NCAA Basketball: Ranking the Elite 8 teams in 2022 NCAA Tournament

3. Villanova Wildcats

The one major question coming into the season was how would they replace former Co-Big East Player of the Year Jeremiah Robinson-Earl in the frontcourt. Eric Dixon turned out to be a perfectly adequate player, and his spacing has proven to be incredibly good, especially from three-point range.

With that settled, everything else has already been national title good, with Collin Gillespie and Jermaine Samuels already with NCAA Tournament rings. They’ve been as good as expected, leading the way in wins over Delaware, Ohio State, and most recently in the Sweet 16, Michigan.

Those two alone are good enough to keep Villanova in contention but having a 15 ppg scorer in Justin Moore flying under the radar can be unfair. He and 6th man Caleb Daniels are quality scorers in their own right, even when Gillespie is having an off-night.

What should make Houston (their Elite 8 opponent) worried is that the Wildcats haven’t really played all that well on the offensive end. And they’ve still been in control for just about the entire NCAA Tournament. They’ve done well against bigs E.J. Liddell and Hunter Dickinson and Houston don’t have an offensively potent frontcourt to deal with.

Of all the teams left, Villanova has the experience and history to say that they can beat anyone. And based on the path to the title game, don’t be shocked if they’re playing on that Monday night in April.