Final Four 2017 picks and predictions: Gonzaga and North Carolina are on a collision course

The 2017 Final Four has been dubbed “The Blue Bloods vs. The New Bloods,” and for good reason.

No team has made it to this round more than North Carolina, which is appearing in a national semifinal for the 20th time. That’s three more than UCLA and Kentucky, which sit in a tie for second place at 17.

For both Gonzaga and South Carolina, this is their first appearance on college basketball’s biggest stage. The Zags finally had their breakthrough moment in their 19th consecutive NCAA tournament appearance, while the Gamecocks hadn’t won a game in the Big Dance of any sort since 1973.

Then there’s Oregon, which played in a national semifinal when the Final Four wasn’t even really a thing. The Ducks won the first NCAA tournament all the way back in 1939, which featured just eight teams and only brought the two finalists to Evanston, Ill. to play in the championship game. For all intents and purposes, the Ducks are every bit as much a Final Four newbie as South Carolina and Gonzaga are.

One of those newbies is guaranteed to advance to Monday night’s national title game, while at least one is guaranteed to head home after Saturday. Let’s take a look at both national semifinals and make a prediction about who those teams are going to be.

6:09 p.m. (ET): CBS

It’s the nation’s No. 1 defense vs. the nation’s No. 2 defense in a game that might not be suitable for viewers with a refined basketball palate. It’s also a bit of an ironic reversal for Gonzaga, whose first moment on the sport’s biggest stage will come against the most surprising story of this year’s tournament and the Final Four’s de facto Cinderella.

South Carolina had won ugly all season before miraculously finding its offensive stride in the NCAA tournament. The Gamecocks have averaged better than 1.0 point per possession in all four of their games in the Big Dance, the first time they’ve hit that mark in four consecutive games all season.

The driving force behind USC’s offensive renaissance has been senior guard Sindarius Thornwell, the tournament’s leading scorer. Thornwell has scored between 24 and 29 points in each of South Carolina’s four tournament wins while also pulling down a total of 30 rebounds. Backcourt mate P.J. Dozier has also upped his offensive production in the tourney, averaging 15.3 ppg and shooting better than 50 percent from the floor.

Typically when shooting percentages are low and turnovers are high, it’s advantage South Carolina. That might not be the case on Saturday.

Gonzaga has a massive advantage over the Gamecocks inside. USC doesn’t list a true center on its roster, while the Zags have a lineup that boasts 7-foot, 300-pound beast Przemek Karnowski, potential one-and-done 7-foot freshman Zach Collins, and versatile 6’9 forward Johnathan Williams.

If South Carolina is able to limit guys like Nigel Williams-Goss and Jordan Matthews on the perimeter, they Gamecocks are still going to have to make sure that challenged misses from the outside don’t lead to uncontested makes around the rim.

Momentum could carry the Gamecocks for a while in the early stages of this game, but don’t expect it to carry them for 40 minutes. The bigger and more talented team will assert its dominance at some point and easily punch its ticket to Monday night.

Prediction: Gonzaga 78, South Carolina 63

8:49 p.m. (ET): CBS

While the first game of Saturday’s doubleheader has the potential to be clunky and gross for significant stretches, Game 2 figures to be its antithesis.

North Carolina and Oregon are both supremely athletic and talented teams that are willing to play an up-and-down style. If guys like Tyler Dorsey and Justin Jackson are as hot in the national semifinals as they’ve been in the preceding two weeks, then this could be the type of contest where we go eight or nine consecutive possessions without either team coming up empty on the offensive end.

The Ducks are playing so well right now that second team Associated Press All-American Dillon Brooks has been their third best player in the NCAA tournament. Dorsey is playing the best basketball of his career and has scored 20 or more points in seven straight games while Jordan Bell picked up Midwest Regional MVP honors after averaging 12.5 points and 12.5 rebounds per game.

Losing big man Chris Boucher for the season on the night before the Pac-12 tournament championship game forced Oregon coach Dana Altman to go with a four-guard lineup where Bell handles the bulk of the heavy lifting inside. While this lineup has had success since the start of the tournament, it could run into some serious issues against North Carolina.

The Tar Heels lead the nation in both rebounds per game and offensive rebounding percentage, coming down with better than 40 percent of their own missed shots. Those are a troubling pair of statistics for an Oregon team that ranks 179th in defensive rebound percentage.

Oregon does have some advantages though. The Ducks will likely try and spread UNC out and make their players try to defend guys like Brooks and Dorsey in some high pick-and-roll and pick-and-pop sets. That’s a dangerous situation for the Heels, who don’t have a player who matches up particularly well with Brooks on defense.

Both teams should have little trouble finding ways to score. The issue for Oregon is that North Carolina’s propensity for getting large chunks of points off second-chance opportunities could seemingly put the Ducks in a position where they have to play a near-perfect offensive game to win. Even though we saw Villanova do just that in consecutive games at last year’s Final Four, it might be asking too much for lightning to strike twice in such a short period of time.

Prediction: North Carolina 84, Oregon 79