What Can OU Basketball Take Away From Villanova’s National Championship?
By Chip Rouse
Nothing will alter the way in which Buddy Hield and the OU basketball squad were eliminated from this year’s NCAA Final Four, but the fact that they fell to eventual national-champion Villanova somewhat softens the emotional agony.
If you have to lose, it is always better to lose to a team that ends up winning it all. At least it helps smooth over the physical and emotional pain of losing.
Call the Villanova Wildcats a team of destiny. It had been 31 years since Villanova’s last national championship in basketball (1985) – something Oklahoma has yet to accomplish in over 100 years of men’s varsity basketball.
On their way back to the promised land, the Wildcats totally throttled Oklahoma, a fellow No. 2 seed in this year’s NCAA Tournament, in Saturday’s national semifinals, and followed that with a buzzer-beating three-point win over North Carolina, the lone remaining No. 1 seed in the tournament, for the 2016 national championship.
Villanova’s win over North Carolina Monday night reminds us that it is not always the best team that wins a national championship. Rather, it is the team that plays the best on the day that the championship is decided.
This also helps explain how a team that the Sooners beat by 23 points early in the season turned the tables – and them some – on Oklahoma in the rematch, burying 71 percent of its shots and the Sooners in the process to hang a 44-point beatdown on OU and the widest margin of victory in the history of the NCAA Basketball Final Four.
While Oklahoma was suffering through its worst shooting performance of the season, Villanova seemingly couldn’t miss, hitting practically every shot that was headed in the direction of the basket. I don’t think it is even possible to lose a game when you hit seven of every 10 shots for an entire game.
Villanova is the hottest team in college basketball, and the Wildcats beat two No. 1 seeds in Kansas and North Carolina and the No. 2-seeded Sooners to prove the point.
In four of Villanova’s six NCAA Tournament wins, the Wildcats scored 86 or more points, and the Cats scored 95 in the win over Oklahoma. So it is blatantly clear that Villanova was firing on all cylinders on the offensive end. Only it wasn’t the Villanova offense that won the Wildcats their second basketball national championship. It was their switching, smothering defensive pressure.
Buddy Hield hit his first shot in the game, a three-pointer, immediately following the opening tip, but was held to just six more points the rest of the way on 4-of-12 shooting. Credit the Villanova defense for that, the same smothering defense that limited Kansas’ leading scorer, Perry Ellis, to just five shots in the game and four total points in handing the Jayhawks’ a 64-59 upset loss in the South Regional final.
That same defensive focus was given to North Carolina’s First-Team All-American, Brice Johnson, limiting the Tar Heel star to 14 points, 10 below his season average.
Villanova did not shoot 71 percent from the field, like it did against the Sooners, but the Wildcats still shot an impressive 58 percent in the win over North Carolina and outscored the taller, longer Tar Heels 32-26 in the paint.
It undoubtedly will take the Sooner players a long time to get over the shellacking they received from the eventual national champions in the semifinal round of the Final Four, but they did beat the Wildcats fairly handily at a different time and place earlier in the season.
That is more than any of Villanova’s opponents did in this year’s NCAA Tournament, which has to count for something.