Why there’s a ‘real chance,’ one expert says, that NCAA champs could emerge from Charlotte

Once the brackets were unveiled, the scrambling began – booking flights, hotels, and all the other production elements that go into making the NCAA tournament the spectacle it is.

For Jim Nantz, 58, the longtime CBS sports anchor who has called the national championship every year since 1991, that meant waiting for his first-round assignment. When it eventually came – Charlotte, with No. 1 seed Virginia and No. 2 seed North Carolina – Nantz was admittedly excited.

He’d get a sneak peak at not one, but two legitimate championship contenders.

“The short of it is, I think I’ve got a real chance to come out of this weekend seeing two teams that I’m going to see two weeks later in San Antonio (for the Final Four),” Nantz told the Observer Tuesday. “I would pick them as the favorites in each of their brackets.”

‘I hope our paths will cross down the road again’

That coming from anyone else might not mean as much, but Nantz’s basketball acumen is to be trusted. Every season since 1991, when Duke won the national championship over Kansas (then coached by current UNC coach Roy Williams), he has pored over March Madness, watching some of history’s most notable moments and upsets play out in front of his eyes. Then, when the champions are crowned, he gets the honor of delivering unto them their trophy.

He even got to hand off one trophy in Charlotte, back in 1994. That year, Duke and Arkansas played for the national title in the Charlotte Coliseum, which has since been demolished and replaced by the Spectrum Center, the site of this year’s games.

“It was at the old arena – it wasn’t that old, and they tore it down quickly!” Nantz said of the 1994 championship game. “What I remember about ’94 was that President Clinton came to the game, that was a big deal.”

Other than Clinton showing up to support his Razorbacks, Nantz remembered the high-stakes ending of that contest. Grant Hill, who was a seven-time NBA All-Star after leaving Duke, was playing in his final collegiate game and third national championship. Nantz had covered Hill’s entire career at Duke, so regardless of how the game shook out, Nantz wanted to meet with Hill after the game.

“I just had such a high regard for the integrity of that young man,” Nantz said, “the quality and character and the way that he treated everyone, including those of us who were covering his career.”

As for Hill’s final college game, Arkansas’ Scotty Thurman hit a high-arching 3-pointer with less than a minute left to put Arkansas up three points. It was later dubbed the ‘Shot heard ’round Arkansas.’ Duke tried to come back from there, but a couple of late Arkansas free throws clinched the Razorbacks’ first national championship victory.

After he handed Arkansas their trophy and completed all his other obligations, Nantz made good on his plan to find Hill.

“He was so down, going out with a loss in his last college game,” Nantz said of Hill. “I just wished him well. Told him I hope our paths will cross down the road again, and of course here we are all those years later.

“Now it’s great to be his teammate at the broadcast level – it’s cool, and we’re having a great time.”

This is only ‘Phase 1’

Since that game, the NCAA tournament has made its return to Charlotte a number of times, although not for another Final Four. The next-largest March Madness event here was the 2008 East Regional that saw North Carolina advance to the Final Four. Otherwise, there have been a handful of opening-round games, as will be the case this weekend at the Spectrum Center.

The two headliners this time around are Virginia and North Carolina.

Virginia, which won the ACC regular season and the conference tournament, has been arguably college basketball’s most complete and consistent team this season. Behind a smothering pack-line defense that hardly allows opponents to score 50 points, the Cavaliers have marched to a 31-2 record. Their second loss, a one-point defeat to Virginia Tech, ended with them missing a buzzer-beater.

Perhaps the biggest knock on Virginia is that in Tony Bennett’s time as head coach, the program has never mustered a postseason run. In 2016, the Cavaliers blew a double-digit halftime lead against Syracuse to fall just short of the Final Four.

Then there’s North Carolina, the team Virginia would have faced in the 2016 Final Four had it beaten Syracuse. The Tar Heels are coming off a national championship in 2017 and will seek their third straight trip to the Final Four. But this is a dramatically different team. Gone are interior stalwarts Isaiah Hicks and Kennedy Meeks, a West Charlotte High graduate, leaving UNC without much muscle on the interior.

North Carolina has responded by relying on its two senior leaders, Joel Berry and Theo Pinson. They have won games for the Tar Heels in the past with clutch play, but whether they can do it alone against some of the elite college basketball teams is another question./

And while Nantz said he believes in UNC and Virginia, he pointed out that this season has had more parity than many in recent memory.

“Across the landscape it’s been such an upside-down kind of year,” Nantz said. “To see some of the seedings, for example, some of the blue bloods of college basketball don’t have a Sweet 16 seed. To see Kentucky, UCLA, Syracuse ... these are traditional tournament powerhouses. ...I’d be surprised if that (turbulence) didn’t happen again in the NCAA tournament.”

The fact remains that North Carolina and Virginia have good odds to advance out of Charlotte, and to make it to San Antonio for the Final Four. In Virginia’s bracket,the Cavaliers may have to go through Arizona, Kentucky or Cincinnati, or even a combination of those. The Tar Heels might draw Michigan, Gonzaga and No. 1 seed Xavier.

Nantz knows that. He has diligently studied the bracket, specifically the eight teams in Charlotte, since the field was announced. And despite the teams that might stand in their way, he’s confident in Charlotte’s two top seeds.

“In the back of my mind, I’m hoping that that first week, I’m going to get a glimpse of a team I’m going to catch up to at the Final Four,” Nantz said. “I will have seen them, I’ll have all the deep layers of preparation complete.

“(This weekend) is just Phase 1 of seeing them on this important road to the Final Four.”

This story was originally published March 15, 2018 at 11:55 AM with the headline "Why there’s a ‘real chance,’ one expert says, that NCAA champs could emerge from Charlotte."