’Nova on ’nother level

HOUSTON

Now watch. Villanova’s basketball team won’t make a shot Monday night.

Isn’t that how things go after such an implausible display?

Isn’t that how fate usually rears its ironic head?

History can be both exhilarating and cruel, both magical and merciless, and all of it played out in the first of two Final Four games Saturday night.

Jay Wright talks a lot about 1985, the season Villanova staged one of sport’s greatest upsets, when he was a Division III assistant coach and the Wildcats shot the lights out in Lexington to win the NCAA title by shocking Georgetown. Not since that memorable evening has a team shot 70 percent or better in the Final Four, not until now.

Villanova showed no mercy by hitting most everything it let go here, routing Oklahoma 95-51 before 75,505 at NRG Stadium.

95-51.

Sit on that for a second.

It was 15 or so minutes after the blowout concluded, after the Sooners walked off the court both astonished and despondent, after they had been beaten by a margin no Final Four team ever experienced, when head coach Lon Kruger passed by on a golf cart while heading to the post-game news conference. He looked over, smiled, gave a wave, flashed a thumb’s up and wished a few reporters the best of luck.

Classy to the end, even following such a humiliating defeat.

Coaches know. There is no explaining this: Villanova shot 71.4 percent from the field, the best such number since those unlikely champions in 1985 made 78.6 percent.

But those Wildcats attempted just 28 shots against the Hoyas.

Villanova of today took 49 against Oklahoma.

Wright’s team also shot 61.1 percent on 18 attempts from 3 and finished the first half with more points (42) than Butler scored in losing the 2011 title to Connecticut in this building. Josh Hart, Villanova’s leading scorer, made 10 of 12 shots and had 23 points.

Stadium effect?

Terrible sightlines?

Night terrors in a place jump shots have come to perish?

There was none of it for Villanova, which advances to meet North Carolina in Monday’s title game.

“Those guys (from 1985) are really icons on our campus, they really are,” Wright said. “That whole team brings that magical underdog feeling, like anything’s possible. That’s really strong still at Villanova for all sports, but definitely in our basketball program. There’s something in me that those guys are so special. I don’t want that team to ever lose their magic. I don’t think they will.

“But I’d love our team to do it also.”

Michigan State beat Penn by 34 in 1979. Cincinnati topped Oregon State by the same margin in 1963.

Until now, those were the worst losses in Final Four history.

Buddy Hield made his first shot, one of those step-back and confident 3-pointers that were part of an arsenal that matured him into nation’s best player, but he was never the same all night. Villanova ran defender after defender at the Oklahoma senior guard and he wilted along with the rest of the Sooners, finishing with nine points on 4-of-12 shooting. Hield entered averaging 25.

Think about this: Oklahoma led 17-16, meaning Villanova outscored it 79-34 the rest of the way.

The Sooners actually cut the deficit to nine early in the second half … and Villanova went on a 25-0 run.

You don’t win by 44 without playing some lock-down defense in several spots, and the Wildcats did in limiting one of the nation’s best 3-point shooting teams to 6-for-27 behind the arc. Villanova won at both ends. It controlled everything — pace, tempo, physicality

It grabbed from Oklahoma its will, its heart, its spirit.

“We’re disappointed,” Kruger said. “We’re very disappointed. But we own it. We’re not shying away from it. Villanova was great. They played great. We didn’t. So it was a combination of the two. We certainly didn’t do a very good job defensively, but Villanova had a lot to do with that.

“It becomes embarrassing. Villanova was terrific. We didn’t have any answer for them. We would have liked to, but we didn’t. You know, we lost our composure there and things came apart. You never like handling things like that. We’d liked to have handled their run a little bit better.

“Again, we didn’t. They played great.”

So now the Wildcats get North Carolina, the No. 1 team to begin this season and the most talented across all of college basketball, a roster of size and skill and depth and every attribute you would expect in a team expected to win the national title.

“We have to approach it like we’re going to miss a bunch of shots and are going to win with our defense,” Villanova point guard Jalen Brunson said. “This kind of game, shooting like we just did, doesn’t happen.”

But it did.

And it was exhilarating and magical for one side and cruel and merciless for the other.

It became more and more implausible with every last shot hitting net.

Ed Graney can be reached at egraney@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-4618. He can be a heard on “Seat and Ed” on Fox Sports 1340 from 2 p.m. to 4 p.m. Monday through Friday. On Twitter: @edgraney