Villanova Rallies in 2nd Half to Top Notre Dame, 65-60, at Wachovia Center

Villanova did not crash after Saturday's historic hosing of unbeaten, then-#2 Kansas. Instead, the Wildcats continued to crest, notching a 65-60 victory over Notre Dame at the Wachovia Center and avenging their loss in South Bend on January 8.

Villanova improved its record to 11-4 overall, 3-3 Big East, as it returned to conference play after the brief foray against the Big XII's Kansas Jayhawks. Notre Dame dropped to 12-5 overall, 4-3 Big East.

After crushing Kansas and narrowly losing at Boston College, both Top 10 teams, Villanova was rewarded with 77 votes in this week's Associated Press Top 25 poll - the most of any school not ranked. If the Wildcats manage to prevail at Rutgers on Saturday, they will undoubtedly be ranked in next Monday's poll.

This was an important game for both teams, as both will certainly be on the NCAA bubble right up to Selection Sunday. The Irish placed fourth in the Big East in the preseason coaches' poll and their play thus far has vindicated those assessments. Notre Dame came into the game red-hot, winning eight of its previous ten contests. Central to the Wildcats' efforts this evening would be shutting down ND's featured star, Chris Thomas. Thomas scored 25 points, including a nail-in-the-coffin three from the corner, in Notre Dame's 78-72 victory over 'Nova on January 8 in South Bend - clearly demonstrating why he was named preseason first-team All-Big East. He has never missed a game in his career and played in his 116th career game tonight. In Notre Dame's tough one-point loss to Georgetown on Sunday, Thomas became only the 16th player in ND history to score over 2,000 points.

The Wildcats were reasonably successful in shutting down Thomas, who struggled from the floor, making just four of his 14 attempts. He had a decent game (12 points and eight rebounds while playing all 40 minutes) but not quite good enough to permit the Irish to steal a game on the road against a good team. Torin Francis picked up the slack, having a great game (19 points and 13 rebounds, both team-highs), and he did it while playing just 30 minutes. Chris Quinn also reached double figures with 13 points, four rebounds and four assists.

For Villanova, Allan Ray was awesome, scoring 23 points on 8-16 shooting. Randy Foye also had a solid performance, scoring 20 points but requiring 7-20 shooting to do it. Curtis Sumpter just missed another double-double, finishing with 11 points and nine rebounds. Perhaps most importantly, though, the Wildcats finished with just five turnovers. This feat was what permitted them to win despite shooting just 37% from the floor (although it was also helped by the strong 47% from beyond the arc).

Notre Dame is celebrating its 100th year of basketball this season, and are doing it in grand style. (To put it in context, even Villanova's storied program won't get to do it for another 15 years.) The Irish entered the season nationally ranked for the second straight year, at #20, although it should be noted that they've been out of the polls for two months now. Notre Dame also enjoyed the thrill of beating Indiana - at Indiana - for the first time since 1973, after which Mike Brey observed that the last time that happened he "was 14 years old and listening to the Bee Gees". It was also the first time Notre Dame had beaten Indiana at all since 1994. Brey and Coach J also go back a long way in their personal rivalry, when Brey was at Delaware and Wright was at Hofstra, both then America East schools. Tonight was the 17th time the duo have faced off, and after tonight, Brey holds a 11-6 lead over Wright.

Villanova continues to dominate the series with Notre Dame since the Irish joined the Big East in 1995-96. The Wildcats now lead the overall series by a slim 14-12 margin, but have routinely defeated Notre Dame since conference play began. Villanova has won those games, 9-2. Notre Dame also continues to struggle in the Wachovia Center, as the Irish are just 1-4 there (their sole victory came last season).

Coach Jay Wright had to contend with a short bench tonight, due to the ongoing injury to Jason Fraser and the disciplinary action meted out to Kyle Lowry. Lowry served a mandatory one-game suspension for punching Kansas player Jeff Hawkins, shortly before halftime of Saturday's game. This left Wright with a rotation of simply seven players (Ray, Foye, Nardi, Sumpter, Sheridan, Chris Charles, and Austin). As a result, Wright made heavy demands on the five starters, who played virtually the entire game. Austin played 10 minutes and Charles just three, and neither scored a point, combining for two rebounds and a blocked shot, all from Austin. It would probably be difficult to find a game in recent Villanova history where the bench failed to score a single point, even during all of those phone-card suspension games where the team frequently played shorthanded.

