Showing posts with label
Villanova in the NCAA tournament.
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Showing posts with label
Villanova in the NCAA tournament.
Show all posts
To the Villanova Wildcats faithful-
It was one for the ages.
The third-seeded Villanova Wildcats demolished the second-seeded Duke Blue Devils on Thursday night in Boston, 77-54, in the Sweet 16 of the NCAA tournament.
(Let that sink in for a moment...)
A 23-point victory over Duke in the NCAA tournament.
It was among the greatest Villanova performances of the 21st century.
It was the first Villanova victory over Duke since 1958, and their first victory over Duke in the NCAA tournament, since ousting Duke from its first-ever tournament in 1955.
Villanova allowed just 54 points, the second-lowest output for Duke this season. The entire team defense clicked tonight, crushing Duke's offense and never permitting the Blue Devils to get into a rhythm - Duke shot just 26.7% from the floor (a season-low for field goal percentage). making just 16 field goals. (Thanks, March Madness Highlights on CBS College Sports Channel for that last fact.)
The statistical heroes for Villanova were Dante Cunningham (14 points, 11 rebounds), Scottie Reynolds (16 points, three rebounds), and Reggie Redding (11 points, nine rebounds, four assists).
And in the most crowd-pleasing moments, Frank Tchuisi scored four points against Duke in the final minute.
It's now very much in the realm of possibility that the Wildcats could win the entire tournament. They will face top-seeded Pittsburgh - whom they've already defeated once - on Saturday at 7 PM or so...
This is just the brief, initial recap, but I'll be exploring the various aspects of the victory in a series of posts throughout today... so check back for much, much more, later today...
You can also take a look at the other Villanova blogs included in Various Viewpoints on the right sidebar, for their takes...
Go Wildcats!
There are two ways you can contact Villanova Viewpoint. One is by commenting on this blog. Comments are encouraged. Also, you can e-mail villanova.viewpoint@yahoo.com (Important note: This is a different e-mail address than before. Please use this new one.)
To the Villanova Wildcats faithful-This week - in addition to previewing the Sweet 16 contest between the Villanova Wildcats and the Duke Blue Devils - I'll be looking back at the ten previous games in which Villanova has met Duke.
Other entries in the Villanova/Duke Rivalry History -
You can read about the November 14, 2000, Preseason NIT meeting at Cameron Indoor Stadium...You can read about #14 Duke wrecking the then-CoreStates Center debut, defeating #4 Villanova, on December 14, 1996...
March 19, 1978 - NCAA Tournament, East Regional Final (Elite Eight) - Providence, Rhode Island - Duke 90, Villanova 72
This was the third time - and until this week, the most recent - meeting between the two schools in the NCAA tournament. It was a remarkable confluence for the Big Five, as Villanova defeated La Salle, 103-97, in first round action at the Palestra. Travelling to Providence, the Wildcats narrowly got past Indiana in the second round, 61-60, before facing Duke there.
For their part, the Blue Devils had eked out a 63-62 victory over Rhode Island in Charlotte in the first round, behind 25 points from Mike Gminski. On St. Patrick's Day, they also had gone to Providence, where they had topped Penn (then a power), 84-80, with a pair of Blue Devils scoring 21 points. And so the Wildcats and Blue Devils met in the equivalent of the Elite Eight.
On March 19, Duke had no trouble getting past the Wildcats, 90-72. The Wildcats on the team included, inter alia, Alex Bradley, Keith Herron, Reggie Robinson, Rory Sparrow, and one Robert Rigsby (better known to the Villanova Wildcats faithful as "Whitey" Rigsby, the team's radio color analyst). Jim Spanarkel (also, now well known as a color analyst) led Duke with 23 points, as they advanced to the Final Four. In addition to Spanarkel and Gminski, the other Duke standout on that team was Gene Banks.
This was under Coach K's predecessor, Bill Foster; Coach K arrived in 1980-81. Foster took the Blue Devils past Notre Dame in the national semifinals in St. Louis, but fell to Kentucky in the national championship.
Check back for more posts, both on the history of Villanova/Duke, and a comprehensive preview of Thursday's Sweet 16 contest, scheduled for around 10 PM in Boston...
You can also take a look at the Various Viewpoints on the right sidebar, for their takes...
Go Wildcats!
There are two ways you can contact Villanova Viewpoint. One is by commenting on this blog. Comments are encouraged. Also, you can e-mail villanova.viewpoint@yahoo.com (Important note: This is a different e-mail address than before. Please use this new one.)
