City of Basketball Love

Eugene Rapay (@erapay5)
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Villanova has turned some heads since beginning its NCAA Tournament journey.

The Wildcats have won four out of the last five games in comfortable double-digit fashion. They have beaten their opponents with an average margin of victory of 24.2 points.

Along the way they’ve shot an outstanding 58.2 percent on the floor and 49.0 percent from beyond the arc.

They put together their best performance of the tournament on Saturday night, beating Oklahoma by 44 - the largest margin of victory in Final Four history. Villanova went 35-of-49 (71.4 percent) on the floor, the second-best shooting performance behind its 1985 counterparts.

“That’s hard to do even if you’re shooting by yourself,” North Carolina forward Justin Jackson said to media on Sunday's pre-game availability in Houston. “I mean, that’s eye-opening, both of them. We got to be ready to play against a very good team.”

Those numbers won’t mean much if Villanova doesn’t deliver one more win on college basketball’s biggest stage, the National Championship Game.

Standing in between the Jay Wright’s Wildcats and a national title is No. 1 seeded North Carolina Tar Heels.

North Carolina head coach Roy Williams is no stranger to the title game.

He has reached this stage four times in the past. Williams took the Jayhawks to the championship in 1991 and 2003 but was unable to walk away with the trophy.

However, since becoming the head coach of North Carolina to begin the 2003-04 season, he reached the title game two more times in 2005 and 2009. In both trips as a Tar Heel, he was successful in leading his teams to win the championship.

During those championship runs the Tar Heels clashed against Wright’s Wildcats and took them down both times. They even met once again in 2013, when North Carolina beat Villanova once again.

Wright won’t have an easy task in coming up with a game plan to solve North Carolina’s length and size inside.

The Tar Heels have Jackson, who stands in at 6-foot-8. They also have a pair of 6-9 forwards in Brice Johnson and Kennedy Meeks to top off their front court.

Johnson, an AP First Team All-America selection, led North Carolina with 17.0 points per game and 10.5 rebounds per game in the regular season.

He is at the forefront of a bruising, interior style of play that is prominent for its rebounding and scoring from inside the arc.

North Carolina is among the top 15 in field goal percentage (48.4 percent) and on top of Division I basketball when it comes to total rebounds (1,588).

“It’s not just length and athleticism, it’s scheme,” Wright said. “They have those guys around the basket. It’s desire. So we’ve got to scheme against it and we’ve got to have the toughness and aggressiveness to want to go get it like they do. They do a great job of getting after the ball.”

For Wright and his team, this is their first trip to the National Championship game. It is also the program’s first appearance since 1985, when Rollie Massimino’s Wildcats upset Patrick Ewing and the Georgetown Hoyas.

“It’s a big part of what we’re doing because we play for those guys that played before us here,” Villanova senior Daniel Ochefu said. “A lot of the guys on the national championship team, they were at the game yesterday. Throughout the year, they’re texting us, wishing us luck, giving us advice, stuff like that. It’s always great to be able to represent those guys in the way we’re doing it this year.”

While a number of recent champions have won the title using some one-and-dones, Villanova has reached the championship game on a different beat.

Wright’s recruiting philosophy has strayed away from the recent trend that is sweeping college basketball.

Most top-tier programs and championship contenders have had some one-and-dones and McDonald’s All-Americans leading the charge, looking to place one final stamp on their resume before leaving for the NBA.

It’s not something that was done entirely on purpose.

“A lot of guys that have been here love the family,” Villanova guard Josh Hart said. “I think that's the reason why a lot of guys are able to stay around so long, because we genuinely love each other, we love the program, we love playing Villanova basketball. I don't think it's anything like Coach Wright has against anybody that could be a one-and-done, it's nothing like that.”

The camaraderie has helped Villanova come this far, using a team-wide effort on both ends of the court. The Wildcats, who have only one McDonald’s All-American, will look to come together to take on a team that has six.

Villanova’s senior starters, Ochefu and Ryan Arcidiacono, were merely freshmen the last time these two teams met. They were on the ninth-seeded team that lost in the opening round to the Tar Heels in 2013.

Now they are preparing for their final game.

“I think for myself, and I can speak for the walk-ons also, no matter what happens in this game, we really just want to go down playing basketball the way we've learned to love and grow and play these last three or four years,” Arcidiacono said.

“I think for us, it would just be a beautiful game if we weren't making shots and we just defended, rebounded. Even if we ended up losing, we could still look each other in the eye and just know all the struggles we've been through. But we went down knowing what we know how to do best.”