This year’s Final Four begins play this Saturday, as Villanova matches up against Oklahoma and North Carolina play’s Syracuse. While some pundits will provide predictions of this weekend’s games based on player talent, statistics and other rational methods, I’m putting a musical spin on it — matching up schools against each other based on their best (in this columnist’s opinion) music alumni. Here are the teams:

Villanova Wildcats

The Wildcats have a surprisingly robust list of musical alumni. Manhattan Transfer vocalist Tim Hauser is a graduate. Country musician Toby Keith and “American Pie” singer Don McLean attended too, but neither completed their degrees at the school. (As a bitter Syracuse fan, I don’t feel like giving my time of day to one-and-dones.)

But the winner from this group is Jim Croce, the iconic singer-songwriter known as a pioneer of the American folk rock movement in the 1960s and ’70s. Croce tragically died in a plane crash in 1973 just as he was at the peak of his fame, but his influence on the soulful folk music of the music after his passing has been felt ever since as a now-essential name in the movement.

Oklahoma Sooners

The Sooners have a mixed record when it comes to basketball in recent years — this year marks the team’s first Final Four appearance in 14 years and its third since 1947. Musically, the school has a rough track record as well.

I had a tough time looking for music alumni for Oklahoma and found myself choosing between David Gates, the lead singer for the lost-in-time soft rock band Bread, Wayman Tisdale, the late NBA player who moonlighted as a jazz bassist in his post-playing career, and a couple of country singers I haven’t heard of.

Digging a little deeper in the depths of Wikipedia brought me to apparent Oklahoma alumna Kirstin Maldonado, who participates in the popular acapella group Pentatonix as a soprano. I’m not too big on acapella stuff — listening to it just makes me feel like I’m stuck in a real-life nightmarish version of “Glee” — but my “Pentaholic” friend tells me Maldonado is best known for her background vocals and her “side-smirk” prevalent in all of the group’s music videos. That’s enough to move her to the front of this all-around weak class for me.

North Carolina Tar Heels

For a school with such a storied basketball program, its musical alumni are surprisingly weak. There are a few cool but random picks out of their graduating classes, though — old-school country singer George Hamilton, 2008 American Idol finalist Anoop Desai, late ’60s/ early ’70s pop singer Oliver and Emanuel Ayvas of indie rock band Emanuel and the Fear make up some of their list.

But my top pick from UNC is none other than Laura Ballance. Ballance first gained fame as the bassist for ’90s indie rock outfit Superchunk, a key player in the genre’s breakout and its evolution that’s led to its modern identity. Ballance’s best contribution to the genre was her role as a co-founder of Merge Records, a label created by the band to release Superchunk music. Merge has taken on artists like Arcade Fire, Neutral Milk Hotel, The Mountain Goats, Esperanza Spalding, Titus Andronicus, Waxahatchee, Destroyer, Spoon, Bob Mould, Conor Oberst and other indie acts too cool to be left out of this column. If anyone can say they’ve shaped an entire genre, she can.

Syracuse Orange

I’m biased in saying this, but Syracuse really has it all. Besides having rich histories in nearly every sport it plays in, SU has a pretty darn awesome list of music alumni to boot. In case you slept through the accepted students’ day presentation way back when, here’s a refresher on SU’s music people: Indie folk artist Pete Yorn, Rascals singer Felix Cavaliere, “Grease” writer Warren Casey and The Chainsmokers member Andrew Taggart, to name a few.

But the late Lou Reed easily takes the prize. As the lead singer, guitarist and songwriter for The Velvet Underground, he pioneered alternative rock as we know it. Some music critics, including Chicago Tribune columnist Greg Kot, say the band was just as important to the future of music as The Beatles. Reed also had a constant presence in the music industry even outside his role in the Velvets, working in his long career with artists like David Bowie, Metallica, Patti Smith, Paul Simon and Gorillaz.

He had a sharp eye on the industry until the very end — one of Reed’s last written pieces before his death was a review of Kanye West’s 2013 album “Yeezus,” which Reed called “beautiful.” Reed said of West, “No one’s near doing what he’s doing, it’s not even on the same planet.” Lou Reed was a musical god from beginning to end — his being a graduate of SU should only make the rest of the students here feel less accomplished.

Villanova vs. Oklahoma — Winner: Villanova
UNC vs. Syracuse — Winner: Syracuse

Villanova vs. Syracuse — Champion: Syracuse

Brett Weiser-Schlesinger is a sophomore newspaper and online journalism major. His column appears weekly in Pulp. He can be reached at bweisers@syr.edu or on Twitter at @brettws.

Published on March 31, 2016 at 9:20 pm