Game recap and box score if you missed the game
Phew! That was an ugly one for about 25 minutes. At the end though, Villanova brought it home by a final score of 80-67. Villanova realized that it’s a good team and decided implement what we like to call “a gameplan.” In the first half, Garrison Carr absolutely torched the Villanova defense and led his American squad to a 10 point halftime lead.
AP Photo/Mel Evans
And even out of the break, the Eagles raced to a couple of quick buckets and had a 14 point lead. At that point, I’m not ashamed to admit, I screamed out “f’ing Old Dominion all over again.” I thought we were dead. But somehow, some way, Villanova found some life.
Scottie Reynolds was terrible for 40 minutes, but no matter. He saved his worst for the first half, but had some timely points in the final frame. Corey Fisher was just as bad in the opening 20, but rallied in the 2nd half and finished with 11 points.
But the real stars of the game, and the saviors for that matter, were Dwayne Anderson and Dante Cunningham. Both finished with 25 points and were the lone reason why Villanova won this game.
Anderson started out early, draining 3’s before eventually being sidelined with foul trouble. Cunningham, when he got the ball, dominated inside and taught the American forwards a thing or two about big-time basketball.
So what happened? Jay Wright’s philosophy of “deny the 2, let them have the 3″ was exploited. Listen, I agree that under normal circumstances, let teams have jumpers and deny them layups. But when you have 2 guards under 6 feet that can’t finish at the hoop, don’t let them have open shots all day!
Jay finally conceded and changed the gameplan at halftime, and what do you know? Villanova storms back. I love Coach Wright, but that game wasn’t that hard to figure out. In fact, I’d better kids all across campus would have been better on the bench the first half than Wright was.
At the end of the day though, the name of the game is survive and advance, which Villanova did. They’ll face UCLA at 1:05 p.m. ET on Saturday.
…Bottom line…we had more in the tank than American…it’s tough on these underdogs because they ride on so much adrenaline for the first half, but then they can’t close down the stretch..nevertheless, I expected a game from them, but I didn’t expect to be down by 10 at the half…so hats off to those guys, they really made me sweat…
March 20, 2009
Chris that was a tough win in the ncaa tournament. The problem is we as fanatical fans for Villanova forget that the other team is also trying win. Unfortunately we missed at lot of open looks. And I mean a lot of open looks. If we make those shots we are close and we win by 30 pts. So instead we win by 14 or 15. And everyone thinks we sleep in the first half or Jay Wright can’t come up with a game plan or some other BS. Listen this is basketball. This is tournament madness. I do think we at times play to our level of competetion. Watch Saturday will be different. Go Nova!!!