I Bleed Blue and White

Whitney and Szczur hoist it up.

Hopefully you planted yourself in front of a TV on Friday night. If you didn’t, you missed Villanova’s 2nd National Championship of the year, and first ever in football. You missed a great game, one in which our boys were down 14-3, and everything looked to be slipping away. But in classic Villanova fashion, they rallied back, thoroughly dominated Montana in the 2nd half, and took home the title, 23-21.

Matt Szczur was spectacular, totaling a career-best 159 rushing yards, 2 touchdowns, and 270 all-purpose yards. Oh, and if you didn’t know, he’s a pretty decent guy off the field too. Chris Whitney went over 100 yards on the ground and through the air, and the defense put up one of the most dominating 2nd half performances I’ve ever seen. I could be wrong, but in the 4th quarter I’m pretty sure I saw ‘43′ under total yards for Montana in the half. That’s quite good.

So now that we’ve won it all, what’s next? Are you content with our FCS program or do you want to see the team (and school) reach new heights? With word spreading that the Big Ten conference is about to raid the BIG EAST for a football team, the BIG EAST is going to be looking for new members, and we already know they’ve reached out to Villanova. So doesn’t it make sense to make the move now?

Our program has currently reached the status of top-tier in the FCS. There is no debating that, and when you look at the talent on our roster, we’re going to be at the top for a while. We CAN compete in the FBS, as we saw when we beat bowl-bound Temple earlier in the year. And let’s be honest, the BIG EAST isn’t exactly known for great football. I’m fairly certain we could step in and be very competitive (top-half finishes) in the first few years.

So just a few problems in my eyes, and we’ll tackle these one at a time:

1. The Fanbase
2. The Stadium
3. Money

In terms of the fanbase, I’m not going to sugarcoat it. It’s bad. And I can’t even point the fingers at others. I probably only attended 7-8 games over my entire 4 years at school. I was anything but loyal. In my defense, we were bad up until last year. Good teams will draw crowds. So it’s a good thing this team has become good, and more importantly exciting to watch. We still need more support from the students if it is going to work. And I mean at least 5,000 at every home game. This isn’t a basketball lottery. We can all fit. And football is f*cking awesome. Come on kids.

Then comes the alumni aspect. I don’t know what our current numbers look like. But they aren’t pretty. But in talking with my friends at the basketball game on Saturday, if Villanova announced a move to FBS, we would immediately buy our season tickets, and I have to think a lot of other people would too. So I think a move would definitely result in more attendance.

In terms of the stadium, we would need an expansion, but this isn’t that difficult. I originally thought the minimum size was around 30,000, but after looking around, there are plenty of FBS teams with stadiums under 20,000. I think the minimum is probably somewhere around 15K. Right now, we’re sitting at an official capacity of 12,500. Just add some endzone bleachers, solve the track problem somewhere else, and you’re good to go. Originally I thought this was a major issue. It’s not as bad as I thought.

Lastly, the money. I’ve heard that our football team currently loses money every year. Not surprising. While it would initially cost more to move to the FBS ranks, I think the long-term benefits make this a no-brainer. Besides the revenue-sharing you’d get from the conference, if you can successfully build up your program, there is no telling how great it could get. Sure, it’s a risk. No denying that. But it’s a risk worth taking. And when your students/alums see you are taking that risk, they’ll back you. At least I would. And I know all my friends would. And the various alums I’ve met, I know they would too.

It’s time, baby.

In this picture you see a kid that I hate, and a man that is aroused by the kid.

I’ll admit, I’m good for a good overreaction every now and then (for both wins and losses) but following our loss to Temple on Sunday, I kind of just sat back, had to smile, and not worry too much. Yes, it sucked. I was appalled at the performances by several players on the team. I thought Jay Wright got away from what has been working for us this year (i.e. a deep rotation), and I was swearing at Juan Fernandez like he was a felon. But at the end of the day, most of us expected to drop an OOC game for a variety of reasons, the most prominent being that we were young.

So is this really all that bad? Would you rather lose to Temple in a game where everything went right for them and learn from it or would you rather drop a game later one where we really don’t deserve to lose? Because we deserved to lose that game. We played bad, but Temple just executed to perfection. In fact, I’m pretty sure the aforementioned Fernandez is either Satan himself or he made a deal with him.

There are both positives and negatives to take away from this game. Mostly negatives, mind you, but this is probably exactly what this team needed. They had been skating by on good offense and they found out exactly what happened when you don’t shoot it well and you don’t play defense either. Now Jay can break them down all week, and then unleash the hounds against poor Fordham next weekend. I give you my list of pros and cons that I took from Sunday. We’ll start with the bad to end this post on a somewhat positive notice.

