What We’ve All Been Waiting For
It’s finally here.
For months, many have looked forward to the matchup that is upon us on Monday night: Illinois vs. North Carolina. The two teams had been battling it out at the top of the polls for most of the season; even while Illinois kept racking up the wins, North Carolina was blowing out many opponents, and a number of people felt that the Tar Heels were really the best team.
Monday night, that all gets settled at last.
On Saturday night, it was all about the second half, as both teams used a big second half performance for their victory. In fact, the similarities are striking. The Illini shot over 62 percent in the second half against Louisville, while the Tar Heels shot over 57 percent in the second half and outscored Michigan State 54-33 to win going away. Each team used a key run in the second half to break the game open at a point when the score was nearly identical: the Illini scored 11 unanswered points when Louisville got within 50-49, while the Tar Heels broke a 49-49 tie with 12 unanswered points and never were never seriously challenged after that.
The similarity in their semifinal victories is not an aberration. These are two evenly-matched teams with a lot of similarities. Both are quick and athletic, capable of running teams off the floor. Both teams have also shown that they can win slow-down games where halfcourt execution is the big key. That means that this game is likely not going to be decided by who controls the tempo, as there isn’t a tangible athleticism edge for either team and neither team is noticeably deeper.
As similar as they are, the Tar Heels and Illini are certainly not carbon copies of one another. The Tar Heels figure to have a slight size advantage on the perimeter, not unlike Louisville did Saturday night. How important that will be is hard to say, though early on Saturday night, the Cardinals were able to use it to their advantage but weren’t able to capitalize on some of their opportunities. Overall, the perimeter units would seem to effectively cancel each other out in terms of a clear advantage for one team. Dee Brown, Deron Williams and Luther Head vs. Raymond Felton, Rashad McCants and Jackie Manuel is pretty much a draw.
As has been the case much of the season, the key with this game for Illinois is what they get up front. James Augustine and Roger Powell had big games Saturday night, with Augustine doing so in a quiet fashion with just six points but a game-high 11 rebounds to lead the Illini to a 38-26 edge on the boards. Augustine and Powell will need to contain Sean May inside, as well as Jawad Williams and Marvin Williams when he’s in the game. Ellis Myles had a nice game Saturday night for Louisville (17 points on 8-of-12 shooting), and at times Otis George made several plays with his size and athleticism, so the potential for the better North Carolina post players to have a big night is there.
We shouldn’t expect this to be a low-scoring game. National championship games haven’t been low-scoring affairs in a while, and with two teams playing that can put points on the board in a hurry, this shouldn’t be the year to change it.
Overall, this is an intriguing matchup, and that’s just one reason college basketball fans and observers have wanted this game for a while now. Well, we have it coming our way, and we should enjoy it. It’s too close to call, which means it should keep up a trend that we’ve had throughout the tournament – the games just keep getting better, even when we think there’s no way they could.
