The Stage is set for Men’s NCAA Final Four Weekend

By Francisco Romero

The 2016 NCAA Final Four will take place at NRG Stadium in Houston, Texas. The first game on Saturday will feature No. 2 seeded Villanova against No. 2 Oklahoma, while the afternoon game will see a classic battle on the court between No. 1 North Carolina and No. 10 Syracuse.

Villanova (33-5) and Oklahoma (29-7) will face each other once again, the Sooners beat Villanova 78-55, but the Wildcats head coach Jay Wright is confident as his team has improved, “Oklahoma has obviously gotten better but we have gotten a lot better in my mind. I think we had a lot more room to improve than they did. They are a veteran team that was good from the beginning of the year, similar to us last year. It was hard for us to get a lot better last year. We were an inexperienced team and it really showed, so I think we are a much more experienced team now.”

The second game will feature two storied basketball programs in North Carolina (32-6) and Syracuse (23-13).

UNC beat No. 5 seed Indiana and No. 6 seed Notre Dame in the East Regional last weekend in Philadelphia to advance to the Final Four. Syracuse beat Gonzaga and Virginia.

The Tar Heels are making a record 19th Final Four appearance, most in NCAA history.

Syracuse, although a program with a great tradition of winning in basketball, could be seen as this years Cinderella team. The Orangemen finished the season with loses and were not supposed to make it this far.

“You know, it’s great to go to the Final Four. It’s great for this team because I only look at the basketball side. I mean, I thought we deserved to be in the tournament, but certainly I wasn’t planning on getting to the Final Four. We tell the players, it’s one game. You play one game, and if you can just win one game, you get another chance. They’ve done that,” said Syracuse’s head coach Jim Boeheim,

The championship game will feature the winners of both games on Monday April 4^th.