Villanova Wipes Out Oklahoma and a Record to Reach the Title Game

The junior Josh Hart (3) shot 10 of 12 from the field and led Villanova with 23 points. The Wildcats, seeking their first national title since 1985, limited the Oklahoma star Buddy Hield to 9 points. Credit Eric Gay/Associated Press

HOUSTON — In a 95-51 demolition of Oklahoma on Saturday night, Villanova not only punched its ticket to the national title game but also set a standard for Final Four blowouts. Through 78 Final Fours — dating to the first, in 1939, which also featured the Wildcats and the Sooners — 44 points is the largest margin of victory.

That includes games involving the U.C.L.A. teams that were part of seven straight national championships; Bob Knight’s great Indiana teams; the high-scoring 1991 Nevada-Las Vegas team; the Duke team that beat that U.N.L.V. team. Whichever great college team is sepia-sketched in your memory as historically dominant, know that it did not do what Villanova did Saturday.

Consider Bill Russell. Bill Bradley. Bill Walton. Many great college basketball players not named Bill: Wilt Chamberlain, Michael Jordan, Christian Laettner, Anthony Davis. None have participated in so spectacular a rout.

“They made shots,” Oklahoma’s Buddy Hield said after his final college game. “We were trying to find a way to make shots. They just played terrific tonight.”

The second-seeded Wildcats (34-5) indeed made shots: 11 of 18 3-point attempts, a 61.1 percent accuracy rate, and 35 of 49 over all from the field, or 71.4 percent. Villanova’s field-goal percentage was the second highest in Final Four history, surpassed only by that of the 1985 Villanova team, a No. 8 seed that upset Patrick Ewing and Georgetown in the title game.

Hield entered Saturday’s game as the second-leading scorer and most effective 3-point shooter in Division I. In his senior year, he built on catch-and-shoot wing play that had led to his being named the Big 12 player of the year as a junior. Hield added the ability to create shots off the dribble, whether by driving to the hoop or by taking step-back 3-point jumpers that have drawn comparisons to Stephen Curry’s game.

But nearly as impressive as Villanova’s offensive attack was its defensive performance. The Wildcats held Hield to 9 points — his second-lowest total of the season — on 4-for-12 shooting, with just one 3-pointer.

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Oklahoma’s Buddy Hield, left, on Saturday. Villanova, seeking its first national title since 1985, limited him to 9 points. Credit Streeter Lecka/Getty Images

Villanova’s frantic defense — sometimes pressing, sometimes man-to-man, sometimes zone, always aggressive — flustered the Sooners.

Hield seemed to receive more open looks in the second half, but he struggled to convert them, missing all three of his 3-point attempts.

Oklahoma (29-8) was not exactly a surprise entrant in the Final Four. It was a No. 2 seed that had already knocked off No. 3-seeded Texas A&M and No. 1-seeded Oregon. The Sooners had even beaten Villanova by 28 points in December. On Saturday, with Villanova creating 17 turnovers and holding Oklahoma 29 points under its average of 80 per game, that earlier game felt as if from the Mesozoic Era.

Villanova players had spent several days telling anyone who would listen that no matter how well known the team’s four-guard, perimeter-oriented offensive sets were, and no matter how much flashier 3-pointers and fast breaks might be, defense was what made the Wildcats tick.

“We don’t care too much about offense,” Mikal Bridges, a redshirt freshman, said recently, adding: “Us stepping up on defense is just the biggest thing. I’d rather have that than just making shots.”

After Saturday’s game, the junior Josh Hart said: “Obviously we love when we can hit shots. But this program is really built on just dialing in defensively, being tough.”

Source: Nytimes.com