The Greatest NCAA Tournament That Never Was–Elite 8 Saturday

We are down to the Elite 8, and after today’s East and South Regional Finals, there will be six teams left in the field.  We’re just 24 hours away from knowing which of these best teams of all time (1960-2019) will make the Final Four.

If you haven’t been following this simulation since its beginning, we took 68 of the best NCAA basketball teams between 1960 and 2019.  No school could have teams from consecutive seasons, or else this would have been the UCLA Invitational.

The games were simulated by actually playing the college made version of Statis-Pro Basketball, a game made by Avalon Hill and Sports Illustrated between the 1970’s and 1980’s.  Our Captain solved the codes for that game and applied them to college.

Here are the results for the East and South Region Championships.

 

EAST REGION

 

Wolf Pack Dominates On Boards/Towe Magnificent

 

1974 North Carolina St.	75
2019 Virginia	64

In it’s first three games in this tournament, Virginia had been able to limit turnovers and force the opponent into bad shots.  In the Elite 8, the Cavaliers committed just seven turnovers, but they could not prevent North Carolina State from getting open shots.  Thanks to point guard Monte Towe’s excellent passing, the Wolf Pack shooters were open more often than a normal UVa opponent.

Towe dished out 10 assists in the game, five in both halves.  Towe also contributed 22  points, hitting all eight of his foul shots in the second half when North Carolina State increased their lead from five to 11 points.

Boxscore
North Carolina St.	Start	FG	FGA	3P	3PA	FT	FTA	ORB	DRB	TRB	AST	STL	BLK	TOV	PF	PTS
Tom Burleson	C	8	13	0	0	4	6	4	6	10	0	0	3	2	2	20
Tim Stoddard	F	2	5	0	0	2	3	1	7	8	1	0	1	1	2	6
David Thompson	F	5	11	1	3	6	8	3	7	10	2	1	2	2	2	17
Mo Rivers	G	2	7	1	4	1	2	0	3	3	1	1	0	2	3	6
Monte Towe	G	5	12	4	9	8	9	0	1	1	10	2	0	3	0	22
Phil Spence		1	2	0	0	0	0	0	2	2	0	0	1	0	1	2
Greg Hawkins		0	0	0	0	0	0	1	2	3	0	0	0	1	0	0
Steve Nuce		1	2	0	0	0	0	0	1	1	0	0	0	0	2	2
Mark Moeller		0	0	0	0	0	0	0	1	1	0	0	0	0	1	0
Team										3
Totals		24	52	6	16	21	28	9	30	39	14	4	7	11	13	75
Virginia	Start	FG	FGA	3P	3PA	FT	FTA	ORB	DRB	TRB	AST	STL	BLK	TOV	PF	PTS
Mamadi Diakete	C	1	3	0	0	0	0	2	2	4	0	0	1	0	5	2
De’Andre Hunter	F	2	7	0	3	3	4	1	4	5	1	0	0	2	4	7
Ty Jerome	F	5	12	2	6	3	4	0	4	4	6	1	0	2	5	15
Kyle Guy	G	6	14	3	8	3	3	0	4	4	2	0	0	1	4	18
Kihei Clark	G	2	5	1	2	0	0	0	1	1	3	1	0	1	3	5
Braxton Key		5	9	1	2	1	2	1	4	5	0	1	0	1	2	12
Jack Salt		2	5	0	0	1	2	0	3	3	1	0	0	0	2	5
Jay Huff		0	2	0	1	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	1	0
Team										2
Totals		23	57	7	22	11	15	4	22	28	13	3	1	7	26	64
Player of the Game	Monte Towe

Score By Halves
Team	1	2	Final
N. C. State	34	41	75
Virginia	31	33	64

 

 

WEST REGION

 

Brunson and Bridges Bring Back The Wildcats

 

2018 Villanova	75
1970 UCLA	69

 

Trailing by six points eight minutes into the final half, Villanova’s Jalen Brunson and Michael Bridges scored a combined 19 points to bring the Wildcats back into the lead at 68-67 with less than two minutes remaining.  Foul shooting and multiple missed three point shots sent the Bruins back to Westwood.

