What’s at stake for each team in the Final Four

As a college basketball purist, the next three days are very bittersweet. The Final Four tips off in San Antonio tomorrow night with the Loyola-Chicago Ramblers and the Michigan Wolverines playing in the first national semifinal. It’s easy to be excited about Final Four weekend every year as it’s the biggest stage in the sport. But in a blink of an eye, it will be over, the One Shining Moment video will run and college hoops will disappear until the middle of November. Someone’s going to be crowned champion on Monday night, so here’s what it would mean for each school.

Loyola-Chicago: It’s hard not to fall in love with this story. By now, everyone knows the 98-year-old team chaplain Sister Jean Dolores Schmidt, but the intrigue surrounding the Ramblers goes much further. Coach Porter Moser was fired from his last head coaching job at Illinois State in 2007. At that time, veteran coach Rick Majerus was set to take over the men’s basketball program at St. Louis University. Majerus brought Moser onto his staff in 2007 and it eventually led to Moser getting another chance at being a head coach as the Ramblers hired him in 2011. Majerus passed away of heart failure shortly thereafter in December 2012. Now, seven years after getting the gig at Loyola-Chicago, Moser finds himself in the Final Four and has given plenty of credit to the late Majerus for his rebirth as a head coach.

In many ways, the players on Moser’s roster have been through similar trials and tribulations. There are several transfers on Loyola’s roster whose collegiate careers have reached new heights. It starts with the Ramblers best player, junior guard Clayton Custer who was stuck behind Monte Morris at Iowa State and wasn’t playing much. Farleigh Dickinson transfer Marques Townes hit what would wind up being the game-winning field goal from three-point land in the closing seconds of the Sweet 16 victory against Nevada. Junior college transfer Aundre Jackson was the Missouri Valley Conference sixth man of the year last season in his first year with the Ramblers. The road gets a lot tougher for Loyola-Chicago, as it played just one team seeded in the top five of its region to get to San Antonio. Now it will have to go through the Big 10 Tournament champions in Michigan and a number one seed on Monday night. If the Ramblers can pull it off, it will conclude the greatest Cinderella run in the NCAA Tournament and they’ll become the lowest seed to ever win it all.

Michigan: Save for its Sweet 16 victory against Texas A&M, the Wolverines have epitomized the tournament cliché “Survive and Advance” in their other three wins in the big dance. By no means did Michigan look like a title contender in its opening game against Montana. If Jordan Poole’s 30-foot prayer wasn’t answered against Houston in the next round, John Beilein’s team wouldn’t have even advanced to the second weekend. In the West regional final, Florida State hung around all game and Moritz Wagner, Michigan’s best player, was just 3-for-11 from the field. With all of that said, none of it matters now. The Wolverines are one of four teams left standing and their play towards the end of the regular season, throughout the Big 10 conference tournament and in the Sweet 16 certainly had them looking like a team that could cut down the nets in San Antonio.

Two wins for Michigan would give the maize and blue their second national championship and it would be the first title for John Beilein, who’s done just about everything else in his coaching career. Before Beilein’s arrival, the Michigan men’s basketball program needed some juice as it had dipped into the abyss of mediocrity in the 10-15 years following the Fab Five era. The Wolverines did not make the big dance for ten straight seasons from 1999-2008. Beilein led them to an appearance in the National Championship game in 2013, got to the Elite Eight in 2014 and is now back in the Final Four.

Villanova: Villanova is the best team left and I don’t think many would argue against that claim. Not only did they dominate the Big East in the regular season and win the conference tournament, but the Wildcats looked clinical for almost all four of their NCAA Tournament wins. Jalen Brunson was just named National Player of the Year and Villanova was one of few teams this season that was consistently in the discussion of the best teams in the country. It’s not hard to argue that this team is better than the Villanova team from two years ago that won the National Championship.

This is Jay Wright’s third Final Four at Villanova. He got there in 2009, and overcame lots of struggles in the first weekend in the first half of this decade to get back in 2016 and eventually win the National Championship. Villanova’s done lots of winning under Wright and a third National Championship in school history, and second for Wright, would go a long way in cementing Villanova as one of the true “blue blood” programs in college basketball. It’s theirs to lose.

Kansas: Throughout all the chaos on the left side of the bracket, with a No. 9 vs a No. 11 seed playing in one regional final and another No. 9 seed getting to the other regional final, seeds held true for the most part on the right side of the bracket. Michigan State losing to Syracuse in the first weekend was shocking for sure, but through it all we had Villanova and Texas Tech in one regional final and Kansas-Duke in the other. The Jayhawks prevailed in what’s probably been the best game of the tournament so far and here they are back in the Final Four for the first time since 2012.

The Kansas roster is eerily like its opponent in the second national semifinal. Both Villanova and Kansas rely heavily on guard play and outside shooting. At times, Villanova plays through its primary frontcourt player in Omari Spellman much how Udoka Azubuike can take games over on both ends of the floor for Kansas. Devonte’ Graham’s storied college career will come to an end in Texas and a win on Monday night would be quite the way to close the book. Bill Self has taken a lot of heat for several losses in the regional weekend as a higher seed since winning the National Championship in 2008. If winning 14 straight Big 12 regular season titles doesn’t speak for itself, then two National Championships certainly should.