Atlantic Sun No. 8 seed Kennesaw State knocked off top seed Lipscomb. We should have known we were off on a wild adventure right then and there.

We had a spectacular tournament, with some great upsets and a bunch of truly memorable games, and when we came out of the regionals we had one of the great NCAA stories ever, when Butler, the Horizon League champion whose campus is located fewer than seven miles from Lucas Oil Stadium, where these games were played, made it to the Final Four and then knocked off Michigan State in the semifinals.

The world had thus been introduced to a very smart and very scrappy team that had not lost a game since Dec. 22 and that played tremendous defense. The world had been introduced to great kids such as point guard Ronald Nored (a coach in the making), Mack, Willie Veasley, Howard, and Hayward, a 6-foot-9-inch do-everything who had chosen Butler over Big Ten schools all because he felt it was a perfect fit for his temperament and personality and personal goals, one of which is to play in the NBA.

Most of all, the world was introduced to 33-year-old Brad Stevens, who now appears to be the Next Great Thing in the coaching profession. He said and did the right things all week long, as he has done since he was hired by Butler athletic director Barry Collier two years ago.

Stevens matched wits with Hall of Famer Krzyzewski, and there was no clear victor. Duke won this game because, in the end, it had more good players, not because Coach K laid a clinic on Brad Stevens.

There were times you’d ask yourself how Butler was in the game. The Bulldogs, who had gone 11 second-half minutes without a field goal during their conquest of Michigan State, only had three field goals in the final 13:36 last night. But they hung in by virtue of their usual killer D and their willingness to attack the rim, thus getting themselves to the foul line. Man for man, the matchups almost all favored Duke, especially in the size category, but Butler is not about individual matchups and it was able to hang with the Blue Devils.

And, oh, that final Hayward shot. It really had a chance.

“I was standing at halfcourt, and I thought it was going in,’’ said Howard, whose participation had been in doubt after sustaining a blow to the head against Michigan State. “That makes it a little more devastating.’’

What an ending that would have been. But the Duke kids have dreams, too, and theirs came true.

Bob Ryan is a Globe columnist and host of Globe 10.0 on Boston.com. He can be reached at ryan@globe.com.