 

Boxscore
Villanova	Start	FG	FGA	3P	3PA	FT	FTA	ORB	DRB	TRB	AST	STL	BLK	TOV	PF	PTS
Omari Spellman	C	0	2	0	1	0	0	2	4	6	0	0	1	1	5	0
Eric Paschall	F	2	5	1	3	6	6	1	5	6	0	0	2	0	2	11
Michael Bridges	F	7	12	3	5	5	5	1	7	8	0	0	0	2	1	22
Phil Booth	G	2	4	2	3	4	6	0	2	2	3	1	1	2	2	10
Jalen Brunson	G	7	17	3	5	6	8	0	1	1	6	2	0	2	3	23
Donte DiVincenzo		2	6	1	4	2	3	0	2	2	3	1	0	3	1	7
Collin Gillespie		0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0
Dhamir Cosby-Roundtree		1	4	0	0	0	0	0	1	1	0	1	0	0	1	2
Team										3
Totals		21	50	10	21	23	28	4	22	29	12	5	4	10	15	75
UCLA	Start	FG	FGA	3P	3PA	FT	FTA	ORB	DRB	TRB	AST	STL	BLK	TOV	PF	PTS
Steve Patterson	C	5	11	0	0	2	2	2	7	9	1	0	1	2	4	12
Sidney Wicks	F	7	15	0	2	3	5	4	8	12	3	1	2	5	4	17
Curtis Rowe	F	6	12	1	3	2	3	2	8	10	1	2	0	2	4	15
John Vallely	G	4	8	2	6	3	4	0	2	2	5	1	0	3	3	13
Henry Bibby	G	4	10	2	7	2	2	1	1	2	2	1	0	2	4	12
John Ecker		0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	3	0
Jon Chapman		0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	1	1	0
Bill Seibert		0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	3	0
Team										3
Totals		26	56	5	18	12	16	9	26	38	12	5	3	15	26	69
Player of the Game	Jalen Brunson

 

 

Score By Halves
Team	1	2	Final
Villanova	40	35	75
UCLA	41	28	69

 

Coming Tomorrow: The Midwest and West Region Finals

 

Midwest Region Championship: 1968 UCLA vs. 1968 Houston

West Region Championship: 1972 UCLA vs. 1982 North Carolina

 

PiRate Ratings Spreads For The NCAA Tournament Championship Game, Monday, April 2, 2018

PiRate Rating Spread for The NCAA Championship Game

Higher Seed	Lower Seed	Spread
Villanova	Michigan	6.8

 

And Then There Were Two

The Pirate Ratings Analytics Criteria to the National Championship Game

Michigan Wolverines Head Coach John Belein compared Villanova to a college version of the Golden State Warriors.  Villanova Coach Jay Wright did not return the favor, but even before Beilein spoke, we had already thought of this game as the college equivalent of Game 7 of the Warriors and Celtics.  The Warriors have the top offense in the Association, while the Celtics have the top defense.  Golden State speeds up the pace, while Boston slows it down.

What can we learn from the two games the Celtics and Warriors have played against each other this year?  Both teams won by four points on their home floor.  The game in Boston was played at a pace the Celtics like and Warriors dislike.  The game in Oakland was played at the exact opposite pace.

Michigan and Villanova will square off in San Antonio on a neutral floor.  Michigan won its semifinal game playing at a snail’s pace that the Wolverines prefer, 69 possessions.  They averaged a point per possession and held Loyola to .83 points per possession.

Villanova won its semifinal game playing at a quicker pace, although not as quickly as they desired in their win over Kansas.  Their 71 possessions looks little different from Michigan’s 69, but a couple factors lowered this number.  First, once VU extended the lead to 15 points, they slowed the pace down.  Second, Kansas looked lost after the initial barrage, and they slowed the pace down trying to throw off the Wildcats.

Tonight, we expect Michigan to slow the pace down and keep total possessions under 70, but will this be effective?  We think it will be partially effective, and the excellent contrasts in playing styles should lead to a much closer than expected outcome.  In fact, we think this game has the potential to be undecided in the final minutes.  It would not surprise us at all if it went to overtime.  In other words, while it wouldn’t be completely shocking for this game to be one-sided, we believe the chances that either team wins by double digits is rather low.  We expect the final margin to be less than 10 points for the eighth consecutive Championship Game.

Let’s look at the analytics for tonight.

First, the game tips at 9:20 PM EDT/8:20 PM in San Antonio and will air on TBS and not CBS.

Team	Power	W-L	Scr	TS% Diff	R+T	SOS
Villanova	Y	35-4	87-70	10.38	12.8	61.22
Michigan	Y	33-7	74-63	5.74	9.9	60.14

Both teams are members of power conferences and have double digit scoring margins, which almost all national champions in the past 65 years have shared.

