IN the three-week, 68-school U.S. National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) Division I men’s basketball tournament where there were a lot of twists and turns and relatively-high 20 off-chart results (a higher-seeded team losing to a lower-seeded team), the winner of the 67th and final game turned out to be just what many prognosticators and Las Vegas oddsmakers had expected to be triumphant.
The nationally second-ranked Villanova Wildcats topped the 80th NCAA competitions for the second time in three seasons with an emphatic 79-62 victory over the seventh-rated Michigan Wolverines in the championship game witnessed by a crowd of 67,831 at the Alamodome in San Antonio, Texas, USA last April 3 (Philippine time).
The Wildcats finished with a 36-4 record and earned their third national crown in school history following title wins in 1985 (66-64 vs. Georgetown) and 2016 (77-74 vs. North Carolina).
‘Nova won all its six games in the single-elimination tournament by a double-digit margin to become the fourth team to turn in the trick. The others were Michigan State (2000), Duke (2001) and North Carolina (2009).
The Philadelphia, Pennsylvania-based school, which whipped fellow regional No. 1 seed Kansas, 95-79, in the semifinals, also became the first team to win its two Final Four games by 16 points or more since Lew Alcindor (who subsequently discarded his Catholic name and legally became Kareem Abdul-Jabbar after turning Muslim) and the 1968 University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA) Bruins.
It was unheralded redshirt sophomore reserve Donte DiVincenzo who steered the Wildcats to the easy victory over the Wolverines.
The 6-foot-5 redhead guard with the monicker “Big Ragu” buried five triples and collected 31 points off the bench. In the process, DiVincenzo earned Final Four Most Outstanding Player honors. He shot 10-for-15 from the field, including 5-for-7 from beyond the arc, to join UCLA legends Abdul-Jabbar and Bill Walton as the only players to chalk up 30 or more points while shooting better than 66 percent from the floor in a Final Four game.
Helping out DiVincenzo, who missed the 2016 Final Four due to a knee injury, was All-America Third Team selection Mikal Bridges, a 6-foot-7 junior swingman who went 7-for-12 from the field and totaled 19 points. Jalen Brunson, a 6-foot-3 junior guard who was voted the Associated Press’ College Player of the Year (the first Wildcat ever to capture the award) and was the leading vote-collector on the AP All-America First Team, settled for nine points.
Wildcat teammates DiVincenzo, Bridges, Brunson, and Eric Paschall (a 6-foot-9 junior forward) made it to the Final Four All-Tournament squad, along with Michigan’s German-born Moritz (Moe) Wagner (a 6-foot-11 junior center).
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