Monday, April 13, 2009
Friday, April 10, 2009
Friday Fun Link: "Here Comes A Greaseball!"
"OK, boy... This is where all the hard work, sacrifice, and painful scaldings pay off."
"I have a feeling this business is going to consume our whole lives."
Duo Accused of Trying to Steal Restaurant Grease [via philly.com]
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Saturday, April 04, 2009
And So We've Come to The End of The Road
In reflecting on this Final Four loss to North Carolina, it's easy to forget that Villanova nearly missed their chance to move on four games ago. Save for a brilliant comeback against the American Eagles, the Wildcats could have been licking their wounds over a first-round upset exit instead of failing just short of their bid for a national championship.
The key to tonight's loss was three-point shooting -- if you live by it, you die by it as well. And Villanova most definitely died by it, reaping a paltry percentage for their efforts (worse than 20%, with 10+ attempts by Scottie Reynolds alone).
The Tar Heels, to their credit, shot threes with an astounding amount of success. Villanova's weakness at times has been in defending the three, and when a team gets hot there's little they (or anyone else for that matter) can do. If you can't respond when your opponent heats up downtown, you might as well start the motor on your bus home -- it's going to be a long night.
Still, after the bitterness of coming so close and failing subsides, I can look back on this season with a large amount of pride: Nobody thought the Wildcats would make it this far. In fact, they weren't picked to finish very high in their own conference, one of the best fielded in a long time.
Jay Wright and his team will be back. They have one of the top three recruiting classes coming in, and the young players sticking around have a wealth of playoff experience to draw from. Make no mistake, this was a brutal loss, and all credit goes out to North Carolina. They were the better team, and showed as much tonight.
Still, Villanova represented itself well this season, and their fans (myself included) are nothing but proud and excited for what's to come.
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Monday, March 30, 2009
Bracket Update: In Short, I'm Boned
The only, remotely outside chance I have of finishing in the money (note that I didn't say "first place," because that baby flew out the window when Memphis laid down and died) is if North Carolina makes it to the National Championship game. Which, of course, means I would have to root for them to beat Villanova, and that simply won't fucking happen.
Losing $30 to see the Wildcats make it to the final round is a small price to pay.
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Sunday, March 29, 2009
Holy Crap: An Elite Eight Summation
Wow. That was certainly not the ending Villanova fans have been accustomed to seeing for the last three rounds of this tournament. No running out the clock here, no sir: Thirteen lead changes in the second half, capped off by a dunderheaded throw by the Wildcats with ten seconds remaining... which was then redeemed after two Pitt free throws by a hot-knife-through-butter layup by Scottie Reynolds which sealed the victory with half a second remaining (although Levance Fields did not give anyone an excuse to exhale until his desperation heave bounced hopelessly away from its target).
If my last sentence left you breathless, well, that's how watching the game felt, too.
And so the Villanova Wildcats -- pride of the Main Line, scourge of the also-rans -- will travel to Detroit as one of the remaining quartet of teams hoping to cut down the net come Monday, April 6. I couldn't be prouder of Jay Wright and this team he has assembled and led with tenacity and brilliance. Excuse me while I get up off of my knees now and realistically examine their chances...
'Nova will play North Carolina for the chance to play in the final round. As you recall, it was the Tarheels who beat Villanova in 2005 en route to capturing their first title since Dean Smith was still coaching there. In later years, it seemed that if you wanted to win it all, you had to beat Villanova to get it. Will this trend continue?
(Continued...)
If you believe the experts, yes. Now that Louisville has been dispatched in shocking fashion, only Connecticut and UNC remain the lone number-one seeds standing, and conventional wisdom says these two will battle for the championship. Unfortunately -- and I would love nothing better than to be wrong -- I think conventional wisdom is right.
This is usually as far as the scrappy underdogs get (if you can call a #2 and #3 seed that). The Huskies and Tar Heels are the elite of the elite, and should Ty Lawson play at full steam the Wildcats may hit the wall by Saturday night. Again, I could be way off, and I pray that I am. But to quote Damon Runyon, "The battle may not always go to the strongest, nor the race to the swiftest, but that's the way to bet."
No matter what happens from here on out, I can only thank these young men from my alma mater for making this a great year to be a Wildcat fan. Go 'Cats!
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Friday, March 27, 2009
Thursday, March 26, 2009
Sweet.
Here we are yet again, Wildcats fans: craning our collective necks to sneak a peek over the precipice of national glory. There is still quite a way to go, and formidable opponents to face along the way, but Villanova finds themselves among the last sixteen colleges standing in this third round of the tournament di tutti tournaments.
Everybody's going nuts!
For the first time in possibly ever, the top three seeds from all four regions have made it to the Sweet Sixteen. Five teams entering Round Three are from the Big East, the most of any conference still represented in 2009. Not coincidentally, the top four Big East teams are among those five, and Syracuse -- the fifth team -- has earned much respect after it's six-overtime clobberfest with Connecticut in the conference tournament.
But let's get back to Villanova. How would you rate their performance after the opening weekend? Aside from that blindside courtesy of who-you-callin'-underdogs American's lights-out shooting performance in the first half of Game One, Villanova played sixty minutes of dominant basketball.
(Continued...)
After fighting back from fourteen down in the second half to outscore those American Eagles 49-26 (winning the game 80-67), the Wildcats were determined not to begin their next match-up against UCLA so lethargically. American caught them off guard; UCLA would not be lucky. The Bruins, participants in three straight Final Fours, were summarily dismissed in decisive fashion, falling by twenty to Villanova.
Did Jay Wright and Co. benefit from official generosity? Does Coach K? Did Michael Jordan? Sometimes yes, sometimes no. But anyone who dismisses the Wildcats' overwhelming effort last Saturday afternoon is either a UCLA fan in denial or just a flat-out 'Nova hater... and you and I know those people simply don't matter.
Tonight at 9:57 EST the Blue Devils meet the Wildcats in Boston. Much has been written or uttered about the greatness of both teams, how neither one has the advantage, the aggressiveness of both coaches' styles of play, etc. I'm not denying any of that. But truth be told, damn it, I think Villanova really can win this game. Maybe it won't be a blowout like UCLA, or (God forbid) a Lazarus-like resurrection from a double-digit grave, but why can't they?
Why not, I ask you? Anderson and Cunningham have been absolute beasts. The Coreys excelled off the bench. Scottie Reynolds has struggled so far (6-for-16 shooting, 9.5 ppg), but if he gets hot tonight, this group will play again come Saturday.
And if Duke should prevail, I'd pencil them in for a National Championship. The last three teams that defeated Villanova in the Sweet Sixteen round or later went on to win the whole thing (UNC, Florida, Kansas).
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