To the Villanova Wildcats faithful- This week - in addition to previewing the Sweet 16 contest between the Villanova Wildcats and the Duke Blue Devils - I'll be looking back at the ten previous games in which Villanova has met Duke.
Other entries in the Villanova/Duke Rivalry History -
You can read about the November 14, 2000, Preseason NIT meeting at Cameron Indoor Stadium...
December 14, 1996 (regular season) - #14 Duke 87, #4 Villanova 79, @ the CoreStates Center college basketball debut, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
The new Philadelphia Flyers/76ers venue, the then-CoreStates Center, opened its doors for the 1996-97 season. Of course, Villanova had occasionally used the old Spectrum for games against Georgetown, Syracuse, and the like, but they wanted a big splash for their first game in the "new building". And what better way to mark the first college basketball game in the glittering venue, than by inviting a program of Duke's prominence?
(The old Spectrum witnessed its final game recently, as it is scheduled for demolition in the near future. In addition, \the Wildcats played a nostalgia game against Pittsburgh earlier this season, on January 29, as a tribute. It was the first time they had played there since the 1996-97 season, when they were unable to book the "new building" more than three times, and thus had to play twice in the "old building". There were five games in South Philadelphia that year, as a result.)
So on Saturday afternoon, December 14, 1996, many Villanova students took a respite from their exams to travel by a flotilla of chartered buses, down to the Center in South Philadelphia, for the historic occasion.
Duke was obviously a program of great prestige, having been to numerous Final Fours and not far removed from back-to-back national championships in 1991 and 1992. However, the Wildcats featured one of their most talented teams, the last year of the Steve Lappas-era nucleus (minus Kerry Kittles and Eric Eberz) of Jason Lawson, Alvin Williams, and Chuck Kornegay - but bolstered by the single-year appearance of Tim Thomas. (Duke fans - you may remember Kornegay from his time at NC State, from which he transferred to Villanova.) As a result, the Wildcats were ranked #4 nationally, higher than the Blue Devils, who were ranked #14 in the poll.
Duke wrecked the opening-day party, unfortunately, hanging an 87-79 defeat on the Wildcats at the Center. According to the Duke Chronicle, which covered the contest:A great deal of the credit for the win goes to the Duke backcourt of [Jeff] Capel, [Trajan] Langdon and junior Ricky Price. The trio scored 49 of the Blue Devils' points and hit a combined 7-for-12 from the three-point arc. Their outside shooting was necessary due to the much larger Wildcat frontcourt which often prevented the Blue Devils from getting the ball inside. Villanova outscored Duke 34-20 in the paint, but the real battle was further out on the court-while the Blue Devils finished the game with a sizzling 52.9 three-point percentage, the Wildcats only managed a meager 23.1%...
Villanova kept Duke's lead within 10 for the first few minutes of the second half, but following a jumper by senior center Greg Newton at the 17:17 mark to put Duke up 48-37, the Wildcats remained in a double-digit debt to the Blue Devils for nearly 15 minutes. Villanova managed to narrow the gap in the last minutes of the game by committing eight fouls in the final 2:20 in an attempt to regain possession of the ball, but it was not enough.
You can also read the AP story.
Epilogue
Of course, given its #4 ranking entering the game, it was a strong Wildcats team, one which eventually qualified for the NCAA tournament as a #4 seed and played - ironically - not very far from Durham- in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, where Wake Forest was the host. But the Wildcats were unable to make it past the second round. They defeated #13 Long Island, before falling to #5 California in the second round. (The Cal squad featured future NFL legendary tight end Tony Gonzalez, who went on to stardom for the Kansas City Chiefs.)
By Duke standards, 1996-97 was a solid, but unspectacular, year. The Blue Devils still had not fully recovered from the disastrous mid-'90s collapse triggered by Coach K's health. As a result, Duke had missed the 1995 tournament completely- its first absence in a dozen years, since 1983. They had also lost in the first round of the 1996 tournament, as a #8 seed, to #9 Eastern Michigan.
The 1997 Blue Devils returned to form, qualifying as a more Duke-like #2 seed, and played their first two rounds in nearby Charlotte, North Carolina. But they really struggled, escaping #15 seed Murray State by just three points, 71-68, in the first round. In the second round, they were upset by #10 seed Providence, 98-87. Capel was the star, scoring 25 points against the Racers in the first round and 26 against the Friars in the second.
Check back for more posts, both on the history of Villanova/Duke, and a comprehensive preview of Thursday's Sweet 16 contest, scheduled for around 10 PM in Boston...