The Strengths of Schedules are not identical, but they are very close.  Villanova only receives a minimum positive adjustment to the rest of their stats based on an advantage of 1.08 points per game. (Our SOS is a combination of 3 factors and not identical to others you may see on the Internet)

Villanova has the decided edge in True Shooting Percentage Margin.  The formula we use for TS% is: (100*Pts)/(2*(fga+(.475*fta))).  (Again, others may use a different formula, but we believe this is the best one to use for college basketball.)

Villanova has a decided but not overwhelming R+T Rating advantage in this game.  R+T is a PiRate Original Rating with this formula: (R * 2) + (S * .5) + (6 – Opp S) + T, where R is rebounding margin, S is steals per game, and T is turnover margin.  The number estimates how many extra scoring opportunities per game a team may obtain compared to an average team, and the difference, after factoring schedule strength, allows us to estimate how much better one team has over the other in going on spurts of 8 points or better.  In the NCAA Tournament, most winning teams enjoy at least one more 8-point spurt than the losing team.

Overall, these first set of analytics favors Villanova, but the margin of error does not make the Wildcats a slam-dunk selection to win.

	Offense				Defense
Team	Pts	FGA	FTA	TS%	Pts	FGA	FTA	TS%
Villanova	3384	2383	698	62.3	2745	2346	623	52.0
Michigan	2957	2280	699	56.6	2517	2169	643	50.9

This group of stats shows us that Villanova is the superior offensive team, while Michigan enjoys the defensive edge, but by less than VU has the offensive edge.  In a seven-game series, this would definitely tilt the outcome in Villanova’s favor.  For one night, VU is still favored, but this is not an insurmountable advantage.  The pace should fall closer to Michigan’s average of 66 possessions per game than Villanova’s 71 possessions per game, or at least through 40 minutes if the game has an extra session or two or three.

Team	W1	W2	L12	Reb	Stl	Opp Stl	TO
Villanova	13	10	11-1	3.03	6.51	4.79	2.26
Michigan	14	7	12-0	0.58	6.38	4.18	3.73

Almost every national champion has had one double-digit winning streak or two winning streaks of 6 or more games each.  Both teams double qualify here.  Michigan’s 14-game streak is active, while Villanova’s #2 streak of 10 games is also active.  What this says is that both teams are peaking at the right time, and you will be the beneficiary of an outstanding game.

Villanova has the rebounding advantage in this game, but it comes with a major caveat.  Michigan is all over the road in their games, and we believe it has more to do with game strategy than inconsistency.  When the Wolverines have faced dominant rebounding teams, like Michigan State, they have actually won the battle of the boards.  When they have faced teams that force turnovers or rarely commit turnovers, the Wolverines usually get outrebounded but keep the turnover battle close or even in their favor.

Also, Villanova tends to win rebounding battles by getting to loose balls quicker rather than pound the glass for success.

Everything else in this section is a wash.

There is a reason why we believe Michigan will make this game extremely close, and even have a fair chance to win.  The Wolverines are perceived to be slow and to lack quickness.  We disagree.  Actually, we believe Michigan can hold their own in a faster-paced game, and the numbers give us reason to believe.  Michigan has played four games this year with a pace more than 10% quicker than their norm.  The Wolverines went 3-1 inthese games, losing only at North Carolina.  In fact, Michigan beat Sparty in East Lansing in a game with a fast pace, and they won by double digits.  We have known for years that superior defensive teams actually gain superiority as possessions increase, while inferior defensive teams gain an advantage by slowing the pace down, as smaller sample size tends to lead to more deviation, while moving closer to the norm as sample size increases.  In this case, sample size is the number of possessions.

Conclusion 

You should be able to easily diagnose this game from the analytical data.  Both teams are playing their best ball of the season.  Both teams have assets that can exploit an average team or a superior team, while both teams have few liabilities.

It is obvious that Villanova is more superior than Michigan, but not by enough points to make them the easy favorite to win this game.  If they played 100 times, Villanova might win 58 to 63 times, so the Wildcats don’t have that much more chance to win one game on one night on a stage like the Championship Game provides.

This game will likely come down to the winning team having one more hot player or one less cold player.  Moritz Wagner was one reason Michigan beat Loyola.  Overall team defense was the other.

Eric Paschall burned the nets and torched Kansas, but overall it was a team offensive effort that led Villanova to its semifinal win.

