Nobody can claim to know exactly what’s going to happen in Monday’s national championship game between North Carolina and Villanova. The Tar Heels and Wildcats have distinguished themselves as the best teams in the country, and both have been so comprehensively dominant so far in the tournament that it’s a fool’s errand to be confident about much of anything heading into the title game. And it seems like computers and people are split on what to expect.
North Carolina vs. Villanova 2016 picks and predictions: Tar Heels are the favorite, but not by much
North Carolina is the slim betting favorite. Some popular statistical models are split.
The March Madness prediction model at FiveThirtyEight gives North Carolina a 54 percent chance to win its sixth national championship. Ken Pomeroy’s model pegs Villanova as the No. 1 team nationally and UNC as No. 2, giving the Wildcats a 56 percent chance to win the game. Pomeroy’s system projects a 77-76 final score for Villanova. It’s going to be tight.
Bettors like North Carolina just a little bit more. The line could wiggle around as we get closer to game time, but the Tar Heels were 2.5-point favorites on the eve of the game. That spread opened at 3 and got thinner, which isn’t surprising given how close this should be.
Personally, I'm leaning toward North Carolina. I think Villanova is the best team in the country, but North Carolina has a slightly better group of post scorers who could wear down the Wildcats over the course of the game. Villanova forwards Daniel Ochefu, Kris Jenkins, Darryl Reynolds and Mikal Bridges are all quality offensive players, but they'll have to expend a lot of energy dealing with North Carolina's Kennedy Meeks, Brice Johnson, Justin Jackson and Isaiah Hicks. Villanova has an amazing group of guards to counter that, but then again, so does Carolina.
This one, though, could go either way. The only thing I feel particularly confident about is that the game will be closer than what either of these teams has been involved with so far in the tournament. The two clubs have won their 10 combined Big Dance games by a 20-point average, with exactly one contest (Villanova’s win over top-seeded Kansas in the Elite Eight) decided by a single-digit margin. This game won’t be such a breeze.
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