Certain outcomes in sporting events can be simultaneously surprising and completely natural.
There’s no way North Carolina State should have beaten Villanova on Saturday evening in Pittsburgh, excusing the first top-two seed from the 2015 NCAA Tournament. Yet, there’s every way North Carolina State should have been able to pull off this upset.
On one hand, North Carolina State is the team that lost to Wake Forest, Boston College and Clemson. It’s the team which lost to Wofford at home. It’s the team which fell behind by 16 points to LSU in the round of 64 on Thursday. It’s the team which — like previous iterations of North Carolina State teams through the decades, including but not limited to those coached by Mark Gottfried — plays to its competition, down or up, and leaves you wondering why it’s not seven or eight seed lines higher on Selection Sunday.
On the other hand, North Carolina State is also the team which convincingly beat Duke and smothered North Carolina in Chapel Hill. North Carolina State is the team which took Virginia to the wire. It’s the team which erased that 16-point deficit against LSU to win in that round-of-64 game on Thursday.
North Carolina State — like LSU — was always a team that you’d never trust to beat a team like Villanova… but it was simultaneously a team with the capability of taking down the Wildcats.
You saw why on Saturday.
The most essential component of North Carolina State’s win is that its guards — Cat Barber in particular — were able to stop the dribble penetration of Villanova’s guards, chiefly Ryan Arcidiacono. Villanova’s guards have been able to get past defenders throughout the season, and when a ballhandler gets even a half-step on a defender, the structural integrity of the defense breaks down. Another area defender has to help. He leaves his man. The guard makes the kick-out pass. Splash. Easy three.
Since N.C. State’s guards were able to stop Villanova’s guards one-on-one, other wing defenders were able to stay on the perimeter to contest three-point shots. Of equal importance was the fact that Wolfpack’s interior defenders were therefore able to stay at home and protect the rim. Their size and power was more than enough to handle Villanova’s weak underbelly, its low-post tandem of JayVaughn Pinkston and Daniel Ochefu, who combined to hit just 3 of 12 shots on a day when only one Villanova player — the team’s best player, Darrun Hilliard — hit more than three field goals and scored more than 13 points. (Hilliard finished with 27 points on 8-of-18 shooting, 6-of-10 from three-point range.)
North Carolina State always had the athleticism and the power to match up with Villanova and a number of other elite teams. On Saturday, the Wolfpack put all the pieces together. Villanova, a guard-heavy team which was found to be lacking in the low post during a round-of-32 loss to Connecticut in last year’s NCAA tournament, was victimized in a similar manner this time. Villanova’s guards were able to get into the paint and set up their bigs at times in this game, but the ability to simply feed the post and allow a big man to do the work — without the guards always having to set the table — is something the Wildcats lacked. Again.
It helped send them out of the NCAAs before the Sweet 16 as a top-two seed. Again.
It feels like 2014. Again.
Yet, that’s only part of the story. Here’s the rest of it:
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One particular way in which the NCAA tournament fascinates us is that it is essentially comprised of three two-game tournaments. Yes, it’s a six-game tournament, but for all intents and purposes, it’s about three separate weekends at three sites, with four teams playing on one day and two winners playing two days later. The essential insight to flow from this construct is that game one and game two will often have very little to do with each other… except, perhaps, in terms of the teams that win their way into the second game of a weekend.
With this in mind, consider Villanova’s 2015 exit in light of its 2014 departure from the Big Dance. The similarities are profound.
Thursday, North Carolina State did not play well in general. The Wolfpack were awful for the balance of 30 minutes before they finally played up to their capabilities… and LSU missed a truckload of foul shots. North Carolina State earned a “scramble win,” a result attained not with structured basketball, but by managing a chaotic endgame sequence filled with purposeful fouling and other situation-specific maneuvers.
Having survived, though — having successfully endured a night in which it didn’t bring its A-game to the table — North Carolina State then brought its best brand of ball to the arena two days later. In that specific sense, Villanova was unlucky.
LSU played better over a majority of 40 minutes than N.C. State did. Had Villanova played LSU on this day, perhaps the Wildcats cruise to an easy win over a team that had already come out of the gates with a strong effort.
This is much like 2014, everyone.
Connecticut did not play well in its 2014 tournament opener against Saint Joseph’s, if you recall. The Hawks played a quality game for most of the night, while UConn tried to stay upright in the ring. Saint Joseph’s, up three with a minute left, was on the verge of landing a knockout punch, but UConn’s Amida Brimah scored on a putback and was also fouled. He made the tying free throw and sent the game into overtime. Connecticut gathered itself in the extra stanza and won.
The Huskies weren’t anywhere close to their best, but they advanced.
Then came UConn’s best game in the round of 32 a couple of days later. Villanova was run out of the gym in Buffalo, 77-65. Had Villanova played Saint Joseph’s, not only does UConn not win the national title (or even make the Final Four). Villanova might very well have enjoyed a big home-court advantage in front of a roaring Big East crowd at Madison Square Garden. Instead, UConn (in The American, of course) gained that advantage and rode it all the way to a fourth national title.
It’s this specific detail — playing poorly in the first game of an NCAA tournament weekend but advancing, and then maxing out in the second game of the weekend — which links 2015 N.C. State-Villanova to 2014 UConn-Villanova, both in the round of 32.
Villanova was inadequate in the low post. Again. Villanova didn’t uphold a top-two seed. Again.
Yet, to be perfectly fair to the Wildcats, they’ve been bitterly unlucky in that Saint Joseph’s and LSU probably would have ushered them into the Sweet 16 these past two years.
Sports can be like that… especially March Madness.