We expect the Wildcats to bounce a little and not be as effective shooting three-pointers tonight, while at the same time, we believe Omari Spellman will contain Wagner better than Loyola’s defenders could.

What this means is that we expect offensive efficiency to be down for both teams, and we believe that Villanova will get one extra scoring spurt in this game than Michigan, probably coming in the second half somewhere either side of the six-minute mark in the game.  Michigan will mount a comeback that will fall just a tad short.

PiRate Prediction: Villanova 74  Michigan 69

 

 

 

 

PiRate Ratings Spreads For NCAA Tournament Final Four Games, Saturday, March 31

PiRate Rating  Picks–Final Four

Higher Seed	Lower Seed	Spread
Michigan	Loyola-IL	4.8
Villanova	Kansas	6.0

The PiRate March Madness Team Criteria

This has been an interesting NCAA Tournament, much different than many recent ones.  Yet, as we look on the eve of the Final Four, we look at our original criteria that we posted almost three weeks ago and look at our results.

We only correctly picked one of the Final Four teams, but this is not a real criticism of the system.  We just did a lousy job picking four of the 14 teams that this system showed having national title caliber analytics.

We looked the original stats of the 68 teams and stated that 14 shared the type of statistical resumes that showed them to be good enough to cut the nets in San Antonio.  Three of those 14 have made the Final Four–Villanova, Michigan, and Kansas.

What about Loyola?  We said that they were now the new Wichita State of this tournament.  We did not pick the Ramblers to make the Final Four, but we basically labelled them as the best of the Mid-major teams capable of repeating what Wichita State had done when the Shockers were in the Missouri Valley.

So, we give the new criteria a passing grade, and we give our human evaluation team of those analytics a D-grade for not properly selecting the correct three of the 14 teams that advanced to San Antonio.

For those of you that may have arrived at this page and did not see our previous March Madness posts, here is a brief tutorial.

Our criteria is based on a combination of analytic data and back-tested statistics that past Final Four and National Champion teams have produced.  We look for correlations that can separate the great from the good.

We came up with the following stats and data sets:

True Shooting Percentage Margin

There has been an evolution in shooting efficiency in recent seasons.  With the 30-second shot clock and the better use of analytics, teams know they should take certain three-point shots and certain high two-point shots without having to force low percentage shots at the end of the shot clock.  Whereas field goal% offense and defense used to be vital, in the current philosophy of college basketball teams, true shooting percentage matters most.

True Shooting Percentage tells you how efficient a team is at shooting the ball.  How many points do they get per shot taken, be it a two-point shot, a three-point shot, or shots from the foul line?

Our formula for college basketball true shooting percentage is: (100*Pts)/(2*(fga+(.475*fta))).  We say “our formula” not because we created it, which we did not, but because there are arbitrary differences in the calculations of different metrics specialists.  Some use .44 for free throws attempted, which is more accurate for the NBA, but there are different free throw shooting rules in the NBA, so we use .475, which is more accurate for college basketball.

The TS% margin is simply a team’s offensive TS% minus their defensive TS%.

 

R+T Rating

This is our created statistic.  R+T attempts to estimate additional scoring opportunities that a team may receive based on rebounding, steals, avoiding opponent steals, and additional turnovers not involving steals.  Since a steal is worth more than a dead-ball turnover, we give it more weight than all other turnovers.  A steal is precious because the stealing team is able to run the fast break much easier than any other type of gained possession.

The formula for R+T is: (R * 2) + (S * .5) + (6 – Opp S) + T,  where R is rebounding margin, S is steals, and T is turnover margin.

If one team has an R+T of 15.5, and the other team has an R+T of 5.5, then the 15.5 team should create 10 additional scoring opportunities in a game between the two teams.  That might be enough extra chances to overcome a significant disadvantage in true shooting perecentage.

Strength of Schedule

Obviously, it is easier to pad your team’s statistics if they have played a bunch of cup cakes rather than play 20 games against other teams in the NCAA Tournament.  So, strength of schedule is vitally important.  Through SOS, we normalize the TS% and R+T ratings to make the numbers on par with each other.  If a team has a TS% margin of 10% and an R+T of 15 with a SOS of 50 (exactly average of 351 Division 1 teams), and their opponents has a TS% of 5% and an R+T of 5 with a SOS of 60 (10 points better than average per game), the team with a SOS of 60 would be the better team based on the analytics.  The exact algorithm for determining par values is a bit too difficult to explain, and we do not care to share this proprietary information, as it is all that separates our formula from others.