You can also take a look at the Various Viewpoints on the right sidebar, for their takes...
Go Wildcats!
There are two ways you can contact Villanova Viewpoint. One is by commenting on this blog. Comments are encouraged. Also, you can e-mail villanova.viewpoint@yahoo.com (Important note: This is a different e-mail address than before. Please use this new one.)
To the Villanova Wildcats faithful-
Part 2 of the recap of the glorious victory over UCLA... Part 3 will be along later, and you can also read Part 1, the initial Villanova/UCLA recap...
Villanova dominated all aspects of play today. UCLA's final lead today was 6-5, at the 16:56 mark when Josh Shipp converted two free throws. The final tie was at 9-9, after Nicola Dragovic hit a three-pointer off an assist from Shipp, with 15:46 to play.
Villanova took the lead for good when Dante Cunningham broke the 9-9 deadlock with a jump shot, 17 seconds later, putting the Wildcats up 11-9. It was the beginning of a 11-0 run that established Villanova in complete control, in the midst of the first half. The 11-0 run culminated in a triple by Corey Stokes, assisted by Corey Fisher, giving the Wildcats a 20-9 lead.
With 12:16 to play, UCLA's James Keefe rebounded a missed layup from Jrue Holiday, and slammed it to break the run and make it 20-11. But the Wildcats responded with another 8-0 run, which had a fitting end - Antonio Pena missed a shot, Dwayne Anderson rebounded it and then dunked it with authority. It was now 28-11 with 10:13 to play.
While I had no sense of certainty of victory at the time, obviously, those twin bursts look different in retrospect. When combined to make it a 19-2 Villanova run over a 5:16 span, the Wildcats never looked back. Their lead was 17 points; the Bruins would never get closer than a dozen points for the rest of the game.
Think about this for a moment. The sixth-seeded Bruins were the Pac-10 runner-up, and were brimming with postseason experience. They had been to three straight Final Fours - while many of the players from those teams were gone, their replacements had still experienced them, as had the coaching staff. Their newcomers were also lauded with many accolades as blue-chip prospects.
In spite of all of these factors, the Wildcats simply steamrolled UCLA today. They seized control with a 17-point lead midway through the first half, and never permitted the Bruins to pull closer than 12 points, at any point for the remainder of the game.
It was a level of performance that I would have thought unthinkable, after the debacle of the first half against #14 American on Thursday evening. On Thursday, the Wildcats had trailed American by 10 points at halftime, 14 points early in the second half, and by eight with just 11:21 to play, before rallying to win by a deceptively wide 13-point margin...
After the Wildcats took the 28-11 lead at the midpoint of the first half, they actually doubled up UCLA at one point. Shane Clark slammed home a dunk, assisted by Corey Fisher, to balloon the lead to 38-19 with 5:17 to play. At this point, the Bruins developed their only momentum of the contest.
Shipp and Darren Collison combined to score seven consecutive points, pulling UCLA to within 38-26 at the 2:53 mark. The Wildcats quickly quelled the challenge, though, trotting into the locker room at halftime with a comfortable 44-31 advantage.
Nor did UCLA truly stay within striking distance, after play resumed. The Wildcats outscored the Bruins 13-4 at the beginning of the second half, with the end of the run coming when Fisher was fouled by Dragovic while laying the ball into the net. Fisher converted the traditional three-point play to increase the Wildcats' lead to 22 points, 57-35, with 16:30 to play.
For the remainder of the contest (i.e., virtually the entire second half), the Wildcats' lead never dipped below 16 points. It fluctuated between 16 and 25 points, with the zenith coming when Scottie Reynolds hit one of two free throws, with 3:40 to play, making the score 86-61. UCLA outscored Villanova 8-3 the rest of the way, to leave the final margin at 89-69, 20 points. Unlike Thursday's game, however, Villanova's margin of victory was a precisely accurate barometer of the Wildcats' level of play in the game. It was a thorough thrashing of UCLA, a very talented and accomplished opponent, which has been an elite program for decades.
I will have Part 3 of the UCLA recap up later, and eventually, there will be material on Villanova's upcoming Sweet 16 battle with #2 Duke in Boston on Thursday... so keep checking back...
You can also take a look at the Various Viewpoints on the right sidebar, for their takes...
Go Wildcats!
There are two ways you can contact Villanova Viewpoint. One is by commenting on this blog. Comments are encouraged. Also, you can e-mail villanova.viewpoint@yahoo.com (Important note: This is a different e-mail address than before. Please use this new one.)
