National Championship Preview: Can the Wildcats take down Roy Williams Tar Heels?

A blog by Big Red

​Final Four Recap: #2 Oklahoma falls to #2 Villanova 95-51. #1 UNC beats #10 Syracuse 83-66. 

To say I was surprised by the outcome of the Oklahoma Villanova game is an understatement. I had to re-watch the game to really believe Oklahoma lost by 44. I had no idea Villanova could get that hot. This win was the largest margin of victory EVER in a March Madness Final Four game. They shot 71.4 % from the field. Is that even fucking possible? At one point in the second half, Oklahoma had like 4-5 offensive rebounds and missed 5-6 SHOTS on one possession. There’s just no way you can beat a team that shoots over 70 percent from the field. Especially when your best player, Buddy Hield, goes 4-12 from the field with 9 points and only 2 assists. For anyone that missed the game, Hield hit a 3 on the opening possession, and I’m sure many of the readers much like myself thought he was going to have one of those 46 point Kansas nights. The exact opposite happened, and after the first few possession’s he looked a little timid, and was so much less aggressive then his team would have liked.

​The blame can’t be put on him, because his team just couldn’t hit shots. However, in what could have been his second to last game ever in a Sooners jersey, I think we all would have hoped to see a little more out of Hield. Going into the game, I was hoping to see a strong effort from Nova’s Seniors Ryan Arcidiacono and Daniel Ochefu, and that’s exactly what we got. Arcidiacono shot 83% from the field and had 15 pts in the game. While Ochefu had 10 pts and 6 boards. What I wasn’t expecting was to see such a break out game for junior guard Josh Hart. He shot 10-12 from the field and finished the night with 23 pts, 8 reb, 4 ast, and 2 stl. I was not expecting such a huge game from the junior on such a big stage. But he was scored in almost every way, and was a lot of fun to watch out there. 

​Sorry Buddy 

As for the Syracuse loss to UNC, I wasn’t all that surprised. UNC just looked a lot more energetic out there, and throughout the whole game you could kinda tell they wanted it more. Not only did the Tar Heels look like they wanted the ball more, they proved it by dominating on the boards. I think the final rebound tally was 43-31. In addition they shot 53% from the field compared to 40% shooting from the Orangemen. Syracuse has no reason to hang there heads, they had a great season and they made an even better run in one of the hardest tournaments in the world.

We’ll see you next season Jim…

Villanova vs. UNC preview:

So, after one of the craziest tournaments we were forced to watch one of the more boring final four’s. With two pretty clear victories, we are left with a national championship that in my eyes is a toss up. I can see both these teams coming out and playing great. We saw that on any given day the Wildcats can come out and just light it up like they did last night. And of course we know that UNC was a heavy favorite going into the tournament, and have easily beaten team after team on the way to the national title game. If the Wildcats can hit shots like they did last night, then it’s going to be tough on Roy Williams Tar Heels.

​My prediction is that the #1 seed Tar Heels will pull it out, but I’m fairly confident to say its gonna be close one. Buy a rack and get it on ice now, tip off is tomorrow at 9:00 p.m. Eastern Time and can we watched on TBS.