Other Contributing Factors

We look at how a team has performed in its most recent dozen games.  Obviously, at this point, every team has a minimum of a four-game winning streak.  We look at each team’s two longest winning streaks of the season.  We don’t expect a team with a longest winning streak of three or four games being able to win six in a row against top-flight competition, while if we see a team with a double-digit winning streak or two in excess of six games, then this team has what it takes to win six in a row after March 15.

In addition to Strength of Schedule, we look to those teams that come from a “power conference.”  In our definition, a power conference is one with a league RPI in the Top 12.  For what it’s worth, all four teams remaining in the field come from power conferences, as did all Elite 8 teams and all Sweet 16 teams.

Scoring margin is also important to us.  The minimum scoring margin of a national champion in the last 30 years is eight points per game, while the majority of champions having double-digit scoring margins.  It is next-to-impossible to win the title with a scoring margin under 8.  When Villanova upset Georgetown in 1985, their scoring margin was just 4.8 points per game.  North Carolina State’s scoring margin was 4.6 points per game in 1983.  In fact in the last 65 seasons where we have complete stats (1943 to 2017), the eventual national champion had a double-digit scoring margin 62 times!

Okay, so there you have our criteria.  Basically, we look for teams that can shoot better than their opponents, create more scoring opportunities than their opponents, and do so against a difficult schedule.  It’s obvious, isn’t it?  It might be, but then so many people overlook the obvious in favor of emotional factors.  And, then there is the case of trying to choose four teams from among 14 of the 68 teams that possessed the qualities necessary to win the title.

We have one party-crasher in the Final Four.  Loyola has earned their trip to San Antonio by playing excellent team ball and limiting mistakes, but they have also had a perfect route with little interference, getting weaker than typical Nevada and Kansas State teams to make it here.  Because the Ramblers do not share the approved criteria numbers to win the title, we are predicting Loyola to end their Cinderella bid Saturday afternoon.  Of course, if Loyola wins, they buck a trend and completely re-write the analytic philosophy.

In case you were wondering, when Loyola won the title back in 1963, the Ramblers were more like Villanova today.  That 1963 team led the nation in scoring margin at 24 points per game.  That team was an offense first team that played at supersonic speed.  They averaged in excess of 90 possessions per game.  The Ramblers defeated a two-time defending champion Cincinnati squad that was more of a patient, defense first team that averaged around 65 possessions per game.  There was a 2018 Loyola type team in that 1963 Final Four, and that was Oregon State.  That Beaver team played patient basketball, relied on defense to stop opponents, because they were not able to score points in spurts, and they only had to beat one ranked team to earn a trip to Louisville for the Final Four.

What happened to that Oregon State team in the semifinals?  They lost to Cincinnati by 34 points.  Another big Cinderella team lost by 34 points in the 1979 Final Four when Penn fell to eventual champion Michigan State.  George Mason lost by 11 points to eventual champion Florida in 2006.  VCU lost by eight to Butler in 2011.  Wichita State lost by just four to Louisville in 2013.

In fact, if you go back all the way to the beginning of the NCAA Tournament in 1939, in the 79 prior tournaments, only one real Cinderella won the national title.  In 1947, Holy Cross had a relatively perfect draw to win an eight-team tournament.  The Crusaders edged Navy and City College of New York to make the title game against Oklahoma, where they dismissed the Sooners by 11 points.  Of course that HCU team had the best guard in the history of the game up to that point in Bob Cousy and an All-American pivot man in George Kaftan, who disproved the theory that brought you the movie, “White Men Can’t Jump.”

Let us now look at the numbers for the remaining four teams now that we have done what we can to convince you that three of the four teams can cut the nets, and it will take a hire authority than Sister Jean to pull off a miracle of this proportion for Loyola to win.

Note: In response to Lexie89’s question to us earlier in the season, the colors shown for each team are the official colors of each team.  We have a list of all team official Pantone colors and then convert from Pantone to Hex Color.  If you are not seeing what looks like the authentic colors, it is your monitor.

