I Bleed Blue and White

I don’t know about all of you, but all the turkey, mashed potatoes, and stuffing was still taking a toll on my body on Saturday afternoon. And apparently, it was still affecting the Villanova sports teams as well. I honestly don’t remember I watched Villanova get beat on the boards that badly. I believe the final tally was LaSalle holding a 42-28 advantage, and even that felt generous.

Reynolds and Pena led the scoring for 'Nova.

Beyond that, the outside shooting (by both teams) was so bad that at one point I suggested that they just remove the 3-point lines so as not to tempt anyone with the notion of jacking one up from out there. And even through all that, Villanova still recorded an 18-point Big 5 win that felt nothing like a blowout, but nothing like a close game either. I don’t even know how to describe it.

As for the football team, well they came out and held off Holy Cross en route to a 38-28 win. I listened to this game briefly on the Holy Cross Radio Network before the play-by-play guy finally drove me off with his obnoxious playcalling. But it wasn’t a pretty game. Over 500 yards of offense combined in the first half led me at one point to believe that defense was indeed optional. But the ‘Nova offense kept pounding away and the defense finally came up with a stop when they needed it for the win. And now, we get another shot at New Hampshire next weekend in the quarterfinals!

All in all, a solid day of ‘Nova sports on a day when all I really wanted to do was lay on the couch, continue to digest Thanksgiving dinner, and watch Villanova beat the brakes in two different sports.My one major complaint (you hear this often from me) — I hate when the students are gone and there are more alums. Don’t get me wrong, I love what they do for the school, but they kill any atmosphere when they get into the student section. Whatever students are left aren’t allowed to stand and make noise and it just sucks the life out of the place. God forbid we have to play a good team when this happens. We won’t win. Rant over.

As for the basketball notes…

• Apparently Mouphtaou Yarou was out before the game running around with the team before heading back in and changing to a suit. That’s a good sign. Hopefully he’ll be back soon but we still haven’t heard anything official.
• For those of you following on Twitter, you know I was raving about Dominic Cheek all game long. His best day in a ‘Nova uni. Defense continues to be incredible as he helped Corey Stokes shut down Rodney Green. And although his outside stroke wasn’t there, he was  fearless on the boards and showed some great dribble-drives and the ability to finish at the rim.
• Maurice Sutton and Antonio Peña seemed to get continually out-worked on the glass all day, but each brought another aspect to the win. Sutton had 7 blocks I believe, most of them when he came over to help on the weakside. I loved seeing that, although he is going to need to bulk up big-time before he’s a complete player. Aaric Murray had his way with him multiple times. As for Peña, he was superb on the offensive end, which is really what he needs to be as he’s the only low-post threat we have at the moment.
• Scottie Reynolds was back and forth all game. Typically forced some shots that made you scratch your head but as soon as you opened your mouth to vent he came up and made a spectacular play.
• Corey Fisher ran the offense well. Nothing terrible, nothing spectacular. He summed up how I felt about the game in general.
• Maalik Wayns’ playing time seems to be going down. Not sure why. But he came in and hit a monster 3 late to extend the lead back to 14 just as LaSalle was starting to gain momentum. That shot shut the door. He also helped contain Green and did a fantastic job.

All in all, just one of those wins that you don’t really know what to think about. I didn’t think we played that well, and we were certainly outplayed on the boards, but we won comfortably. So, you take it.

See ya on Wednesday when we face Drexel!