Foye rocked the Wachovia Center in the beginning, scoring nine points in the first eight minutes and leading 'Nova to an early 15-10 advantage, while ND committed six turnovers in the first eight minutes. Back-to-back threes from Allan Ray helped put 'Nova up 23-13 early, however, ND enjoyed a 24-7 run to end the half. With 33.8 seconds, Foye drove to the hole and and-one'd it in, to cut it to 34-30, Notre Dame. That was 'Nova's first free throw of the half - and in doing so, Foye reached the millennial milestone (more about that below). Unfortunately, back at the other end, Torin Francis was fouled by Marcus Austin, and Francis completed a three-point play to make it 37-30 at intermission, reclaiming the momentum. While VU scored 13 points off turnovers to ND's 4 in the first half, ND went 5-10 from the line in half, ten times VU's trips to the line. (Ironically, Villanova would ultimately finish the game with 20 FT attempts to ND's 16.)

Notre Dame still clung to its single digit lead for much of the second half, before Villanova finally erased it at the 9:07 mark, thanks to consecutive threes from Foye and Sumpter. And ND would never retake the lead. The Irish managed just eight points in the final 11:47 of the contest. Some clutch free-throw shooting from 'Nova was enough to keep the Irish at bay and secure Villanova's second straight victory at the Wachovia Center in five days.

With these two triumphs, the Wildcats have a chance to do what no other Villanova team has done since the building opened for the 1996-97 season: win three games there. Only one other squad has managed to go undefeated there: the 2000-01 team, which went 2-0. The Wildcats will attempt to complete the sweep on February 12 against Syracuse.

Foye Hits A Thousand: Foye finally reached 1,000 points tonight, the 47th player in Wildcat history to do so and the second to achieve the mark this season (Allan Ray became the 46th a couple of weeks ago).

Villanova travels up to the RAC at Rutgers, one of the toughest venues for a visitor in America, on Saturday afternoon.

Notre Dame Narrowly Knocks Off A Non-Sumpter Villanova Squad, 78-72, in South Bend

There were two major factors which contributed to Villanova's 78-72 defeat at the hands of the Notre Dame Fighting Irish on Saturday afternoon in South Bend, Indiana. One has been well-known to Wildcat fans for weeks - that as late as early January, the Wildcats had yet to leave the five-county metropolitan area to face an opponent. However, the second came in the last 24 hours, as a rude surprise both to Jay Wright and the Wildcat faithful: namely, the fact that leading scorer Curtis Sumpter would sprain his knee in a collision with Kyle Lowry in Friday's brief practice. Both of these unpleasant facts would directly lead to Villanova's first defeat in over a month.

In summary, the Wildcats were without their best player, and were facing a surprisingly large and spirited crowd on enemy territory at the Joyce Center with ND on break. And so perhaps it's not surprising that the Wildcats succumbed to just their second loss of the season, placing them at 8-2 overall, 1-1 Big East. Notre Dame improved to 10-2 overall, 2-0 Big East, after the only meeting between the schools this season.

This was one of those games where the whole really didn't add up to the sum of the parts. Notre Dame was ranked eighth nationally in defense - almost as good as the fourth-ranked Wildcats, as of games of Dec. 30 via ESPN.com. But despite that formidable ND defense, most of the Wildcats turned in impressive statistical performances. Randy Foye stepped up his game in Sumpter's absence, scoring a career-high 26 points on 9-21 shooting and also collecting six rebounds. Will Sheridan also narrowly missed a double-double by finishing with nine points and 10 boards in only 28 minutes. Allan Ray struggled with foul trouble, logging an identical 28 minutes, but still reached double figures with 13 points (and in a statistical oddity for a guard, managed to finish the game without an assist OR a turnover). Mike Nardi followed up his superlative performance against West Virginia on Wednesday with another strong game, scoring 11 points and dealing six assists against only one turnover. Finally, Jason Fraser continued to dominate in the paint, made even more impressive by Sumpter's absence (Sumpter had been averaging nearly nine boards a game). Playing 30 minutes (he's played more than 30 minutes just 15 times in his career due to his plague of injuries), Fraser grabbed 10 rebounds and negatively influenced countless ND shots after swatting six of them. For good measure, he added five points. And as a team, Villanova committed just nine turnovers and outrebounded ND 42-33, even WITHOUT Sumpter's nine-a-game.

So, after reading all that, one would likely conclude that this was a happy-ending Villanova victory. After all, Villanova has been a defensive terror this year, right? Among the nation's leaders in defense, right?

Well, they HAD been. The Irish riddled the Villanova defense, scoring 78 points, more than any other opponent this season (the previous high was the 72 points scored by Albany, and excluding that game the next highest total was 64 against Penn). Notre Dame shot a sizzling 55% from three-point range (11-20), and the high number of threes, combined with a perfect 19-19 from the line (albeit something Villanova couldn't do anything about) explained the 78 points.

