HOUSTON– In this unpredictable college basketball season, this was one of those unpredictable moments.
Villanova wiped out whatever bitter memories remained of its ugliest loss of the season last night. The Wildcats scorched Oklahoma, 95-41, to advance to the NCAA championship game against North Carolina here Monday night before a sellout crowd of 75,500 at cavernous NRG Stadium, setting a record for the largest margin of victory in Final Four history in the process. The blowout erased the haunting nightmare of the Wildcats’ 78-55 loss to the same Sooners back on Dec. 7 at Pearl Harbor.
This one had Villanova-Penn ’71 written all over it. The Wildcats took out three years of Philadelphia City Series’ frustration on the third-ranked 28-0 Quakers– who had beaten them five straight times– in the NCAA Eastern Regional finals that year, blowing them away, 90-47, in Raleigh.
Like that great Penn team, this Oklahoma team never knew what hit them.
Junior guard Josh Hart scored 23 points on 10-of-12 shooting for Villanova, which executed its offense flawlessly, shot a blistering 71.4 percent and made 11-of-18 three point shots. It was a far cry from the abysmal 4-for-32 the Cats shot from beyond the arc the first time these two teams met. Junior forward Kris Jenkins contributed 18 points, making 4 of 7 threes. Six Wildcats scored in double figures.
Villanova was totally locked in at at both ends of this elevated court, limiting the Sooners to just 31.7 percent shooting and 6 for 27 from the three. They completely neutralized Oklahoma’s high scoring All America guard Buddy Hield, who finished with just nine points on 4 for 12 shooting.
“The first time we played them it was a tough game,” Hart recalled. “Early in the season, we were a young team. Me and Kris (Jenkins) were starting for the first time. Guys like (freshmen) Jalen Brunson and Mikal Bridges were getting their first-ever college basketball games. We didn’t have our habits as instilled as we do now.”
This is the second trip to the Final four for Villanova’s coach Jay Wright, who was here in 2009. The normally extroverted Wright has taken a serious approach all week in an attempt to keep his team focused because he knows opportunities like this don’t come along very often. Wright looked like a man who could sense history in the making in the post-game media conference. His Big East team has a legitimate shot to win the national championship if they can come close to duplicating their performance against Oklahoma.
It is hard to believe they can play much better.
Wright was an assistant at Villanova under Rollie Massimino, who won the national championship in 1985 with a near perfect 66-64 upset of Georgetown in Lexington That was Massimino’s crowning achievement and Villanova’s one shining moment.
“I’m not sure anymore about Philadelphia basketball, how ’85 looms,” Wright said. “It did at the time. I was an assistant in ’87, ’88. It was big at that time in Philadelphia. At Villanova, those guys are still legendary, magical guys. Anytime they come around.
“Last year we did a 30th anniversary. Fox Sports televised it. We played coach Massimino’s Kaiser (Fla) University team. Everybody came back to see those guys. We had an event before the game where guys could come and get pictures with them.
“Those guys are really icons on our campus, they really are. The whole team brings that magical underdog feeling, like anything’s possible. That’s really strong still at Villanova for all sports, especially in our basketball program.
”There’s something in me that those guys are so special. I don’t ever want them to lose their magic. I don’t think they will. But I’d love our team to do it.”
The 82-year old Massimino missed Nova’s latest magical moment. He was back home in Florida with his ailing wife Mary Jane.
“My wife Patty and I talked to him today, about 10, 15 minutes before we came over here on the bus,” Wright said. “We would love to have him here, we really would. He’s dealing with some health issues with his family. That’s why I called him. He had already called me in the morning. I said, ‘Take care of yourself, take care of Mrs. Mass. Don’t worry about us. We’re good.’
“If there is anyway we he can be here, he’ll be here.”
Nova will likely need all the magic it can conjure up against Carolina, which advanced with an 83-66 victory over Syracuse in the other semi-final.
But the Wildcats made a bold statement against Oklahoma with their defensive intensity, much like they did against another Big 12 power Kansas in the regional finals.
“The first time we played Oklahoma,” Wright said, “their guys started the game defensively, they were smacking the floor. Our guys were just out there playing like, ‘Oh, we’re in Hawaii, this is nice. I’m starting finally. I sat for two years, now I’m starting. This is fun,’
“Those guys were dialed in, focused, smacking the floor, denying everything. It became the standard for us throughout the season. Even when we played well within our league, they were up around 1, 2, 3 in the country, we kept telling our guys, ‘Hey, just remember how those teams are playing. If you want to do anything we have to face those teams one day. Think about how Oklahoma played us.
“That, I think was a big part of the game. When you’re talking about 18-, 22-year old kids, they beat us by 23, they just did to us what we did today. If we had to play tomorrow, it might be different. They would have learned from this one. I think we had an advantage having gotten beaten pretty bad earlier in the season.”
The Cats never let Hield, who was averaging 29 points per game in the tournament, do much damage, Wright started senior guard Ryan Arcidiacono on him before switching to Hart and mixing a dose of the versatile 6-7, long- armed forward Bridges and guard Phil Booth onto him in an effort to keep fresh legs.
“We were watching on film how good Buddy is,” Arcidiacono said. “We knew he would take and make tough shots. We tried to keep fresh bodies on him, tried to make him take tough, contested shots. it just happened he didn’t make them tonight. We’ve seen him when he’s knocking them down from everywhere.”
At the eight minute mark, Hield came out of the game. He looked gassed. “I thought, he’s got to be tired. We must be getting to him now,” Wright admitted.
It wasn’t long before Oklahoma collapsed for good. This will go down as one of the great performances ever by a Villanova team. But the Cats would do well to remember the journey isn’t over yet.
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Dick Weiss is a sportswriter and columnist who has covered college football and college and professional basketball for the Philadelphia Daily News and the New York Daily News. He has received the Curt Gowdy Award from the Naismith Basketball Hall of Fame and is a member of the national Sportswriters Hall of Fame. He has also co-written several books with Rick Pitino, John Calipari, Dick Vitale and authored a tribute book on Duke coach Mike Krzyzewski.
