Ford: 'Nova's final test: Toppling an icon
HOUSTON - The other guys are taller and ranked higher and they will climb onto the raised court Monday night with one of the most iconic names in college basketball on the front of their jerseys.
HOUSTON - The other guys are taller and ranked higher and they will climb onto the raised court Monday night with one of the most iconic names in college basketball on the front of their jerseys.
Villanova knows all that and, sure, the Wildcats would rather be playing the University of the Arts for the national championship than the North Carolina Tar Heels, but this is how the script played out and why not step into the ring and find Apollo Creed waiting? Who were you expecting, Bugs Bunny?
The flaw in the script is that the Wildcats aren't exactly Rocky Balboa. They might be slight underdogs against Carolina, but try selling that to Iowa, Miami, Kansas, and Oklahoma, teams that combined to win 111 games this season but weren't good enough to withstand the buzz saw Villanova has become in this tournament.
Still, it is North Carolina standing in the way, the team that has been a March and April impediment in the three decades since Villanova beat the Tar Heels to advance to the Final Four in 1985. In the interim, the Wildcats have made it back to two Final Fours, including the one that concludes Monday night. For North Carolina, this is the 10th since then, and the program's 19th overall, an NCAA record.
Jay Wright's teams have met up with Carolina three times in the NCAA tournament - losing a Sweet 16 game by a point in 2005 on a debatable traveling violation on Allan Ray; dismissed by 15 points in the 2009 national semifinal; and eliminated in their opening game of the 2013 tournament. Those first two Carolina teams went on to win the national championship, giving the Tar Heels a total of five for their history.
"There's a style of play they have, there's a talent level they have, that has been consistent over the years, and that has given us trouble," Wright said. "Each time we play them, we try to learn something. That ['05] game was the best game we played against them, other than the '85 game. I'd take that kind of game, but with a different outcome this time."
The Wildcats won't have to beat all of Carolina's history and tradition on Monday night. They will only have to beat the current Tar Heels and that will be challenge enough. Carolina is as strong around the basket as Villanova is on the perimeter, and that is at the heart of what will be a fascinating matchup. Both teams score, but in different ways. Both teams defend, but in different ways.
Where North Carolina is in the pantheon of college basketball - its entanglement in a long-running investigation into academic corner-cutting, notwithstanding - where any program would like to be. What comes with that, however, is a bull's-eye. The Tar Heels can't sneak up on anyone.
"I think coaching and playing at North Carolina is a tremendous advantage. The history, the traditions. It's a nice school, pretty color, all those things," coach Roy Williams said. "The only thing is that you always get everybody's best shot. You don't ever catch somebody on a bad night. I take the advantages over the disadvantages, but at this stage [of the tournament] it doesn't make any difference because the other teams are just as good and you're going to get their best, regardless."
Villanova is considered a very good program and is gradually reaching the level of respect where every opponent circles the game on the schedule. That is certainly the case in the Big East and, with a couple of more runs like this, the rest of the country will have to catch on, too.
"One of the things we've learned is that you can't watch film of a team and tell your guys, 'This is how they're going to play against you,' because they're going to be at another level and they'll do anything to beat you. They'll break their schemes to beat you, because they respect you," Wright said. "That's something we've learned recently, but if you've been at North Carolina, or at Kentucky, or Indiana, those guys know that. I have great respect for the guys who coach there, and I don't know if we're at that level yet, but some of the challenges that come with being at that level we're learning about, and it's not as easy as it looks."
The Tar Heels have made it look easy for a long time. They take the stage wearing a color so ingrained with the program that it bears their name. They have won so regularly for so long (the only NCAA team to make the Final Four in eight straight decades) that it is as easy for outsiders to dislike them as it is for their followers to worship them with an evangelical fervor.
What is never easy is beating them.
Villanova will try on Monday night, though. The script fell this way, and it is up to these two teams to write the ending. The measure of this season, and of the two programs still standing, is that it won't be a surprise either way.
@bobfordsports