MINNEAPOLIS – For Virginia and Texas Tech, doing something that had never been done before took hard work, dedication, determination — and vision.

The Cavaliers and Red Raiders meet in the NCAA Tournament championship game Monday night. Neither program has ever been this close to a title, making it a rare matchup of first-timers to the final game of the college basketball season. The last time both teams in the championship game had never been there before was 40 years ago, when Magic Johnson and Michigan State beat Larry Bird and Indiana State.

Between the Red Raiders (31-6) and Cavaliers (34-3), a first-time champ is guaranteed. The last one of those was crowned in 2006, when Florida won the first of back-to-back titles.

College basketball's hierarchy, blue bloods in an array of shades from Duke to Kentucky, North Carolina to Kansas, is difficult to crack. Getting here started with Virginia coach Tony Bennett and Texas Tech's Chris Beard believing it could be done.

“Then you've got to get people on board that really believe it and believe it in front of you, behind your back, believe it at 10 o'clock when they're out of town, on the road somewhere. Believe it in the morning, believe it when they're talking to their wife, their kid,” Beard said Sunday at U.S. Bank Stadium. “They've got to really believe it.”

In less than a decade, Beard has gone from coaching in the semi-pro ABA to Division III, then II, and then a couple of seasons at Arkansas Little Rock before landing in Lubbock. The Red Raiders basketball history is solid but unspectacular. Texas Tech was where Bobby Knight landed after the volatile Hall of Fame coach wore out his welcome in Indiana. He took Texas Tech to the NCAA Tournament four times in the 2000s. Pretty good, but Beard expected much more.

“Our goal has never been to make a tournament. It's been to win the tournament,” Beard said. “It's easy to talk about, and really, really hard to do. But that's where we started this whole thing, was just trying to have the expectations and the vision where we could be relative.”