Ultimate Guide to the 2016 Final Four
Unless you keep up with the NIT, CBI, CIT and Vegas 16, the gap between the Elite Eight and Final Four is by far the longest lull in the action during the college basketball season, leaving quite the void to be filled with off-court storylines.
But it's just too much to keep up with, right? Plus, with incessant news of players transferring, coaches coming and going and high school all-star games, it's tough to even separate the 2015-16 news from everything thereafter.
No need to sweat. We've got you covered.
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This is your one-stop shop for the stories and topics you need to know about before the final weekend of the season commences. If you feel the need to go above and beyond these overarching themes to find out about things like the ancient video games in Oklahoma's locker room, that's what Twitter is for.
The Unyielding Hield Bandwagon
Everywhere you look, it's Buddy Hield. On Wednesday afternoon alone, his face was plastered all over Twitter. The tweet from Bleacher Report's NBA account about the top 10 prospects in this year's Final Four featured a picture of Hield. Sports Illustrated's tweet about its experts' Final Four picks also included a Hield cover photo. And the tweet from Sam Vecenie's ranking of all 20 starters in the Final Four for CBS Sports? You guessed it. Another Hield picture.
This is neither surprising nor unwarranted. Despite a late surge from Michigan State's Denzel Valentine in the Player of the Year discussions, Hield has been the best player in the country all season long. And the off-court stories of his tireless work in the gym, his humble beginnings in the Bahamas and his decision to eschew the NBA draft for one more season to (successfully) prove his worthiness as a first-round pick only further endear him to college basketball fans.
Moreover, it's impossible to get this deep into the tournament without the media hopelessly latching on to one player. Last year, it was Frank Kaminsky. 2014 gave us Shabazz Napier mania. 2013 was Trey Burke and/or Mitch McGary. And remember Anthony Davis and Kemba Walker from 2012 and 2011, respectively? There's always someone, and Hield had far too many magical moments over the past few months to not be this year's guy.
At this point, we're just wondering if he'll make history. Hield is 67 points behind Michigan's Glen Rice for the all-time record in points scored in a single NCAA tournament (184 in 1989). He's also just 16 triples behind Stephen Curry for the NCAA record of three-pointers made in a single season (162 in 2008).
It's unlikely he reaches either of those marks with a maximum of two games remaining, but it was also unlikely that a kid who grew up shooting on makeshift hoops and shot just 19-of-80 (23.7 percent) from three-point range as a freshman would blossom into one of the greatest college basketball players in recent memory.
Greatness Overshadowed
Hield is awesome, but we have kind of lost our collective mind over him, repeatedly neglecting another senior whose stock has risen meteorically this season. Brice Johnson simply had the misfortune of putting up his most impressive numbers on nights when Hield was doing even more noteworthy things:
| Date | Brice Johnson's Stats (Opponent) | Buddy Hield's Stats (Opponent) |
| 12/19/15 | 27 points and nine rebounds (UCLA) | 33 points and three rebounds (Creighton) |
| 1/4/16 | 39 points and 23 rebounds (Florida St.) | 46 points, eight rebounds, seven assists (Kansas) |
| 1/9/16 | 16 points and eight assists (Syracuse) | 31 points, eight rebounds, five assists (Kansas St.) |
| 3/10/16 | 19 points, 10 rebounds, five blocks (Pitt) | 39 points, nine rebounds (Iowa St.) |
Jan. 4 was the biggest offender, as Johnson had one of the most absurd double-doubles in recent history, only for that night to forever be remembered as the one during which Hield had 46 points in a triple-overtime loss to No. 1 Kansas.
Even on Feb. 17 when Johnson had another monster night against Duke (29 points and 19 rebounds), he disappeared in the final 12 minutes as the bigger story of the night became Oklahoma losing to Texas Tech on a dreadful shooting night for the entire Sooners team, including Hield needing 16 shots to score just 16 points.
To be fair, Johnson had 23 double-doubles this season, and they didn't all coincide with big nights for Hield. In fact, up to this point in the tournament, North Carolina and Oklahoma have not played on the same day, leaving Johnson's eight-block game against Florida Gulf Coast and his three subsequent double-doubles to exist outside of Hield's shadow.
Yet even those box scores fell by the wayside as we instead marveled over crazy upsets, comebacks or both. For one reason or another, we've managed to continuously overlook the No. 1 player in the KenPom.com POY rankings—typically in favor of something that No. 2 (Hield) or No. 4 (Valentine) did.
