Villanova Beats North Carolina in Spectacular Finish

The 2016 NCAA Basketball Championship Game in Houston on April 4th featured an exhilarating finish for Wildcat fans and a gut wrenching, nearly indescribable feeling of finality for Tar Heels fans.

North Carolina trailed by six with 1:38 to go, but was nowhere near finished, taking advantage of a couple of Villanova turnovers and tying it with a Marcus Paige three point basket with 4.7 seconds to go. And then in a play that will forever be enshrined in NCAA basketball lore, Villanova’s Ryan Arcidiacono took the ball upcourt, passed to Kris Jenkins, who took a three point shot as the final tenths of a second ran off the clock. The shot was perfect and the first time since 1983, the NCAA Championship was decided on a buzzer beater.

Here’s a look at the end of that 1983 Championship game, where North Carolina State beat Houston on a buzzer beater, a finish remembered as much for the unrestrained joy of Jim Valvano, the late coach of NC State, as it was for Lorenzo Charles’ winning dunk. Sadly, Jim Valvano died of cancer in 1993 at age 47. In a cruel coincidence, Lorenzo Charles died in a traffic accident in 2011; he too, was 47.