The devil in me sort of hopes that either North Carolina or Syracuse will win the 2016 NCAA championship Monday night in Houston. That would put the NCAA in the awkward position of having to hand the trophy to either a school that has just come off probation (Syracuse) or one that is sitting on perhaps the most egregious case of academic fraud in NCAA history (North Carolina).
It would be delicious to watch NCAA President Mark Emmert pontificating about “student-athletes” with either North Carolina coach Roy Williams or Syracuse coach Jim Boeheim beaming at his side. Uh, hold up on that. Boeheim has never beamed in his life. Just getting a smile out of him is tougher than solving his trademark 2-3 zone defense.
But truth be told, I can’t really pull for either of them. Boeheim is just an old mope who has only one NCAA title (2003) to show for decades of great talent. He seems as surprised as anybody at his current team’s success. I’m very confident that North Carolina will put him out of his misery.
The Tar Heels have more talent than anybody in the country and they’ve put it together at the right time. But how can you pull for a program that’s certain to get hammered with major infractions penalties sometime in the not-so-distant future? Once North Carolina was a beacon of excellence in both academics and athletics. But that was before it was revealed that numerous athletes, over a long period, took phony courses.
So that leaves me to hope that the winner of the Villanova-Oklahoma semifinal also wins the championship.
I have nothing against Oklahoma coach Lon Kruger, and I’ve enjoyed watching the Sooners’ Buddy Hield, who should be the Player of the Year, do a passable Seth Curry imitation when he gets the ball beyond the three-point arc. But for some reason I can’t explain, I just can’t get my arms around the Sooners.
It would be different with Oklahoma State. The Cowboys have been a national basketball power going back to the 1940s, when the school was known as Oklahoma A&M. Then known as the Aggies, Oklahoma A&M won back-to-back NCAA titles in 1945 and ’46 for Coach Henry Iba. Its best player was Bob “Foothills” Kurland, the first dominant 7-footer in college hoops.
But Oklahoma is different. Oh, I know the Sooners have produced great basketball players like Wayman Tisdale, Stacey King, Blake Griffin, and Mookie Blaylock. But when I think of Oklahoma, I think first of Bud Wilkinson, Barry Switzer and Brian Bosworth. It’s a football school, for heaven’s sake. To see the Sooners win the NCAA basketball title would be like seeing Duke win the national football championship. It just doesn’t feel right.
I know that’s lame. I’ll try to get over it.
So that leaves Villanova, which rolled into the Final Four by upsetting Kansas in Louisville’s KFC Yum! Center. I really like the Wildcats and here are 10 reasons why:
— With an enrollment of around 10,000 and change, they’re the smallest member of the Final Four. North Carolina and Oklahoma are flagship state universities with enrollments of around 30,000 each. Syracuse is the dominant athletic program in the state of New York, and is one of the few schools that has an enrollment (around 20,000) that’s significantly smaller than the seating capacity of its arena (33,633 capacity).
— Villanova is the only private university in the field, and I have a soft spot in my heart for private, liberal-arts colleges because I attended one (Transylvania University, class of ’66). There’s also the fact that Bill Poulson, one of my best college friends, and Villanova both are located just outside Philadelphia.
— Villanova is a Roman Catholic university founded by the Order of St. Augustine in 1842. I was confirmed into the Roman Catholic church in 2007, so I feel my parish prients, Father B. J. Breen and Father Jerry Eifler, would want me to pull for the Catholic school.
— Villanova coach Jay Wright seems to be the anti-Boeheim. When he smiles, which is often, some women fans swear he looks a lot like George Clooney, the Kentucky-born and bred actor who’s the Gregory Peck of our generation. I don’t know about that, but I do know that Wright has done a very solid job with resources that don’t compare to those available at most of the five major conference schools.
— Philadelphia is the home of The Palestra, the ancient arena where the so-called “Big Five” schools used to play double-headers that packed the joint. The five programs I’m talking about are Villanova, LaSalle, Penn, Temple, and St. Joseph’s. They have given the city a rich hoops tradition that’s right up there with New York City and Boston.
— One of the most exciting games I’ve ever covered was Villanova’s 66-64 win over supposedly unbeatable Georgetown in the 1985 title game in Rupp Arena. In the next-to-last title game before the shot clock and the three-pointer changed the game forever, Coach Rollie Massimino’s Wildcats played a near-perfect game, hitting 78.6 per cent from the field against 7-1 Patrick Ewing and Georgetown’s formidable defense.
— In evaluating restaurants, it’s generally unfair to compare what’s available in a major city to what’s available in college towns. Still, even though the original Bookbinder’s is long gone, Philadelphia deserves a nod for being the place where the cheese steak sandwich was invented. I’m told there are several good cheese steak restaurants in Houston.
— Louisville’s Bobby Haner still holds the Villanova football record for points in a season (99 in nine games, 1952). Haner was a star at St. Xavier High before heading for Philadelphia. In the 1953 NFL draft, he was picked in the 17th round by the Washington Redskins.
— I love Ryan Arcidiacono, Villanova’s 6-3 senior leader. He’s cocky, tough, and fearless. He seems to relish diving for a loose ball as much as nailing a three-pointer. When he and 6-ll fellow senior Daniel Ochefu are in sync, the Wildcats become a many-splendored team.
— Playing in a city that has a pro team in every sport, Villanova doesn’t get nearly as much publicity as North Carolina, Oklahoma, or Syracuse, who are literally the only game in their respective towns. Even if they win the title, they might not get as much attention on talk radio as such lofty topics as, oh, who the Eagles need to get in the NFL draft.
So there you have it. My heart is pulling for Villanova, but my head tells me that North Carolina is going to win the title. That would serve the NCAA right, of course, because they’ve been nothing but tar heels on the North Carolina investigation.
Billy Reed is a member of the U.S. Basketball Writers Hall of Fame, the Kentucky Journalism Hall of Fame, the Kentucky Athletic Hall of Fame and the Transylvania University Hall of Fame. He has been named Kentucky Sports Writer of the Year eight times and has won the Eclipse Award twice. Reed has written about a multitude of sports events for over four decades, but he is perhaps one of media’s most knowledgeable writers on the Kentucky Derby