While Johnson and Hield wouldn't actually be playing one-on-one any more than Hield and Ben Simmons did in late January, which star steals the spotlight would be a key if North Carolina and Oklahoma end up battling for all the marbles.
Respect Your Elders
In addition to Hield and Johnson, this Final Four is absolutely loaded with upperclassmen. Sure, we missed out on one final weekend of making jokes about how old Perry Ellis actually is, but—assuming each team sticks with the rotation that got it here—there will be 10 seniors and five juniors among the 20 starters Saturday night.
And a few of the seniors have even been around for more than four years. Ryan Spangler played his freshman year at Gonzaga before transferring to Oklahoma and sitting out a year. Michael Gbinije followed the same career arc from Duke to Syracuse. Trevor Cooney redshirted for one year before beginning his career at Syracuse. And, let's be honest, it feels like we've been talking about Marcus Paige and Ryan Arcidiacono for at least a decade.
Based on the number of times we've heard about the importance of experience in March, you may think that's par for the course. But it hasn't been lately:
| Year | Seniors | Juniors | Sophomores | Freshmen | Avg. Years Exp. |
| 2016 | 10 | 5 | 3 | 2 | 3.15 |
| 2015 | 5 | 3 | 6 | 6 | 2.35 |
| 2014 | 7 | 5 | 3 | 5 | 2.7 |
| 2013 | 5 | 5 | 6 | 4 | 2.55 |
| 2012 | 4 | 5 | 7 | 4 | 2.45 |
Typically, there's one particularly young team skewing the numbers—Kentucky was responsible for all five freshmen in the 2014 Final Four, and at least one team in each of the past four Final Fours had at least three freshmen in its starting lineup. However, with two sophomores, North Carolina is the only team in this year's Final Four with multiple starters with fewer than three years of experience. And all four teams start at least two seniors.
No matter who wins Monday, there will be multiple players saying that all of their years of hard work finally paid off.
Third Time's the Charm? Think Again.
It has been mindlessly uttered over the past decade that it is difficult to beat a team three times in one season, but is there any evidence for that theory?
Because based on what happened this March, it couldn't be much further from the truth.
In the six major conferences (ACC, Big 12, Big East, Big Ten, Pac-12 and SEC), I found 22 instances of two teams meeting for a third time after one of the two teams won each of the first two meetings. In 18 of those games—otherwise read as 81.8 percent of them—the team that was 2-0 improved to 3-0.
Even in the four outliers, it's not like the team that had already been beaten twice was playing with a vengeance. Rather, the favorites simply failed to show up on offense. Villanova, Oklahoma and Vanderbilt lost by two-point margins to Seton Hall, West Virginia and Tennessee, respectively, while Texas Tech lost by five to TCU. Not one of those eight teams scored so much as 70 points.
If you're picking the Orange to pull off the upset because you believe their defense can fluster North Carolina, their three-point shooting will finally show up in the tournament or the "Nobody believes in us" factor is enough motivation for them to topple the mighty Tar Heels, more power to you. Just make sure the crux of your argument isn't that it's hard to beat a team three times in the same season, because it isn't.
The Elephants in the Classroom
But until that game begins, the story of North Carolina vs. Syracuse that everyone brings up will have nothing to do with this year's box scores and everything to do with grades from previous years.
We won't belabor that storyline here—ESPN's Eamonn Brennan summarized it nicely if you're new to the program or need a refresher on what we're talking about—but the elevator pitch is that one half of this 2016 Final Four pairing (Syracuse) banned itself from the 2015 postseason, while most assume the other (UNC) will be banned from the 2017 postseason.
Why do we care, though?
In the NFL, the Denver Broncos' Von Miller was suspended for the first six games of the 2013 season for trying to cheat drug tests, but he served his penalty and was eventually rewarded with Super Bowl MVP honors this past February. And even in the interminable two-week stretch between the conference championship games and the Super Bowl, the "former cheater" storyline never saw the light of day.
Syracuse was penalized (and is still being penalized with fewer scholarships per season) for its academic misconduct and "lack of institutional control," but it got here anyway. Why can't we just marvel at how amazing it is that a team with basically no bench spent more than a quarter of the season without its head coach and is still in the national semifinals? There's no need to muddy up this accomplishment by mentioning things the university did wrong in the past.
