2016 NCAA Tournament: Final Four schedule, scores and highlights

The 2016 NCAA Tournament is in the books. Sixty-eight teams started it with life a few weeks ago, and 67 died agonizing March Madness deaths over the course of the single-elimination tournament.

This post isn’t about congratulating Villanova, though. The Wildcats beat North Carolina in the national championship game at the Final Four on Monday night, and good for them. They’ll get many tributes in the coming days and weeks, including the always popular One Shining Moment short film that airs after the title game every year.

Popular Internet meme Michael Jordan happened to attend North Carolina in the early 1980s before he went on to a relatively successful career in American professional basketball.

Jordan, who nowadays splits his time between being an owner of the NBA’s Charlotte Hornets and being photoshopped onto the faces of losing sports figures, made an appearance at the Final Four in Houston on Monday night. That’s where his Tar Heels are facing Villanova for the national championship, so Jordan joined Craig Sager, Turner’s inspiring sideline reporter, for a nice interview during the second half of the game.

College basketball’s national championship game on Monday night between North Carolina and Villanova figures to be really, really good. But it’s hard not to get the impression that it could be all downhill from here because the game opened up with an absolutely stirring rendition of the national anthem, boomed out from midcourt at NRG Stadium in Houston.

The man behind the microphone on this gem is named Generald Wilson. He’s got an incredible voice and seems to have a great story, too.

A loss in the Final Four is crushing for a coach, but Jim Boeheim didn’t let that get in the way of telling Craig Sager how he feels about him. Sager spoke with the coach moments after Syracuse lost to North Carolina and after a minute of basketball talk, Boeheim wanted Sager to know something from his heart:

This was a very cool moment. Kudos to Coach Boeheim, and we’re all thinking about you, Craig Sager.

Final Four evening was sleepy. Villanova obliterated Oklahoma 95-51 in a record-setting blowout, then North Carolina romped over Syracuse in a 17-point win that didn’t feel that close. It was the largest combined margin of victory in Final Four history. And that meant two of the final three games of the college basketball season were, well, boring.

But while it made for an uninteresting Saturday night, it means Monday should be great. North Carolina and Villanova have left no opponent unwhooped. They’re both playing like juggernauts right now, and our national championship should be amazing.

Syracuse’s surprising NCAA Tournament run has come to an end in the Final Four. The Orange were knocked out by fellow ACC nemesis North Carolina when the Tar Heels ran out to an 83-66 win. Roy Williams’ squad is heading to the national title game for the ninth time in school history, and the first time since 2009.

The game started off back-and-forth, with neither team gaining an obvious advantage early in the first half. The Tar Heels particularly struggled with their three-point shot, missing their first nine attempts from beyond the arc. But despite UNC’s shooting struggles, it was still pulling off neat plays, such as this Brice Johnson tip-in dunk.

No.

Villanova just laid the most vicious whooping in Final Four history. The Wildcats beat Oklahoma 95-51, a 44-point romp that set the record for largest margin of victory in a Final Four game, and they’ll be playing for a national title.

Everything worked for Nova against Oklahoma. In an arena where it’s been hard for teams to shoot threes, the Wildcats shot 11-for-18 from deep. They were even better inside the arc, shooting 24-for-31 from 2-point range. Even on plays where Oklahoma played great defense -- and, to be honest, there weren’t a ton of them -- Villanova found a way to score.

Before Villanova eviscerated Oklahoma, no one had ever won by more than 34 points in a Final Four. No one in the 2016 tournament had beat a team by more than 39! Villanova won by 44. It was brutal, vicious and left us all a bit shell shocked at just how violently the Wildcats knocked down the Sooners.

There are two stretches where Oklahoma flatlined. They survived the first one, sort of, because Villanova briefly stopped scoring as well. They couldn’t overcome the second, where the Sooners watched Villanova rattle off a 25-0 run that put the game away for good.

We understand that attending a live basketball game merits a different experience than simply watching one on television. You get to feel the electricity in the air during a close game, plus there are nachos every 20 feet so you’ll be happy, full, and attentive.

But these seats might not be worth it, especially when you consider the price and the view. If you’re looking to find tickets on a site like PrimeSport, you’re going to spend a few hundred bucks to watch the championship game from that seat.

Saturday was not a good night to be an Oklahoma Sooner.

Villanova put a 44-point beating on Oklahoma in a national semifinal, the largest loss a team has ever taken in the Final Four. It was the most comprehensive defeat in the history of college basketball’s premier event. It was also painful for the remarkably simple way it happened: The Sooners couldn’t hit a thing, and they couldn’t get Villanova to miss.

Villanova destroyed Oklahoma by a 95-51 score in the first national semifinal of the Final Four on Saturday night. With their victory, the most lopsided ever in a Final Four, Jay Wright’s Wildcats advanced to face either North Carolina or Syracuse in the national championship game Monday night.

To win, the Wildcats jumped to a double-digit halftime lead with a late-first-half spurt, then poured it on after the break. They went on a 25-0 run during the second half, turning the contest into a complete bloodbath.

Oklahoma’s Jordan Woodard was fouled on a three-pointer and knocked down his first two free throws. Usually, four-point plays involve making the initial jumper, but Woodard’s way was more creative: miss the third shot, wait until it hits the rim, burst into the lane and follow up his own miss with an athletic layup that looked like it was start out of a game of 21. The Sooners are still trailing, but this was a huge play for Oklahoma brilliantly executed by Woodard.

You know who that play reminds us of? Nearby Oklahoman basketball player Russell Westbrook. If you get compared to that guy, you’re doing something right.

For most of the first half of Oklahoma-Villanova, the lights reflecting off the floor of NRG Stadium were distractingly loud, as you can see above. Dozens of people were upset about it on Twitter, and honestly, it was a bit of a baffling error for TBS to make.

