With Villanova and Oklahoma clinching spots in the Final Four, the beauty in sports shines through once again.
Call them a fluke. Call them a one-hit wonder. Call them whatever you want to call them, because it doesn’t really matter anymore.
On Saturday night, in the only all-chalk matchups of the NCAA tournament’s Elite Eight, both of the No. 2 seeds took down the top seeds, doing so in different fashion and rewriting their recent histories in the process.
Oklahoma spent all season ranked in the top 10, earning a number of key wins and delighting fans with their jump shooting and free-flowing offense led by Wooden Award favorite Buddy Hield. From his 46-point outing in Lawrence to now, Hield has captured the attention of the nation with his infectious attitude and, yes, ability to light it up from the outside at any given moment.
During his rise to the top, Hield’s scoring ability has been the main focus, but how he and the Sooners have gotten here is far more important.
From role player on a mediocre team, Hield and the Sooners have come a long way to get to the Final Four, something they earned after stomping on the top-seeded Oregon Ducks for most of the game before settling for an 80-68 victory in Anaheim on Saturday.
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In his first year with the team, Hield earned playing time and his stats were modest, scoring in double figures just seven times. As a team, Oklahoma struggled to put together consistency, lost their last three games of the season, including a 15-point loss to San Diego State in the NCAA tournament as a No. 10 seed.
A quick glance shows how far the Sooners have come since then as few people — save the diehard Boomer Sooner crowd — could tell you who the starters were on that 2012-13 team.
Oklahoma started to figure things out a bit the next season, improving from a No. 10 seed to a No. 5 seed in 2014, but the results were the same. The Sooners, who at the time were young and inexperienced despite being talented, were upset by a veteran North Dakota State squad in the first round.
Hield and the Sooners again improved the next year, this time avoiding the early exit and getting to the Sweet 16. Unfortunately, they were met by the team of destiny that was the Michigan State Spartans and were unable to make it any farther in the tournament.
Rather than become a second-round pick in the NBA, Hield, already the reigning Big 12 Player of the Year, opted to return to finish what he started. He worked to improve his shooting, his scoring and his team’s overall standing.
All of these things were accomplished and so much more. Hield jumped his scoring average up by eight points per game, his three-point shooting by 10 percent and his team’s win total up by five games, advancing them to Final Four for the first time in 14 years.
Now, Hield has a chance to accomplish something only two other NPOYs have done this millennium: win a national championship. Regardless of what his draft stock may or may not be this year, Hield’s finishing his career in style.
Hield’s Final Four opponent has also come through some adversity to get to this point.
Villanova has been one of the top programs in college basketball under Jay Wright, averaging 23 wins per year and having three years of 30 wins or more. The Wildcats have always been a threat, but their postseason success hasn’t matched that regular-season success.
Since their last Final Four appearance in 2009, Villanova had failed to reach the NCAA tournament’s second weekend five straight times, including last year as a No. 1 seed. Much was made about the Wildcats being a regular-season-only team, not being able to live up that dominance in the postseason.
With a dominant win over Miami in the Sweet 16, Villanova shed that label a bit, but Kansas was set to be a new challenge, the likes of which Wright’s squad hadn’t seen since December due to the Big East being a two-horse race for most of the year.
The game went exactly as you’d expect from two teams playing their best basketball at this point of the season. The defense shined through and the offenses clashed as neither team was able to get into rhythm. By the end, it came down to the things that have defined the Wildcats under Wright: grit, determination and heart.
Bodies on the floor and senior leadership by Ryan Arcidiacono gave Villanova the edge in the final minutes as the Wildcats knocked off the No. 1 overall seeded Kansas Jayhawks 64-59 to advance to the Final Four, effectively taking that regular-season-only label and shoving it down the throats of all that have written them off over the last few years.
With Oklahoma and Villanova battling for a spot in the national championship game, two of college basketball’s best stories collide in Houston.
In the Sooners, you have a team that has embraced its star, its leader and its top scorer, letting Hield go to work and do what he does best. His scoring is the story, but his fire is what’s carried Oklahoma to the Final Four, exceeding expectations and overcoming a stagnant last month of the season.
In the Wildcats, it’s a team with an axe to grind, an ability to show the nation that they are as good as expected and maybe even better. Though they don’t need to prove anything else, they’ll keep playing and keep battling, because that’s what Wright’s squad does.
Next: NCAA Tournament: Breaking Down The Elite Eight
These two teams have earned the right to play in Houston and have done enough to silence those that have doubted them over the last few years. In a four-year span, these two teams went from chokers to studs and, if all goes well, to champs.
If Houston has a problem, it’s that there’s too much good in these teams and their stories to see one of them lose next week.