With Selection Sunday looming, college basketball fans are experiencing the calm before the storm. The madness we’ve all been waiting for is right around the corner.
The Villanova Wildcats gave notice and shook things up in late November by beating the second ranked Kansas Wildcats with their dominant roster, stocked full of future NBA draft picks, on a buzzer beating 3-pointer by point guard Ryan Arcidiancono. To prove this was no fluke they went out the very next night in the Bahamas and beat Iowa, a potential top 10 seed in this year’s NCAA tournament. After defeating Iowa in overtime they were crowned champions of the annual Battle 4 Atlantis.
Many said it was way too early in the season to make any rash judgments about this young squad, but here they are at the end of the season with a very impressive 28-3 record and champions of the Big East. While this perennial powerhouse conference isn’t quite what it used to be after the departures of teams like Pitt and Cuse, the remaining teams are hardly a group of pushovers.
Villanova basketball is the epitome of the city in which it plays. Philly is a no-nonsense, blue-collar town with a rich history of great collegiate basketball. Head Coach Jay Wright’s 2014 team is arguably the grittiest squad in the nation. Unlike most tournament teams, the Wildcats lack the stereotypical star player; however they use this to their advantage. Never looking past any teams, not caring who gets the recognition, just taking it one game at a time, like an old school college basketball team.
The majority of the top teams in the country have one or two players who do it all, which is great to have, but easier to defend than a team with countless weapons playing together as a unit. Nova exemplified this fact in a signature win over a solid Marquette team, when leading scorer James Bell had zero points and the Cats won by 17.
In this dream season for Villanova ‘balance’ is everything. It would be hard to argue against them being the most balanced offense in the country. They rarely rely on one player like Duke, for example, with Jabari Parker.
They have the credentials to be taken seriously by bracketologists and have a chance to add to them in the upcoming Big East tournament. Coach Wright preaches stability to the team at every practice; hammering home that no one game is more important than the next. The beloved Big East Tournament is one of the most prestigious and competitive in the country and is played at the Mecca of basketball, Madison Square Garden. That being said, it is not quite the big dance, so a loss would be much better to suffer in New York this week than in late March/early April.
Coaching plays a big role in the outcome of highly competitive college basketball games and while Jay Wright may not be a household name like Krzyzewski or Boeheim; you can count on two things come tournament time. Wright will be wearing the most expensive suit in the arena on game day and he will be leading a team that is not flashy or conceited but as confident as they come. As Coach Wright has been known to say, “shoot em up, sleep in the streets.” Play with a toughness and confidence that cannot be matched.
With his court general, Ryan Arcidiancono making the calls and controlling the flow of the game James Bell, JayVaughn Pinkston, Daniel Ochefu, Darrun Hilliard round out the rest of the starting 5 and possess something that most teams don’t, experience. In a day and age when most players from top programs leave for the draft after one year of play Nova has managed to keep this group together and build a team chemistry.
This team will undoubtedly be a tough out in the tournament and certainly poses a threat to be dancing well into March and even cutting down the nets in Texas.
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