Entering the 2016 Final Four weekend, it's safe to say that North Carolina occupies the role of favorite in the public eye. The Tar Heels are the only No. 1 seed to make it to Houston, and have played exceedingly well in this NCAA Tournament, winning all four of their games by double figures and scoring at least 83 points in all four contests.
Villanova, though, isn't far off the Tar Heels' pace. And Oklahoma has Buddy Hield. And Syracuse is playing some of its best basketball. So we need some power rankings to make sense of this Final Four.
Final Four Power Rankings: Teams
No. 1: Villanova Wildcats
EfficiencHeat Check1: 1.27 points per possession (PPP), 0.97 PPP allowed
No. 2: North Carolina Tar Heels
EfficiencHeat Check: 1.33 PPP, 1.09 PPP allowed
It's really, really hard to bet against North Carolina and its nearly 90 points per game (89.2, to be exact) in the NCAA Tournament right now, given what the rediscovery of the three-point shot did for the Heels' offense in Philadelphia. UNC went an incredible 11-for-20 from three against Indiana, and that performance, combined with a couple of early threes against Notre Dame, opened up an offense that had a tendency for clanging away fruitlessly. This allowed the Heels to score an amazing 1.48 points per possession over those two games, its most efficient offensive showings of the year.
Yet Villanova had the best offensive performance of the 2016 NCAA Tournament in the Sweet Sixteen, and did so against a team (Miami) that occasionally tried to play defense. North Carolina got to run through Indiana's decent defense and Notre Dame's horrific-for-a-good-team one, and while it's fair to give the Heels a lot of credit for blowing the doors off Indiana when previously red-hot Kentucky failed to do so, that perimeter shooting was the key, and probably aberrational.
Roy Williams's team has only made at least 50 percent of its threes five times this season, and has made eight or more threes just eight times. Villanova has only six games of 50 percent from three or better, but it has 15 games of 10 or more threes this year, which makes its scintillating 37-for-80 shooting from three (46.3 percent) in March Madness more in line with its seasonal results, even though a handful of nights with a ton of misses from three drag down the Wildcats' percentages.
But given that evidence points to defending the three being about limiting threes rather than forcing opponents to shoot a poor percentage from deep, Villanova's ability to consistently get threes gives it the ability to play more efficiently. Couple that offense with a defense that's been better than North Carolina's, and I like the Wildcats just a little bit more than the last No. 1 seed, though I'd be utterly unsurprised by either team winning the title.
No. 3: Oklahoma Sooners
EfficiencHeat Check: 1.16 PPP, 1.00 PPP allowed
I'd only be mildly surprised by Oklahoma winning it all, because, well, no one else hasBuddy Hield. Hield's quite clearly the most explosive player left in the field, more capable than either Villanova's Josh Hart or North Carolina's Brice Johnson of simply stamping his opponents in his footprints. While Oklahoma does have other talented players (including snipers Isaiah Cousins and Jordan Woodard), if the Sooners are going to win the title, Hield's almost certainly going to have to be the Final Four's Most Outstanding Player.
That's well within his powers. Hield's 29.3 points per game leads the 2016 NCAA Tournament, and he's the only Final Four-bound player to score more than 84 points in it. His 19 threes are more than all but 15 teams made in the Tournament, and the 45 percent clip he's connecting at is actually lower than his 46.5 percent season average, because he's basically a cyborg. If any one player is going to go nova (sorry, er, 'Nova) and win a trophy by himself, it's Buddy Buckets.
No. 4: Syracuse Orange
EfficiencHeat Check: 1.10 PPP, 0.89 PPP allowed
You, over there, thinking that "Syracuse's best basketball" somehow puts the Orange on par with the other three teams in this Final Four? It does not, has not and probably will not. Yes, Syracuse is third in both scoring defense and scoring margin in this Tournament, but that's partly because it got to play three double-digit seeds and slow-going Virginia, and made up for wins by three and six points in Chicago by beating up on Middle Tennessee State by 25 in the second round.
Syracuse's offensive rebounding was also the talk of its broadcasts in the Midwest Regional, with Reggie Miller fawning over Tyler Roberson to an almost uncomfortable degree, but North Carolina has been better at boarding its misses both this season and in this tournament — and the Orange hemorrhage offensive boards on the other end, because that's just what Jim Boeheim's 2-3 zone does.
Even if North Carolina weren't a terrible matchup for Syracuse, this Final Four would be an uphill road for the Orange by virtue of their inability to match the other three offenses, all within the top 13 of KenPom. But hey, maybe Houston's notoriously shooting-stifling setup, which only Duke has seemingly ever solved, will play into the hands of the team that wants to force threes.
Final Four Power Rankings: Go-To Players
No. 1: Buddy Hield, Oklahoma
I do not think this point needs to be belabored, but Hield's 37 points in the Elite Eight were the most in a game in this tournament ... topping his 36 points against VCU in the second round. (Same for his eight threes against Oregon and his six against VCU.)