The Bad:

• Jay Wright playing 5 guys over 30 minutes, Dominic Cheek for 11, and everyone else under 10. We may be young, but our depth is a weapon. We got away from it and leaned on our experience. We’ve seen Jay do it in the past, but I would have liked to see more subbing yesterday. If we win I probably applaud this decision, but even when we were winning I wasn’t happy about it.
• We have no frontcourt depth. Antonio Peña reverted back to last year’s player and went for a grand total of 2 rebounds in 39 minutes of action, and genuinely looked disinterested in getting after it, something that we haven’t seen from him this year. It was worrisome to say the least. The 16 points was nice but he has looked so good rebounding this year. I don’t know what happened. If he’s not on his game, we’re in for a long night.
• Taylor King’s frustration getting the best of him. Keep it to yourself TK. Still love ya, but just keep your head down and play hard.
• Corey Stokes’ offense. Where have you gone to hide?
• Maurice Sutton looking completely overwhelmed. Don’t know what else to say really.

The Good:

• The officiating was borderline criminal. It’s not an excuse, but I do take comfort knowing that we weren’t getting any calls whatsoever.
• Scottie Reynolds is on a hot streak right now. Hopefully the holidays don’t cool him off.
• Temple shot over 70% during the last 10 minutes of the game. I don’t even have to look up the stats. It felt like it was over 85% so I’ll go conservatively with a number of 70. It’s really hard to win when you play good D for 30 seconds and then they make a shot, which was defended well. It’s demoralizing for a player.
• As I said, Juan Fernandez had some kind of black magic going on. Just one of those days.

And the biggest one…

Reggie Redding officially makes his return on Saturday. It cannot be overstated how big this is for a young team coming off a loss. By all accounts, he has been killing everyone in practice. Nobody can guard him, and nobody can get by him. He’ll take the defensive pressure off of Stokes and Cheek and allow them to be themselves, and he’ll be a stabilizing force for the team at a time when they really need someone to step up and light a fire under their ass. Redding’s the guy.

If you can’t tell, I’m really excited about this.

Kind of a weird game to watch. I was fired up about the game, and at certain parts it was a really close game. But you know what? I was never really worried about what the final outcome would be. We have better players, a better coach, and our fans were taking over The Palestra fight for noise despite being outnumbered. There’s nothing more comfortable than ESPN flashing to Phil Martelli, clearly searching his pea-sized brain for answers, and then an immediate flash to Jay Wright, who is barking out instructions to his team. In HD, the differences between the two are even more stark, if you catch my drift.

TK's willingness to dunk worked here. In the 2nd half, uhhh...nevermind.

But really, what else can you say about this program. This game is always a dogfight, no matter the talent differences between the two. That is how true rivalries are. But were you ever worried that we would lose? Sure, I didn’t love giving up the double-digit lead late in the 1st half, and I really didn’t like how the refs decided it would be beneficial to blow their whistle so much that the game would take 2 and a half hours, have 52 fouls calls, and 78 free throws attempted between the two teams. But I was never really worried about losing the game. And that’s because our program has reached the level where we have heady seniors every year who can will this team to victory when they need to, along with a cast of underclassmen and newbies who are dying to step up into the spotlight and prove themselves. That’s a good recipe for winning.

And even though we all knew it would happen, it does feel great to know that The Hawk Is Dead for another year. Also, great to see the Hawk students get all riled up, thinking they had a chance. Then depression. That was fun. Onto my notes from the game…