What is particularly galling about this loss is that it's a road game that with a little extra luck, they could have WON. Had they done so, the Wildcats could have markedly improved their national profile. At 9-1, 2-0 Big East, with a devastating victory over ranked West Virginia and a road victory against a solid ND squad , Villanova almost certainly would have received some Top 25 votes in the next poll - and now will have to put together another winning streak to do so.

For Notre Dame, Chris Thomas powered the team to victory. Playing all 40 minutes, Thomas scored 25 points, including a stake-through-the heart rainbow shot from the corner in the final minute that fatally sank any Villanova hopes of a comeback. He was also a perfect 3-3 from beyond the arc and 8-8 from the line. Colin Falls and Chris Quinn each scored 16 points while Dennis Latimore posted a double-double with a dozen points and 11 rebounds.

ND came out slugging, registering first-half shooting numbers that nearly mirrored their final totals, shooting 44% overall and 54% from beyond the arc. Often, Jay Wright has been able to successfully adjust at halftime, but it didn't work out today. Villanova's largest lead of the game came in the early going, taking a brief 16-10 lead, and the Irish eventually abandoned the full-court pressure they initially showed. But ND fought back with a 10-3 run that ended on a triple by Thomas, giving them a 20-19 edge. The Irish gradually increased their lead as the half progressed and took a 41-34 lead into the locker room. For 'Nova, Ray had 11 of his 13 points by halftime.

After play resumed, the teams basically traded baskets until Notre Dame was maintaining a 66-59 lead with 7:27 left. Then the Wildcats made their charge. An 8-0 run was capped by an incredible play by Fraser: he crushed one of Quinn's shots, grabbed the rebound with his left hand, and then fired an over-the-head, two-handed pass the length of the court (with the speed and accuracy of outfielder Vladimir Guerrero) to Nardi, who laid it in. Villanova had its first lead since 25-24, holding a 67-66 advantage with 4:05 to play.

Unfortunately, 'Nova went cold, quickly lost the lead, and remarkably, didn't even make it that exciting down the stretch. The game was tied at 70 as late as the 2:53 mark, but the Wildcats could only manage two points from Sheridan in the last 2:53, while giving up eight to ND - and that's a formula for disaster. The coup de grace came after Latimore had drained two free throws to put ND up 72-70. Nardi dribbled down the court and took an absurdly long three from the top of the key, which he missed and ND successfully rebounded (although in fairness to him, he had made that shot earlier in the game). ND was draining the clock on the next possession when Thomas was trapped by Nardi in the corner as the shot clock ran down, with about a minute to play . Thomas fired an earth-orbiting shot, which would have scraped the Golden Dome if the game had been outside - and somehow, it dropped at the buzzer. The Joyce Center crowd went crazy and Villanova's hopes were dashed, despite trailing just 74-70 with 57 seconds left. There was no drama from that moment.

Back in the days when Notre Dame was an independent, prior to 1995-96, Villanova/Notre Dame was an annual series from the 1970s to the early 1980s. Coach Digger Phelps, now the foil for Dick Vitale on ESPN's college basketball coverage, liked to bring the Irish into Philadelphia as often as possible, to play Villanova or La Salle at the Palestra. The series died in 1984, however, and didn't resume until Notre Dame joined the Big East in 1995-96. Remarkably, Villanova owned Notre Dame for many years after that happened. The Irish didn't win a Big East game against Villanova until 2004, losing eight straight contests - six of them by double-digit margins. But they've now beaten 'Nova twice in a row. Villanova now holds a slim 13-12 lead all-time.

Worth noting: In what undoubtedly warmed the hearts of Golden Domers far more than the basketball Irish's impressive victory this afternoon, New England Patriots assistant coach and ND football-coach-designate Charlie Weis addressed the Joyce Center crowd at halftime. (The Patriots are enjoying a bye weekend thanks to their outstanding regular season, leaving Weis free to concentrate on his future challenges, which are considerable.) His oration likely included a pledge to return to the football Irish to its former and increasingly distant glories, but undoubtedly did not invoke the names of such predecessors as Gerry Faust and Bob Davie...

With apologies to ESPN's Dan Patrick: Did You Know? One of the legendary Four Horsemen of Knute Rockne's Notre Dame in the 1920s, Harry Stuhldreher, later became the football coach at Villanova... Some former Villanova players were at the game, including most notably Tom Ingelsby, a star in the early 1970s (his son Martin played for ND several years ago).

Villanova will conclude this brief, two-game road trip, with a venture to Providence on Tuesday night, where they have historically struggled. It was not clear whether Sumpter will be available.