Team	Power	W-L	Score	TS% Diff	R+T *	SOS
Kansas	Y	31-7	81-71	8.15	5.7	61.78
Loyola (Chi.)	Y	32-5	72-62	10.27	6.8	52.35
Michigan	Y	32-7	74-63	5.86	9.6	59.94
Villanova	Y	34-4	87-70	10.29	13.1	60.82

Team	W1	W2	L12	Reb	Stl	Opp Stl	TO
Kansas	7	7	11-1	0.45	6.55	5.61	1.16
Loyola (Chi.)	14	7	12-0	1.84	6.38	6.54	0.49
Michigan	13	7	12-0	0.49	6.28	4.15	3.67
Villanova	13	9	11-1	3.11	6.61	4.79	2.34

	Offense				Defense
Team	Pts	FGA	FTA	TS%	Pts	FGA	FTA	TS%
Kansas	3095	2304	619	59.6	2708	2354	588	51.4
Loyola (Chi.)	2664	1912	612	60.5	2308	2059	505	50.2
Michigan	2888	2221	681	56.8	2460	2118	629	50.9
Villanova	3289	2318	691	62.1	2666	2284	603	51.9

Times listed are Eastern Daylight

Both Games on TBS

The Semifinal Games

Michigan vs. Loyola of Chicago

Tip Time: 6:09 PM

Strength of Schedule

Michigan has a considerable advantage here by an average of 7.59 points per game.

True Shooting % Margin

Due to schedule strength, Michigan has a decided advantage here.

R+T Rating

Michigan has a considerable advantage and should obtain 5 or 6 extra scoring opportunities in this game, which should allow the Wolverines to enjoy at least one scoring spurt of better than 8 points.

Other

Michigan will win the rebounding war as Loyola will not crash the offensive boards.  The Ramblers will look to stop Wolverine fast breaks, so if Michigan can guard well enough to limit open shots, especially from the outside, Loyola will have little chance to score enough points to win this game.  The Ramblers will have to be very hot from outside and hope that Cameron Krutwig can play longer than 22 minutes.

We expect Michigan to commit single-digit turnovers in this game, as Loyola will have to concentrate its efforts on limiting high-percentage shots inside and open three-point shots against quicker players.  The Wolverines have been a much better rebounding team in the second half of the season, and their overall defense has been improving for the last month.

Conclusion

We see this game having two possible outcomes, neither of which is good for the Cinderella team.  In the first scenario, Michigan will open up a comfortable lead in the first five to eight minutes of the game and then keep the lead safe for the duration of the game, winning by double digits.

In the second possibility, Loyola might keep the game close for a half, but Michigan will go on a scoring spurt at some point in the second half to gain a double-digit lead and hang on to win by six to 15 points.

Either way, we see the Maize and Blue of Coach John Beilein earning the school’s sixth National Championship Game appearance, and Beilein’s second in Ann Arbor.

MICHIGAN 73  LOYOLA 62

 

Villanova vs. Kansas

Tip Time: Approximately 8:49 PM

Strength of Schedule

This is basically a wash with both teams having a top 5% SOS.  Kansas has a minimal advantage of less than one point per game.

True Shooting % Margin

Villanova has a miniscule advantage here that reveals very little due to the standard deviation of shooting percentages per game.  All this says is that Villanova has maybe a 52 to 53% chance of having the better true shooting percentage in this game.

R+T Rating

Villanova has a decided advantage here of 7.4, and when you combine it with the SOS of the two teams, the Wildcats are expected to receive about six to seven additional scoring opportunities in this game.  Villanova has the best ability of the four remaining teams to capitalize on extra scoring opportunities with game-deciding scoring spurts.

Other

This game has the potential to turn into a 75-possession game per team, and it is possible that the loser could top 80 points.  The team that gets better open looks from behind the arc should win this game, as long as that team doesn’t come out so flat that they cannot hit at least 35% from behind the arc.

This game is not necessarily a toss-up, but the advantage of our favorite is not insurmountable.

However, the overall most dangerous player in this entire tournament of 68 teams is still alive and leading the team that is now the odds-on favorite to win the national title for the second time in three years.  Jay Wright has given the City of Brotherly Love a possible second champion of the season.

CONCLUSION

Villanova has the near perfect statistical resume of past national champions.  Their 17 point scoring margin is on par with 80% of past national champions and typical of about 90% of all past champions.

Of the four teams remaining, the Wildcats are most apt to enjoy a 10-point scoring spurt more than once in a game.  Wright’s team reminds us of Denny Crum’s 1980 Louisville team and in some ways like the 1970 and 1971 UCLA teams that won titles.  The perimeter players can score inside, and the inside players can score from the outside.  Six players are capable of carrying the team for a half, and if you attempt to concentrate on stopping one or two players, the other four or five will exploit your defense and burn you.

VILLANOVA 84  KANSAS 77