No. 2: Brice Johnson, North Carolina
Hield is No. 2 in KenPom's Player of the Year standings, but it's not to newly minted AP National Player of the Year Denzel Valentine -- it's to Johnson, whose talents as a rebounder and defender help him slightly edge Hield for the top spot. And if I had to predict a Most Outstanding Player, I'd pick Johnson, because North Carolina winning out is more likely than Oklahoma doing it.
No. 3: Josh Hart, Villanova
Johnson, by virtue of being a senior and undersized for his NBA position, is projected just outside the first round of the 2016 NBA Draft in the latest DraftExpress mock. Villanova's Swiss Army scorer? He's at the end of the second round in the 2017 mock, behind such household names as LSU's Tim Quarterman and Utah's Kyle Kuzma.
Hart's not likely to take over a game with scoring alone, given that he only has five 20-point games this season, but he's the straw that stirs the drink for the Wildcats, the player who contributes so much to spacing and defense and so forth that he's their most indispensable player. If Villanova has a glaring weakness, it's probably the lack of a creator for self, something that maybe freshman Jalen Brunson is best at on the team, but Hart is capable of creating for others and happy to defer, as he has to a red-hot Kris Jenkins in this tournament.
No. 4: Malachi Richardson, Syracuse
Perhaps this is wishful thinking? Richardson's not as well-known as Trevor Cooney orMichael Gbinije, and he's actually got an Offensive Rating under 100, suggesting that Syracuse has scored less than a point per possession with him on the floor this year. And yet: Richardson has two 20-point games against Virginia and a third against Miami this year, and he's arguably the "go-to" player in a sense that Gbinije, who derives a lot of his value from stifling defense and basically never coming off the floor, isn't.
Richardson needs to be good for Syracuse to have a chance of making the national final. Gbinije's just good, no matter what, and Syracuse doesn't seem to be better or worse when he's on or off.
Final Four Power Rankings: Coaches
No. 1: Roy Williams, North Carolina
Key stat: .750 winning percentage in NCAA Tournament
Williams is now tied for third all-time in NCAA Tournament winning percentage with John Calipari, and because he's probably not catching Mike Krzyzewski (nor is Coach K catching John Wooden), that's about as high as Ol' Roy can get. And that's a vindication of both his program-building and his oft-maligned coaching: getting elite athletes and running teams into the ground with pace is a viable strategy, even if it sometimes leads to lamenting that he "just rolls the ball out" or other specious criticisms.
The major change for Williams this year, though, is a defense that has finally figured out how to slow down opposing offenses, something that has dropped a Williams-coached team out of the top 30 in adjusted tempo for the first time in the KenPom era and provided a big boost to interior defense.
No. 2: Lon Kruger, Oklahoma
Key stat: Second Final Four (1994, Florida)
Kruger is recruiting to and building a program in Oklahoma, in the backyard of Big 12 colossus Kansas, and he's done it brilliantly. Oklahoma was outside the top 100 in KenPom and missed the NCAA Tournament in Kruger's first year, which was still an improvement on Jeff Capel's last.
Kruger's 20-16 record in NCAA Tournament play isn't gaudy, but his only other Final Four visit came with a Florida team that basically should not have been there, given that it was unranked before the season and never got higher than No. 14 in the AP Poll. Kruger's never had a job where he can stockpile talent, so he's had to win with less, and has done so. He's respected and beloved, and it's a reflection of his skill that Oklahoma is the fifth school he's taken to multiple NCAA Tournaments.
No. 3: Jim Boeheim, Syracuse
Key stat: 13-17 in Sweet Sixteen or later
It's virtually impossible to separate Boeheim's coaching from how good Syracuse's zone is on a year-to-year basis, and his teams' history of being relatively underwhelming in NCAA Tournament play is certainly a knock on him. He's a wildly impressive 44-13 in first- and second-round games, but the flip side of this being Boeheim's fifth Final Four is that he's only made five despite 17 Sweet Sixteens, and that five is one more than Billy Donovan had since 2000, and two fewer than Tom Izzo's had since 1999.
No. 4: Jay Wright, Villanova
Key stat: Second Final Four (2009, Villanova)
Prior to this year, the last two subheads on Wright's Wikipedia page under "Villanova"were "Second Round Upset" and "Another Second Round Upset." It's not entirely fair to say that he has underachieved, given how Villanova has struggled to attract NBA-caliber players, but Villanova's Sweet Sixteen drought between 2009 and 2016 is a bit damning, and Wright's 18-12 record in NCAA Tournament action isn't far removed from Kruger's mark. Given that Kruger's managed those numbers at schools that weren't basketball powers when he got there, and that Wright has unarguably revived Villanova, he lands at the last spot in this admittedly loaded list.
- The EfficiencHeat Check — named by Chip Patterson — is a team's points per possession on offense and defense in the NCAA Tournament, based on KenPom'spossessions totals for all teams listed. As always, this measure isn't exactly predictive, because of sample size, but it's meant to be sort of a thermometer, telling us how hot or lukewarm a team has been of late.
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