NCAA Tournament 2023: Teams that most resemble last year’s Final Four squads

This year’s Villanova – UCLA

The 2021-22 Villanova Wildcats reached the Final Four on the strength of a dominant senior star with an old school game and previous Final Four experience, plus a respected, well-dressed head coach that endured years of critics saying he couldn’t win the big one. A 2-seed, one of their most important players was lost to a late-season Achilles injury. Sound familiar?

This season’s UCLA Bruins are very reminiscent of those Wildcats. Whereas Villanova was powered by Collin Gillespie, UCLA goes where Jaime Jaquez takes them. Both ball-dominant players are the faces of their respective teams, and they each excel at the kind of moves that you might see at the local Y. Gillespie, despite being a 6’3″ guard, loved to play in the post, initiating offense by backing his man down. Jaquez is a master of pump fakes, up-and-under, and midrange turnarounds.

Prowling the sidelines for Villanova, in all his sartorial splendor, was Jay Wright. Long considered the best-dressed man in college basketball (though I will die on the Roy Williams hill), Wright left coaching after last year’s run as one of the most accomplished coaches of his generation. People forget, though, that Wright didn’t always have such an unimpeachable reputation. For years, he led Villanova to the tournament only to watch them fall short, finally breaking through in 2016 when Kris Jenkins drilled one of the greatest shots in NCAA Tournament history against North Carolina. Fun fact, this also doubled as the worst moment of my life. Wright further solidified his legacy two years later with a second title.

With Wright out of the coaching game, UCLA coach Mick Cronin has inherited the mantle of the game’s most finely tailored fellow. While Wright had reached two Final Fours before reaching the top of the mountain, Cronin has been to one, and he was also present (though on the wrong end) for one of the Final Four’s greatest moments, Gonzaga’s Jalen Suggs’ running banked three from the logo at the overtime buzzer.

Both teams have had to contend with losing one of their most important players to an Achilles tear in March. In Villanova’s case, star guard Justin Moore suffered the injury in the final minute of the team’s Elite Eight win over Houston, leaving the Wildcat faithful wondering what might have been when the team fell short to Kansas one game later. For UCLA, they’ve been without Pac-12 Defensive Player of the Year Jaylen Clark since he suffered his injury in the regular season finale against Arizona.

The teams do have some differences, namely that Villanova was a prolific three-point shooting team while this UCLA squad is in the bottom 7% of teams nationally in threes attempted. Both teams were rated in the top 25 according to KenPom’s adjusted offense and adjusted defense metrics, though Villanova was rated higher offensively, while UCLA sports the country’s top-ranked defense.

Could UCLA make a Villanova-like run to the Final Four? It may be more difficult considering that they’re already without Clark, but much like Wright and Gillespie, the team is in good hands with Cronin and Jaquez.

Honorable mention

This year’s Xavier team also shares some similarities with last year’s Wildcats. Senior guard Souley Boum leads the Musketeers in threes and assists, much like Gillespie did for Nova. Both teams hail from the Big East and rely heavily on their perimeter scoring to win, and Xavier head coach Sean Miller has had a similar track record to early Jay Wright, bringing highly ranked teams to the tournament but falling short of the summit.