• Had a phenomenal time at the Manhattan GameWatch. Talked to a couple of people who read the blog, always nice to meet new people. Overall the atmosphere was pretty solid. Tons of huge HD TV’s everywhere, people definitely into the game and cheering and moaning with every turn of the game. Even though it was “The Christmas Party” it felt more like “The Let’s All Hate St. Joe’s Party.” That was good to see. Only down side was not being able to hear Bill Raftery. I heard some random shrieks and yells that made me laugh though.
• Scottie Reynolds was the man again last night.  Still turning the ball over a lot, but he makes a lot of things happen as evidenced by his 22 points, 8 rebounds, 5 assists and 4 steals effort. Plus 12-14 from the line. As login77 noted in the Jamie’s recap, there was a point in the 2nd half where he looked possessed, Exorcist-style.
• I’m blocking out Taylor King’s missed dunk from my memory. So with that not happening, he played a great game. 20 points and 11 boards, and was just a friggan assassin with those trey’s late in the game. Plus, he really gets the emotional aspect of the game. He gets fired up about everything. There will probably be a point where we say ‘Calm down TK’ but for now, I love it.
• Can’t praise Antonio Peña enough. Before the year we were all hoping for a moderate improvement from ‘Tone. He’s legitimately developed into ‘the man’ down low. I found myself yelling at our team to give him the ball last night, and was not happy when he had to go to the bench for fouls. Nobody could have predicted this season from him.
• We hit 29 straight free throws at one point in the 2nd half. That’s mind-blowing.
• How about Corey Fisher fouling out after not touching a guy. Raf astutely yelled before the replay that it was an awful call and Fisher didn’t touch the guy. Jay Wright proceeded to have blood vessel appear in his forehead. I thought Fish had a decent game. Too many TO’s, not great FG%, but 8-8 from the line and 6 assists. He managed it well.
• Corey Stokes couldn’t buy a bucket, but he did play excellent D again (one of the few who did). I’ll take the D from Stokes right now because last year it was all offense or nothing.
• Maalik Wayns, Dominic Cheek, and Isaiah Armwood all played well in their first Holy War. Wayns was very calm for having to handle the ball as much as he did. Cheek was visibly fired up and aggressive the entire time he was in. Good to see. Armwood has the 18-foot jumper down. When he throws it up, I’m as confident as in him as a TK/Stokes trey at this point.
• Maurice Sutton has hit the skids a little here. He rebounded well last night, but missed a few easy buckets. Interested to see how he handles it and if he can come back and start playing the way he was before.
• Love seeing Reggie Redding sitting behind the bench. You’re almost back medium-sized fella.
• Got real sad everytime they showed Mouphtaou Yarou. What a shitty situation. Stay strong big fella.

…All in all a solid night and a solid win over the assholes…final Big 5 game at Temple on Sunday as we go for the Big 5 sweep…

Villanova 97

Safety School 89

SEND IT IN SOUTHPAW!

Given the importance and excitement of tonight’s game, I’m going to have a more in-depth look at this season’s edition of the “Holy War” first thing in the morning. Until then, I’m going to hand it off to the greatest color man in the business, Bill Raftery.

“King is not just a pretty face out there! Shootin’ that deep one! That is a gorgeous delivery to Pena. Send it in big fella!! … Or lay it in… “

– Raft referring to a sweet Taylor King pass to Pena in the 2nd Half

I mean what else can be said about the kid? 20 points and 9 rebounds ain’t half bad, right? Its obvious that we at IBBW have had a man crush on TKing for awhile now and he just continues to mature and grow as a player on a nightly basis. Now, obviously he’s not without his faults as we witnessed on that failed dunk attempt in the 2nd half. However, as I’ll get into more tomorrow, King, Pena and Scottie have a nice thing working at the moment with the offense and it’ll be interesting to see which way the team moves as tougher contests lay ahead.

“How ’bout that?? With a little blessing from above!” – Raft on the circus runner in the lane by Scottie Reynolds to start the 2nd Half

I know Chris has pointed it out, but man how lucky are we that Scottie is still around as a Senior? Tonight was a typical game by the Senior from Virginia as Reynolds held the team together throughout his 22 point performance at the Palestra. At around the 6 minute mark in the 2nd Half, I said to myself that Scottie needed to take over this game if we were to hold on and come out victorious. Glad to see he did just that. Oh and of course there was the “OMFG SCOTTIE DON’T SHOOT THAT….I MEAN THAT’S A GREAT SHOT SCOTTIE!” moment just to put a bow on his career against my Safety School.

“Well thats transition D at its best… Don’t give up anything easy. You think they got an easy one…… GET OUT OF TOWN!!!” – Raft on the Pena block around the 8 minute mark in the 1st Half

Pena continues to shine as he has all season long. He’s certainly made a believer out of this fan and I think that his valuable experience (albeit somewhat limited last year) will come into play greatly as we take the turn on a tougher schedule as the calendar hits 2010 in a few weeks.

Some more stats to hold you over until the full recap in the morning:

• Villanova had 8 less FTs than the Dead Hawks in the 1st Half
• Followed by 31 FTs in the second half, converting all but 1 (30)
• Villanova won the rebound battle 39 to 23
• Isaiah Armwood continues to prove quality over quantity (shooting 60% from the field on the season…..on 10 shots)
• VILLANOVA chants echoed throughout the Palestra loudly as the game came to a close

A shout out to the students who made the trip down to Philly for the game as they were very loud and made 100 or so fans sound more like 800 throughout the game.