Good news! TBS had Twitter open and they heard your complaints. Coming back from a commercial break late in the first half, the feed suddenly looked like this. Ahhhhhh. That’s much better.

It’s finally time for the Final Four, with the NCAA Tournament’s field of 68 teams down to a pair of national semifinals on Saturday night, In the first game, Oklahoma faces Villanova. In the second, North Carolina meets Syracuse.

The most common viewing mistake around this year’s games will probably be that lots of people will flick on CBS around 6 p.m. ET on Saturday, expecting to find the Final Four. They will be disappointed! The games are on TBS, with alternate broadcasts split between TNT and truTV (It’s a thing.). So, figure out which higher-numbered channel is TBS on your cable, and you’ll be able to watch the games.

It’s hard to believe that the end is near. It feels like just yesterday we were staying up all night together to watch East Tennessee State take down Green Bay, and now we’re gearing up for the final three games of the 2015-16 season. I’m not crying, Lonesome Dove is just on in the background and Gus is refusing to give up his other leg.

But now’s not the time to let up or lose focus. On the contrary, we must adequately educate ourselves in order to be properly equipped for this season’s final stop.

These days, being a senior college basketball star comes with almost as many questions as it does accolades.

Should he have turned pro last year? If he’s so good, what is he still doing here? How do you think his age will affect his draft stock? Hasn’t he been there since, like, 1997?

The Final Four begins on Saturday with a national semifinal between the Villanova Wildcats and Oklahoma Sooners. Both teams are No. 2 seeds in the NCAA Tournament and have looked like juggernauts in getting this far, so the game should be a doozy between two teams at the top of their games – and featuring some of the best individual talent anywhere.

Oklahoma’s story starts with prolific scoring guard Buddy Hield, who has poured in 29 points per game during the Sooners’ four tournament wins. Hield narrowly missed out to Michigan State’s Denzel Valentine for National Player of the Year honors, but he’s as good as it gets. The Sooners have plenty behind Hield, too, including another pair of effective guards, Isaiah Cousins and Jordan Woodard.

After Oklahoma and Villanova tip off the Final Four at 6:09 p.m. ET on Saturday night, the next game is North Carolina’s tilt with Syracuse two-and-a-half hours later. The Tar Heels and Orange will play for the right to face either the Sooners or Wildcats for all the NCAA Tournament’s marbles on Monday night. All games will take place at NRG Stadium in Houston.

North Carolina is nearly a 10-point favorite, and the Heels probably should win this game going away. They have the best player on the floor in do-everything forward Brice Johnson, and they are a No. 1 seed for a reason. Syracuse isn’t nearly as pedigreed, but the Orange have spent the tournament doing things they weren’t supposed to do, and maybe Jim Boeheim’s team has one or two more tricks up its sleeve.

Villanova and Oklahoma will play in a national semifinal at the Final Four in Houston on Saturday night. It should be a thriller between two No. 2 seeds, each making its second Final Four appearance since the turn of the millennium.

Oklahoma’s biggest story is, obviously, Buddy Hield. The senior guard is the nation’s deadliest scorer. He’s averaging 25 points per game this season, which is pedestrian compared with the 29 he’s posted in the Sooners’ first four tournament games. Hield is a bad, bad man and his team’s headliner, but the Sooners run deeper than just him; they have three other double-figure scorers, all juniors and seniors, to pair with a top-15 defense by adjusted efficiency.

The Final Four begins Saturday night, with back-to-back national semifinals kicking off college basketball’s greatest spectacle. Villanova faces Oklahoma in the first game, as the No. 2 seeds in the South and West regions duel for a spot in Monday’s title game. Afterward, North Carolina faces Syracuse, matching up two programs with a ton of tradition, only one of which was widely expected to get this far.

On the surface, the Villanova-Oklahoma semifinal is likely to be the more competitive of the two. The Wildcats and Sooners entered the tournament on the same seed line, and both teams are elite on both sides of the ball. Villanova has been a little bit better over the course of the season, probably, but Oklahoma has Buddy Hield, who’s developed into college basketball’s most lethal assassin and is averaging a cool 29 points in four tournament games.

The Final Four has arrived.

Major college basketball’s two national semifinals will be held on Saturday night at NRG Stadium in Houston. In the first, West Region No. 2 seed Oklahoma faces South Region No. 2 Villanova. In the second, East Region No. 1 North Carolina faces Midwest No. 10 Syracuse, which has taken up something of a Cinderella mantle despite its dual-role as a villain.

The Final Four is set, and the NCAA Tournament is three games from the finish line. Saturday features two national semifinals, one between Oklahoma and Villanova and the other between North Carolina and Syracuse. Both should be lots of fun, and you can get caught up with our printable bracket right here.

It’s a tired truism that anything can happen in March Madness, but this year has proven that point obviously correct. With that in mind, North Carolina is the clear Final Four favorite, with Las Vegas oddsmakers slapping 1-to-1 odds on the Tar Heels to bring a national championship back to Chapel Hill in a few days. After the scratch favorite Heels, Villanova’s odds are 11-to-4, Oklahoma’s are 7-to-2 and Syracuse’s are 8-to-1.

Both Syracuse and North Carolina have been here before, but the two programs arrive at this week’s Final Four under drastically different pretenses.

The generally dominant Tar Heels emerged unscathed as the East Region’s No. 1 seed, while Syracuse floundered at the end of the season, narrowly made the NCAA Tournament and has since mounted a four-game run as a No. 10 seed, all the way to the Final Four. So two programs with plenty of recent historical success are standing in each other’s way of a little bit more on Saturday night in the second of two national semifinals.