Finalists contrast on court
SAN ANTONIO — Villanova men’s basketball coach Jay Wright’s custom-tailored suits are as sharp as the Wildcats’ 3-point shooting. The game-day attire for Michigan coach John Beilein is reflective of the Wolverines’ emphasis on old-school fundamentals and defense.
“At the end of the game tomorrow, he’ll still look like George Clooney and I will look like Columbo by Peter Falk,” Beilein said Sunday. “I’d like to say Kevin Costner, but I can’t go there.”
For their drastically different styles, both in dress and how their teams play, one of them will celebrate a national championship late tonight. Wright will either get his second title in three seasons, or the 65-year-old Beilein his first in 40 years as a college head coach.
Villanova (35-4), the No. 1 seed from the East Region, set records for 3-pointers made for the season (454) and the NCAA tournament (66), and their 18 against fellow No. 1 seed Kansas in Saturday’s 95-79 win broke a Final Four mark.
The title game in the Alamodome, set for a 9:20 tipoff and televised by TBS, will be the first time in this NCAA tourney the third-seeded Wolverines (33-7) face a top-five seed. They beat the Nos. 14, 6, 7 and 9 seeds in the West Region before
overcoming a 10-point deficit after halftime Saturday night to top Loyola-Chicago, only the fourth No. 11 seed to reach a Final Four.
Loyola shot 1-for-10 from 3-point range against the nation’s No. 3 defense in terms of efficiency.
After Kris Jenkins hit a buzzer-beating 3-pointer against North Carolina to win the national championship two years ago — Villanova’s first since 1985 under coach Rollie Massimino — the now 56-yearold Wright noticed people looking at him differently.
“Mostly positively,” said Wright, who is in his 17th season at Villanova after seven years at Hofstra. “But sometimes if you don’t handle it well, they look at you negatively. They just look at you a lot more. You just get a lot more attention.”
Beilein has an impressive coaching résumé with 799 wins when including his previous stops — at Erie Community College, Nazareth, LeMoyne, Canisius, Richmond and West Virginia. What’s missing is a national title.
Of course, Beilein would love to have a championship — the Wolverines made the 2013 title game and lost to Louisville. The Cardinals were later forced to vacate that title because of NCAA sanctions in the wake of an embarrassing sex scandal. It was the first time a Division I men’s basketball program was stripped of a national championship.
Going into his 1,260th game as a head coach, Beilein doesn’t anticipate the outcome of tonight’s game changing how he sees his career.
“You hang in there and you just do your absolute best every single day. And someday you’re going to say, I gave it everything I had, and if I’m falling into my grave, that’s OK too,” Beilein said. But you just do everything you can to be the best coach, the best mentor, the best teacher, the best husband, the grandfather, father every day, and you go do it again. And that’s all I want to be.”
Michigan is in its seventh national title game. The Wolverines have won only one, beating Seton Hall in overtime in 1989.
After Michigan wrapped up the first national semifinal Saturday by finally putting away Loyola, Beilein didn’t get a chance to tune into the Villanova-Kansas game until after halftime. By then, the Wildcats had already matched the Final Four single-game record with 13 of their 3s. They had a double-digit lead throughout after jumping ahead 14-4 in the first four minutes, and they added 10 more points before Kansas scored again.
“I’m sure glad I didn’t get to see it,” Beilein said. “It was an offensive clinic against a very good defensive team.”
Tonight, it will be up to Beilein’s very good defense to try to prevent another one.