One more Raftery quote on Taylor King to hold us over until tomorrow. . . .

“A little pick and pop…. oh is that honey?!?! AND MONEY!!!!!”

..ook fine 1 more…

“He’s becoming the answer! Anything deep is in his range!!” – The Raft

What started off as a day where I couldn’t catch a break (train troubles) while trying to get to the Giants-Cowboys game turned into just a fabulous Sunday. The New York Football Giants beat the Cowgirls, who continue to prove that they just cant, and wont, get it done in December.

That was followed by me remembering that I did not have to go to a bar to watch the Villanova game (My body was not going to accept more alcohol) and I settled in on the couch for some Villanova hoops and pizza. And it was fabulous to watch for about 10 seconds. And then the announcers started talking.

I really did not know the extent of what was happening (as I mentioned, a few adult beverages were consumed) but I do remember venting about the idiocy of the 2 morons assigned to cover this game, who were not only completely pro-Maryland, but more often than not just flat out wrong about their “facts.” And I could not have been happier when the final buzzer sounded and we were on top. It was time to sleep.

Anyways, as i said I was pretty out of it watching this game, but I think I do remember some things good, and bad, about the game. Here they are:

• Greivis Vasquez is going to give Jon Scheyer a run for his money in terms of being the biggest whiner in the college game. Not surprisingly both are from the ACC – where optional defense happens!
• Speaking of optional defense, Corey Stokes and Dominic Cheek have been doing anything bu that. They were again the main men responsible for Vasquez poor outing. I cannot wait til Reggie Redding is back in 2 weeks. That is 3 shutdown defenders on one team. Stokes also had 18 points on 5-11 from deep. The offense is coming back. Watch out.
• Scottie Reynolds referred to the Verizon Center as his Madison Square Garden. Hard to argue with that after 25 points and 8 assists and a phenomenal game from the senior.
• Corey Fisher had 20 points, was lethal from deep (4-6) and hit a monstrous 3 to give the Cats a cushion in the 2nd half right after Maryland cut it to 3. I do remember that shot, as I’m sure everyone does. It was the biggest one of the game in my opinion.
• Another near double-double for Antonio Peña. He has really stepped up this year. Couldn’t be happier for a kid who has clearly worked hard for everything that he’s getting right now.
• Looking at the stat sheet, it appears Taylor King was chucking a bit (5-17 from the field), but I thought he had a good, scrappy effort. Plus, I liked when he got in that punk Vasquez’ face.
• Other than the good D by Cheek and Stokes, the rest of the team was terrible. Three Maryland guys (names escape me) had monster games. That basically tells me everyone else did not do their job on D. Maybe keying on Vasquez was the gameplan, but I don’t like giving up 86 points to anyone. And we’d been playing so well.
• At least we showed we can just outgun people when we need to.
• The Holy War is on Wednesday. Awesome. I love kicking the shit out of them. Yes, I refuse to acknowledge the name of that hell-hole.

…Solid win in what many labeled the biggest OOC game this year…and it was definitely a road-game and a great test for the young guys…

“Villanova finished the game with a 387-84 margin in total offense yards. The Wildcats held the ball for nearly 36 minutes of the game and didn’t allow New Hampshire to pick up positive offensive yardage for the game until late in the third quarter.”

Villanova beat the brakes off of New Hampshire today in the FCS quarterfinals this afternoon. I couldn’t watch the game, but I watched on GameCast and saw that John Dempsey returned a fumble for a touchdown on the first play of the game. It was over from there.

On a day where the snow came down like the game was in Green Bay, the Wildcats asserted themselves from the get-go and never made this a close game. We’re on to the semi-finals to face William & Mary next Friday or Saturday (game-time TBA).

Apologies for the abbreviated post. I wasn’t able to see the game. That should change next weekend. Go Cats!

I’ve already documented how frustrating it is to follow a basketball game on my BlackBerry while I ride the train home from work. Yesterday added a new element to that. While I drained what little life there was in my phone hitting refresh every 20 seconds, I realized that Drexel was still not scoring. 10 minutes into the game, and they still didn’t have a point. Now to be fair, Villanova wasn’t exactly blowing them out of the gym either. Mid-way through the 1st half when the Dragons finally got on the board, they cut the deficit to 11-3 and would hang around for a few more minutes before ‘Nova finally hit their stride.

We need more of the Reynolds we saw last night.

