Villanova and North Carolina Have Combined for the Most Dominant Championship Game Runs Of the Modern Era
By Jason Lisk
The Villanova Wildcats and North Carolina Tar Heels will meet Monday night in the Final. Both dominated their Final Four matchups, and we can say that the two best teams in this tournament will play for the title. Villanova won a close game against #1 overall seed Kansas in the Elite Eight, but has otherwise obliterated opponents throughout the tournament. North Carolina has won every game by double digits.
How dominant have these runs been? Here is a list of the combined point margins for the top 20 finalists since 1985, when the tournament went to the 64-team field, and when the 3-point shot was introduced a few years later.
Both teams appear on this list. The only other years where that happened were 2008, when Kansas and Memphis met in the final, and 2001, when Duke and Arizona met.
Here is a summary of the ten finals since 1985 with the highest combined point margins for the two participants:
In a year when people were bemoaning the lack of great teams and speculating that this tournament was wide open, we’ve seen two of the best five teams all year (remember, Villanova was probably a #1 seed until they lost in the Big East final) go on two of the most dominant runs in tournament history. Sports–it’s rarely predictable.