2019 NCAA Men's Basketball National Championship Game: Virginia vs. Texas Tech

Tonight Texas Tech will play Virginia for the 2019 NCAA Men's College Basketball Championship.  Both Texas Tech and Virginia will appear in the Championship game for the first time in their respective schools' histories.

Based on the gaming industry's published odds, Virginia enters tonight's game as a slight favorite.  Both teams, however, play stifling defense and run controlled offenses that attempt to probe the opponents' defense until they can generate a "good" (high percentage) shot. 

Usually, the team with the most future NBA players and the best leadership at Point Guard will win the Championship.  Looking forward to tonight's game, neither team is loaded with future NBA players, though both Virginia and Texas Tech have one or two players who will likely play at the next level (Texas Tech's Jarrett Culver is a likely future NBA draft lottery pick).  Both Texas Tech and Virginia are led by experienced Point Guards who run their respective offenses very well, who display strong leadership and who can either score all night long from behind the three point arc or by putting the ball on the floor and generating shots in the lane.  Virginia PG Ty Jerome leverages his 6'6" frame to his advantage against smaller opponents; he can get shoot over smaller Point Guards, and when he gets into the lane, his size allows him to get shots off against other teams' big men that most PGs couldn't.  Both teams also feature outstanding three point shooters on the wings, with Virginia's Kyle Guy being widely recognized as one of the best shooters in the game. 

Texas Tech's backcourt of fifth year South Dakota graduate transfer Matt Mooney and Italian import Davide Moretti are essentially combo guards who are equally capable of being both the primary ball handler, and of lighting it up from behind the three point line.   Mooney stands out for his grit and leadership, though, as well as for his ability to score off the dribble.  Virginia's guards are great shooters, and Jerome is noticeably bigger than either Mooney or Moretti.  But Tech's guards can shoot the lights out too, and nobody on either team is tougher than Mooney.

Texas Tech shooting guard Jarrett Culver and Virginia shooting guard De'Andre Hunter are both future NBA players.  As mentioned earlier, Culver will be a lottery pick in the 2019 NBA Draft.  Both players are big (6'7"), athletic wings who can create shots for themselves off the dribble with relative ease, and who shoot well enough from three point range.  Culver had a quiet outing against Michigan State in Saturday's semifinal victory, but he stepped up in the last three minutes of the game by making two crucial shots at the most opportune of times, which effectively served as the daggers that sent Tom Izzo's Spartans home to East Lansing, MI.

The Culver vs. Hunter matchup will likely be almost as interesting as the Jerome/Guy vs. Mooney/Moretti matchups.

Virginia has more size on the front line than most teams, including Texas Tech, but the Red Raiders from Lubbock counter with tough, experienced big men of their own. 

Overall, the game is likely to be a lower scoring, defensive minded affair.  Both teams have outstanding backcourts with great three point shooters, as well as players who can create shots for themselves and create shots for others.  The backcourt is probably where the game will be won or lost.

Drive and Dish expects tonight's game to be close (if low scoring), but we expect Virginia to come out with an edge.  Texas Tech surprised the world by beating Michigan State, and Virginia had the good fortune to escape (thanks to a missed double dribble that wasn't called on Ty Jerome in the last seconds of game) against Auburn.

Virginia knows that they're lucky to be here and that they have something to prove.  Texas Tech knows that they have something to prove as well, but we expect Virginia to play with a slightly bigger chip on their respective shoulders.  We also expect Virginia to be the beneficiary of the referees' calls.

Most of America will be attracted to the storyline of Virginia going from the only Number one seed to lose to a sixteen seed in the history of the NCAA Tournament, as they did last year when they lost to 16 seeded Maryland-Baltimore County, to winning the National Championship a year later.  It's our hope that the referees in tonight's game aren't also attracted to that storyline. 

Here's to hoping that upstart Texas Tech keeps that from happening.