So when I looked back on that, I’m almost happy I didn’t have to witness such putrid basketball being played. It all worked out. What I did not realize until the 2nd half was just how good our defense was playing. Drexel’s top 2 scorers, Jamie Harris and Gerald Colds were held scoreless on the night. This comes 4 days after we held LaSalle’s top scorer to 7. And all of this is being done without our best defender, Reggie Redding.

It’s scary to think how good this team can be on the defensive end when Redding returns. Even Jay Wright, always one to be a little pessimistic and underplay a performance, finally admitted last night that he was genuinely surprised by how good his defense is this year. He knew they had the offense (which hasn’t even showed up for a full game outside of Penn) but he was expecting his team to not be as good as they’ve been on defense. That tells me a lot. When Jay even has to admit it, you know it’s true.

So color me very, very happy. The ‘Nova teams I watched as a student weren’t the flashiest offensively, and they were always undersized. Yet they were the toughest sons of bitches I ever watched on a basketball court. I thought this was the year we went all offense-no defense (not wrong to assume considering who we brought in and who we lost) but I may have to reconsider. These guys are hungry.

Onto my abbreviated player notes (really only caught the 2nd half):

• I’ve got to hand it to Corey Stokes and Dominic Cheek once again. Keeping Drexel’s top 2 men under 10 points each would have made me extremely happy. Blanking them is on another level completely. Stokes continues to elevate his game on the defensive end. The offense is coming. Thank Bob Hurley for Dom Cheek. The kid is well-schooled.
• Scottie Reynolds had a phenomenal game, and even flirted with his first career triple-double (2 rebounds and 2 assists short). That’s the Scottie I want to see every game. Then again, he may have had some extra motivation.
• Corey Fisher had a pretty quiet night, but again, his defense was stellar. 4 steals to go with 5 points and 5 assists. Ideally you want more offense, but in a 19-point victory it is hard to complain.
• Tough to believe that 19 points and 11 rebounds gets Antonio Peña the 4th bullet point, but what can I say? I’m growing accustomed to this out of ‘Tone. Maryland will be a big test. If he turns in another performance like this, we may have to start expecting this out of him and be disappointed when it doesn’t happen. 11-16 from the line was nice too.
• 3 more blocks for Maurice Sutton and countless shots altered. Still not getting super-excited because he hasn’t seen the big boys yet, but if he can play this role this team will go places.
• Taylor King rediscovered the stroke last night. 4-6 from downtown including one BOMB from well beyond NBA-range. His release is so smooth. But even better, he’s still making all the hustle plays that some people doubted he would be willing to make. He’s quickly, and deservingly, become a crowd favorite.
• Not much to report on Maalik Wayns or Isaiah Armwood. Wayns was 3-4 from the field, so he chose his shots well and converted, but he only had 1 assist and 3 turnovers. Need that to be better from your future PG. Armwood only got 7 minutes of action. Wish he saw more.
• Russell Wooten got in late and scored another 2 points. His points per minute this season are outstanding.

Few days off now until we travel to Washington D.C. and face Maryland in a ‘neutral game.’ There will be nothing neutral about it. This looks to be a very tough test that will show us a lot about this team as they get their first road test of the year.

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!

Terrible job on my part for just completely abandoning football coverage around here. That team deserves the coverage after a stellar regular season. The football team went out on Senior Day and pounded rival Deleware 30-12 for their 4th straight victory over the Blue Hens, and a win that increased their series lead to 22-20-1.

Whitney had a career day.

The win meant a lot of things for Villanova — most notably a CAA Championship. The conference title means that Villanova was automatically invited to the FCS playoffs, and earned the #2 seed in the process. That ensures homefield advantage all the way to the Championship game in Chattanooga, Tennessee. The Wildcats reached 10 wins for the 6th time in school history.

As for the game that got them there, it was the usual cast of characters putting in the majority of the work. Chris Whitney ran for a career-high 138 yards, Matt Szczur recordd 179 all-purpose yards and the Villanova defense was it’s usual stifling self limiting the UD offense to just 12 points.

The football team takes on Holy Cross this Saturday at 12:00 p.m. as part of a dual-sport double-header with the basketball team who hosts LaSalle at 3:30 p.m. Make sure you get out there early and support the football team. A National Championship is on the horizon!

