South regional 2-seed Villanova took vengeance in the Elite Eight on the team that unseated them as national No. 1, advancing over Kansas on Saturday night by the score of 64-59. With the win, the latest in this year's string of history-defying victories, the Wildcats booked a ticket to coach Jay Wright's first Final Four since 2009.
They should be taken seriously as a threat to win it.
Disrespect for Villanova is nothing new. Five consecutive first-weekend exits will do that to a team. If the rest of the nation has yet to take heed, though, this Wildcats team is throwing every label out the window.
They did more than just escape the first weekend of the 2016 tournament. They cruised through it. They obliterated it.
The first round, against 15-seed UNC-Asheville, went to script in a thirty-point victory. The same can hardly be said for fellow 2-seed Michigan State.
In the second round against 7-seed Iowa, ranked No. 25 in the season's final poll, 'Nova cleared the bench. What reason did they have not to sit the starters? The Wildcats led by 31 points - with 10 minutes left to play.
Villanova entered the Sweet Sixteen, the prize that had eluded Wright since that magical '09 tournament, at even odds against 3-seed Miami. The Hurricanes, No. 10 in the AP poll, shot a scorching 67 percent in the first half and still lost the game by 23.
It helped that Villanova's Kris Jenkins could do this.
After all of this, Ryan Arcidiacono and company remained underdogs to Bill Self's Kansas.
Defense beats offense, went the conventional wisdom, and Kansas could guard anybody. Well, Pomeroy says Villanova can play defense too, to the tune of seventh-most efficient defense in the nation.
Sure enough, the Wildcat defense locked down, restricting Kansas forward and leading scorer Perry Ellis to just four points on five attempts. The Cats also outhawked the Jayhawks, racking up 16 Kansas turnovers on the evening and holding the Big 12 champions under 60 points for the first time all season.
Once in a while, they also split the Kansas defense like this.
The next opponent in line, Buddy Hield, led Oklahoma, may be the only team in the nation with a claim to solving the Wildcats; their last meeting, on a neutral court in December, ended 78-55 in Oklahoma's favor.
If Villanova can shoot better than 12.5 percent on three-point attempts when next they meet the Sooners, expect a very different and much more competitive game. At this stage, every team is the equal of any other, and the skeptics are running out of ammunition.
The elephant in the room is long gone: Villanova is more than a first-weekend team. The weaknesses that plagued this squad from the onset have been addressed, compensated, and turned into strengths. From outside shooting and an eight-deep rotation to a seven-footer in the paint, the bully of the Big Five has the tools to break every heart left in the Dance.
How many teams does Villanova have to beat to shed the ignominy of the last five exits? How severely does a team need to defeat its opponents before receiving its just due?
In a wild season, we may have come to expect a wild conclusion. In that wide-open environment, why not Nova?