Likewise, there's no point in bringing up the Wainstein Report when it involves literally none of this year's Tar Heels, but it keeps happening anyway. It's taking much longer than anyone initially expected, but that fallout will eventually come, and it won't affect this year's team.
But this is the same kind of pointless off-court drama that Kentucky had to deal with in 2012 when bitter fans tried to demean that national championship by joking/insinuating that the title would eventually be vacated, because of the issues that John Calipari dealt with at Massachusetts and Memphis. But that championship still counts, as would the title that either North Carolina or Syracuse will be playing for Monday night.
Unfortunately, it just might take a little time before some people are willing to mention it without an academic asterisk.
The NRG Stadium Effect
Poor previous grades is the narrative from the right side of the bracket that won't die, but poor projected shooting might be even more beaten to death on the left side.
NRG Stadium produced the most unwatchable national championship game in the history of sports in 2011 when Connecticut and Butler shot a combined 26.1 percent from the field in a 53-41 snoozefest that had us wondering if college basketball was irreparably broken.
Hopefully we have better luck this year with some help from the rule changes from this past offseason, because the last six tournament games at this venue were brutal:
| Game (Year and Round) | FG% | 3P% | Total Points |
| UConn vs. Kentucky (2011 F4) | 39.6 | 25.6 | 111 |
| VCU vs. Butler (2011 F4) | 37.6 | 35.6 | 132 |
| UConn vs. Butler (2011 NC) | 26.1 | 22.7 | 94 |
| Duke vs. Utah (2015 S16) | 39.0 | 28.0 | 120 |
| Gonzaga vs. UCLA (2015 S16) | 39.6 | 18.8 | 136 |
| Duke vs. Gonzaga (2015 E8) | 40.6 | 34.5 | 118 |
| Average | 37.0 | 27.6 | 118.5 |
It may look like Duke and Gonzaga finally broke the curse a little bit in last year's Elite Eight, but they finished last season respectively ranked No. 3 and No. 1 in the nation in field-goal percentage. If we remove the three games they played at NRG Stadium, Duke and Gonzaga shot a combined 51.6 percent from the field last season. So, yeah, 40.6 percent is still pretty ugly, given the offensive prowess of the participants.
Enter Oklahoma and Villanova. Each No. 2 seed averages 24.4 three-point attempts per game and takes more than 40 percent of its shots from beyond the arc. Villanova has cut back a little bit to just 20.0 attempts per game in the tournament, but Oklahoma is still letting it fly like always.
If any team is going to figure out how to shoot in this dome, though, it has to be Oklahoma, right? Hield is shooting 46.5 percent from three on the season, and Jordan Woodard is right behind him at 45.9 percent.
Coaching Legends
It's almost impossible to get to the Final Four without a great coach, but this year's quartet feels extra special.
Jim Boeheim, Lon Kruger, Roy Williams and Jay Wright have a combined 120 years of head coaching experience at the Division I level. Wright is the least experienced of the bunch, and he first became a head coach at Hofstra on April 15, 1994—less than one month after his current senior point guard (Ryan Arcidiacono) was born (March 26, 1994).
Before you think that's meant to make Wright feel old, though, note that Boeheim already had 159 career wins and three Sweet 16 appearances by the time Wright graduated from Bucknell in 1983.
The point is these guys have been around for a little while. Long enough to make 88 NCAA tournament appearances and now 17 Final Fours, at any rate.
However, they only have three national championships between them. Kruger and Wright are both looking for their first, and regardless of whether Oklahoma or Villanova wins Saturday night, that coach will be making the first national championship appearance of his career Monday. Williams has a pair of titles with the Tar Heels (2005 and 2009), and Boeheim won it all in 2003 with some kid named Carmelo Anthony, who ironically enough beat Williams' favored Kansas squad.
Not one of these coaches will ever catch John Wooden's record of 10 national championships, but Boeheim could become just the 15th coach in college basketball history to win multiple titles, while Williams would join quite the exclusive club of coaches with three or more, tying Bob Knight and Jim Calhoun for fourth all time behind Wooden, Mike Krzyzewski (five) and Adolph Rupp (four).
One way or the other, a lot of history will be made in Houston this weekend.
Kerry Miller covers college basketball for Bleacher Report. You can follow him on Twitter @kerrancejames.
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