No. 1 Villanova annihilated No. 9 Alabama in the NCAA tournament’s round of 32 on Saturday in Pittsburgh, 81-58. The Wildcats will play in the Sweet 16 for the sixth time in the last 14 seasons. That will be against the East Region’s No. 5 seed, West Virginia, or No. 13 Marshall. Jay Wright’s group will be heavily favored against whomever it plays next.
Villanova has the clearest path to the Final Four after dismantling Alabama
The Wildcats look like they’re in total control.
Geoff Burke-USA TODAY Sports
Nova looks like a complete juggernaut at the moment.
No. 1 seeds are expected to beat No. 9 seeds in the round of 32, but the way Villanova steamrolled Alabama was so impressive. The Tide are an athletic, well-coached team, and Collin Sexton is as dangerous a player as Villanova has seen all year. None of that mattered.
The Wildcats were plugged in. They made 17 of 41 three-pointers. They forced 15 turnovers and committed 10. They shared brilliantly, with someone posting an assist on 18 of their 25 baskets from the field. They led for 34:05 of clock time, compared to 22 seconds for the Tide. Their defense was asphyxiating, and no Tide player except five-star guard Collin Sexton could do anything at all with the ball in his hands. Even Sexton needed 14 field goal attempts to pile up his 17 points.
Donte DiVincenzo came off the bench to score 18 points, highlighted by a 5-of-11 three-point-shooting day. Mikal Bridges scored 1 point in the first half and then 22 in the second, leading Nova on a charge from a 5-point halftime lead to a 23-point final margin.
Villanova wasn’t perfect. The Cats’ raw field goal percentage was 40 to Alabama’s 42, and they shot seven fewer free throws. They still blew out a good opponent, and they did it by doing what they’re best at: shooting the hell out of the ball. Nova entered the day No. 1 in Division I with an effective field goal percentage of 60. (That’s a stat that weights three-pointers as 50 percent more valuable than twos. Nova can shoot the triple.)
Nova has never been much good at getting to the foul line. It’s not a great offensive rebounding team. But what they are good at is enough to destroy most opposition.
The East is now set up nicely for its top seed.
Nova has to win twice more before it can return to the Final Four, where it won the national championship two years ago. A lot could yet go wrong. But consider:
- Both West Virginia and Marshall can create chaos with the best of them — WVU with its relentless press, Marshall with its fast pace and willingness to chuck up about a million three-pointers per game. But the Wildcats are set up as well as anyone to handle chaos. Wright’s team does a great job taking care of the ball. It entered Saturday ranked 11th out of 351 Division I teams in offensive turnover rate. The Wildcats’ otherworldly shooting suggests they could pass through Press Virginia to set up a lot of open looks, then knock them down. If the matchup is Marshall, that’s tricky, but still, Marshall is a 13 seed.
- An Elite Eight matchup could come against any of No. 2 Purdue, No. 3 Texas Tech, No. 6 Florida, and No. 8 Seton Hall. One of those teams is a lot better than all the others, and that team, Purdue, just had its cornerstone center fracture his elbow. (Isaac Haas may or may not return.) Any of those other teams could be tough for varying reasons, but Villanova’s a lot better than all of them. Texas Tech has the country’s No. 3 defense by opponent-adjusted points per 100 possessions, but Villanova has its No. 1 offense.
The Wildcats know March disappointment better than most. Sandwiched around their title run in 2016, they’ve fallen short in all kinds of devastating ways. They have no guarantees, but they might find themselves with the simplest path to San Antonio of any No. 1 seed. (Kansas might have to go through Duke, Xavier through North Carolina, and Virginia, uh, well, let’s not talk about that.) Nova is definitely title favorite as of this weekend.
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