Villanova-Michigan: 5 winners, 5 losers from a dominant NCAA title win for Super Nova
Five winners and five losers from the Villanova-Michigan national championship game – both on the court and on the TV broadcast:
Winner: Donte DiVincenzo. Seriously, how much did you know about this guy before Monday night? He had an amazing 31 points off the bench in Villanova’s 79-62 win – the most ever for a non-starter in a title game – and also a gorgeous two-handed block on defense that was about as athletic as it gets.
Loser: Michigan’s three-point shooting. The Wolverines went 3-for-23 from three-point range to help give Villanova its second NCAA title in three years.
Winner: Charles Barkley. At halftime, with Villanova leading by nine and the rest of the TV announcers falling over themselves to talk about how the Wolverines could climb back into the game quickly, Barkley correctly pronounced: “Michigan is in serious trouble.... This could get out of hand.”
Loser: Charles Barkley. I once enjoyed those Capital One ads that Barkley does with Samuel L. Jackson and Spike Lee, but now those commercials have turned into slapstick comedy – without the comedy part. Those three guys are so talented that they deserve some better material. An armadillo - really? That's the best you can come up with?
Winner: Billy Cunningham. The former UNC star – who won NBA titles as both a player and a coach – saw Villanova practice for two days before the season. He then proclaimed to TV announcer Bill Raftery – in a story Raftery told during the TBS broadcast – that the Wildcats would win the 2018 national championship.
Cunningham has a thing for preseason predictions after watching practice. He told his former college coach Dean Smith after only watching Michael Jordan practice as a freshman in 1981 that MJ would be the greatest player Smith ever coached. Cunningham told me Smith had an emotional reaction to this pronouncement.
“Dean got mad at me,” Cunningham recounted. “He was asking me how I could say that? I tried to calm him down, saying, ‘Coach, it isn’t brain surgery. Look at him.’”
Loser: UMBC. I thought the Retrievers didn’t get enough airtime in the 2018 “One Shining Moment” video. The first No. 16 to beat a No. 1 in the men’s tournament (and it happened in Charlotte!) deserved more than a couple of cursory highlights.
I think UMBC-Virginia should have been featured more prominently than any other game of the tournament besides the actual championship. In 10 years, we will remember three things about this tournament above everything else: Villanova, Sister Jean and UMBC.
Winner: Philadelphia. The City of Brotherly Love now boasts both the reigning Super Bowl champion and NCAA men’s basketball champion – the first city to ever accomplish that double.
Can you imagine how difficult that is? Can you imagine the Carolina Panthers and the Charlotte 49ers – or else the Davidson Wildcats – doing the same thing in the same year? Extraordinary.
Loser: Kids who love basketball – and anyone else who likes to go to bed relatively early. Why does the NCAA title game have to start so late that it's not over until nearly midnight? Is an 8 p.m. Eastern starting time simply not good enough? Because it should be.
Winner: Villanova. The Wildcats were absolutely dominant in this tournament. They became the first team since the 2009 UNC championship team to win all six of their NCAA tourney games by double digits.
Loser: Drama. The Villanova whipping was so complete that there was basically no drama at all in the game’s last eight minutes – nor was there much in either of Saturday's men's Final Four games. Contrast that with the women's Final Four and in particular Notre Dame’s victory in the women’s title game Sunday, which featured one of the most clutch, buzzer-beating shots you will ever see.
This story was originally published April 3, 2018 at 1:03 AM with the headline "Villanova-Michigan: 5 winners, 5 losers from a dominant NCAA title win for Super Nova."