Villanova is the best team in the Final Four, and the Wildcats look as tough as ever

All year, Villanova was one of the two best teams in college basketball. Then the other one lost to a 16th seed in the first round of the NCAA tournament, and Villanova was instantly the closest thing the field had to a favorite. Now, that only looks more true.

The top-seeded handled pummeled No. 3 Texas Tech in the East regional semifinal on Sunday in Boston, 71-59. Against one of the country’s best defensive teams, the Cats didn’t put on their usual fireworks exhibition, but they scored plenty and suffocated the Red Raiders’ offense on the other end. Villanova has played four games in this tournament. The first two were light jogs, and wins over West Virginia and now Texas Tech during the regional weekend required Nova to break a sweat but never really feel danger.

In an event that’s claimed blue-blood after blue-blood, Villanova has just been Villanova.

Until further notice, Villanova is the best team in the sport.

Most who look at a stats page would reach that conclusion. So would most who watched them lay a trail of destruction through the East. Some teams look better on paper than they do on TV, and others ace the eye test but have glaring underlying problems. Villanova is the rare team that is so clearly dominant through every prism imaginable. The Wildcats haven’t lost in more than a month, since Feb. 24, and most of their wins haven’t been close.

Villanova’s the best shooting team in recent college basketball history. The Wildcats entered Sunday with an absurd 60 percent effective shooting rate, a stat that weights three-pointers as 50 percent more valuable than twos. No team has posted that high an eFG% since 2005, when Samford just cleared 60 percent in the Ohio Valley Conference. Nobody else has shot as well as this Villanova team in the Ken Pomeroy era, which runs back to 2002.

Pair that with a top-15 offensive turnover rate, and you’ve got an offensive juggernaut without parallel. The Wildcats make shots at a historic rate, and they don’t give the ball away. The result is the most efficient offense any college defense has ever had to play. Nova is a 40-plus percent three-point-shooting team that also dominates around the basket. Jay Wright has assembled a group that’s custom-designed to score on anybody.

The offense is so good that Villanova doesn’t have to have a great defense to win. But the Cats defend well, too. They entered the Elite Eight ranking 14th out of 351 Division I teams in opponent-adjusted efficiency for the year. They’ll be either second- or third-best in that stat among Final Four teams, but Nova’s defense is competitive with anyone’s. The gulf between Nova’s offense and everyone else is smaller than between Nova’s D and the best.

Another mark of a durable competitor is that it wins even when it’s not itself. Nova wasn’t itself against Texas Tech. All of those incredible shooting numbers I mentioned above didn’t mean much on Sunday, when Nova shot 33 percent from the field and made four of 24 threes.

So all Villanova did was put the clamps on defensively and win without much drama, anyway. Texas Tech fought gamely but didn’t get closer than five points down after trailing by 13 at the half. Even when Villanova struggles immensely, it doesn’t struggle much.

At some point, Villanova will probably have to play a nail-biter to win the national championship. When that happens, it won’t hurt to have the country’s most solid point guard, Jalen Brunson, driving the ship. It won’t hurt to have all-around star Mikal Bridges, and it won’t hurt that those guys’ teammates are typically knockdown shooters.

The Wildcats won’t have a walk to the championship, obviously.

Their national semifinal matchup will be Kansas or Duke. More important than being historical national powers, those schools are among the few that have similar (or better) talent to Nova’s. Wright has for years assembled great teams without being loaded with NBA talent, and even as Villanova’s gotten more stars to sign up in recent years, it’s possible that a Duke or Kansas game will present some matchup problems. Lots can go wrong at the wrong moments, as most of the country’s best teams have already learned this month.

But as teams descend on San Antonio next weekend, there’s nobody you’d rather be than Villanova. The Wildcats have barely missed a beat all season, and unlike so many others, they haven’t lapsed at all in March. Villanova at full throttle is better than anybody, and even Villanova on one of its ugliest shooting days of the year is better than most.

Let's block ads! (Why?)