ACC National Champions That Really Cooked

Much was made in the aftermath of Villanova’s NCAA championship, its second in three years, of the Wildcats’ dominating run through the field.

Coach Jay Wright’s team won each of its six games by at least a dozen points, with victories by 16 and 17 in the Final Four. Almost a decade had passing since North Carolina won each of its games by double-digit margins in capturing the 2009 NCAA title.

In 1983 the ante was upped in NCAA competition, with the champion having to win six rather than five games to reach the pinnacle. Since then only four teams managed the half-dozen victories by double digits: Villanova, UNC, Duke in 2001 and Michigan State in 2000.

Six champions from the ACC scored an average of at least 14 points per game in winning the NCAA title.

Subtract the high and low victory margins for each of the ACC’s 10 title winners post-1984, and the ’09 Carolina squad still won by an average of 16.5 points followed by the 2015 Blue Devils at 14.8 and the ’91 Dukies at 13.3.

Oddly, three of Duke’s five champs triumphed by 29 points in their first NCAA outing.