…You can see the FCS Playoffs bracket here…we got a good draw because of the #2 seed…but we also avoided Richmond, who would have been out for revenge, and we potentially get another crack at New Hampshire, who is our only loss this season…

…I really do feel bad about not covering this team more…they are a special group…I was raised on basketball at ‘Nova and when I came in the football team was an afterthought…ironically many of my freshman classmates helped and are still helping this program turn into a national power…

…So I just want to congratulate the entire team on a great season — you’re not done yet though…let’s have a solid run through these playoffs and win it all…

I was initially a little disappointed when I realized I had a soccer game a 8 p.m. tonight. I love my weekly league, but I haven’t been able to watch Villanova play on a television yet. Just on my laptop, and I was about ready to give that up for the year. So I DVR’ed the game and left to play. 2 hours later (a 9-year old girl’s tournament ran into our time slot) I was on my way home to catch up on the game.

IBBW's early-season MVP

I told myself I wasn’t going to check my phone, so naturally the first thing I did was do that. I had 2 text messages, without a proper timestamp for some reason. The first was from Jamie: “This game isn’t even in HD.” Great, just what I wanted to hear. The second was from Mark: “Ridiculous 3 by Scottie.” As I said, I have no idea WHEN they sent these, and by this time the game is probably over, so as I raced home I had visions of Reynolds knocking down some insane jumper for the win.

(Let the record show that the aforementioned 3 was his step-back trey that capped an 8-0 run to start the game. It was very good.)

I always hate missing the live action because I enjoy living in that moment, where you really don’t know what is going to happen next. Whenever I watch something recorded, I feel like it isn’t as meaningful. I think I can attribute that to two things – making sure I had no idea what the score was, and the fact that it was the finals against a quality team. I was excited.

Anyways, I severely underestimated the quality of watching a game that’s been recorded. For one thing, there is the no commercial factor. That’s pure brilliance, as you all know. I was even getting so good with the different speeds of ‘fast-forward’ that I was skimming through the point guards bringing it up the court and free throws. I could still see what was happening, but it was going just a little faster.

And of course the best part, not having to listen to 3 idiots try to talk about the game. In the 1st half there were a few points where I watched extended action and got into the conversation the commentators were having. Both teams were scoring, there were some great plays, and none of them were even approaching anything relevant to the game at hand. It was brutal. For the record, I only like 4 college basketball announcers:

1. Gus Johnson (just makes everything much more exciting)
2. Sean McDonough (the only play-by-play guy that actually knows his hoops)
3. Jay Bilas (a Dookie, but very intelligent and articulate)
4. Bill Raftery (so much passion, it oozes out of him)

(In fact, I’m pretty certain that the reason you never see Gus and Bill do a game together during March Madness is because knowing those two, the building might implode on the first dunk of the game)

As for the game itself though – a great win. Against solid competition, we really looked like a Top 10 team. And still, we didn’t fire on all cylinders (22 turnovers). The best is still yet to come. But for now, I’d say that was a good team-building experience in Puerto Rico, and it certainly doesn’t hurt to walk away with hardware. As for my notes…

• Vintage Scottie Reynolds. There was a point in the 2nd half (to the announcers credit, they pointed it out) where Reynolds just decided he was going to take over the game – and he did. Hopefully he’s out of the early-season funk.
• 17 points and 16 rebounds for Antonio Peña. Are you freaking kidding me? ‘Tone’s best game in a ‘Nova uniform by far. Great for him, and great for the team if this becomes common. He was the epitome of a glass-cleaner tonight. And for the first time in a long time, he was demanding the ball in the post. He’s got confidence right now.
• Corey Stokes finally woke up. He looked like the player we saw in the first couple of games. He’s got a versatile offensive game now, and the defense continues to improve.
• 9 points and 11 boards for Taylor King, who like Peña, was a force on the inside. He didn’t do much at all outside today actually. The dunk he threw down was with authority. I caught myself yelling when that happened.
• Corey Fisher and Mo Sutton both did some nice things. Fisher was hurt by fouls, Sutton seemed to be a little over-matched at times in terms of strength but he’s a great help-defender and he’s so active on the boards.
• He may not be there yet, but I’ll continue to say it – Dominic Cheek is going to be scary-good. He’s still figuring out the college game but I get excited everytime he’s out there. I think he needs to play a little looser, but the defense has been great. The offense will come.
• Jay Wright went 3-0 without a suit. I don’t know how.
• Maalik Wayns has an absurd handle on the ball. He keeps playing with a lot of confidence. I love that.

After 3 games in 4 days, Villanova now gets a nice extended break before they host LaSalle at home next Saturday at 3:30 p.m. Shout out to all the ‘Nova fans in Puerto Rico, you guys were great down there!