I tried to put this off. I was fielding calls all Sunday morning from family calling to see if I was “okay,” and then proceed to talk about the game and make me relive the whole thing all over again. Whee. Then I used the excuse of watching the games yesterday, other writing elsewhere, and probably a few too many drinks. But I need to put the final stamp on the game and ultimately the season with a rundown of the stories afterwards.
Then it’s on to the off-season speculations, thoughts and spring football. Somehow that just seems completely lacking compared to being able watching Pitt continuing to play meaningful basketball in April.
I keep trying to at least keep perspective in that this goes down as one of the greatest games in the NCAA Tournament.
With a berth in the Final Four as the prize, Villanova and Pittsburgh waged a fierce, skilled, and dramatic battle that was not decided until Levance Fields’s attempt at a 75-footer hit the square above the rim and fell to the floor.
“When the ball left Levance’s hands,” said Villanova’s Scottie Reynolds, about and from whom more will be heard, “it was right on target. He gives a little less on that shot and we could be in another position right now.”
That position was a 78-76 victor. Villanova is going to the Final Four for the first time since an eerily similar Wildcats squad won it all in Lexington (the other one, silly) 24 years ago in a Final Four that featured three Big East teams. And if Louisville takes care of business today there will again be three Big East teams in the Final Four. But I can tell you right now none of them will have earned it more than Villanova.
I say this because the Wildcats had to beat Pitt, and they had to do it by making one more big play than a team that specializes in making big plays. Pitt is a team that lives famously on the edge. The Panthers had not had a smooth game in this tournament, but they had been able to out-tough and outfox the opposing team.
And the Panthers had come from 4 points down with 46.5 seconds to go, and again with 20 seconds left, tying the game on a pair of Fields free throws with 5.5 seconds remaining, having regained possession on a downcourt pass by Villanova’s Reggie Redding that went awry.
Given a second chance, Redding inbounded to Dante Cunningham, who tipped it over to a flying Reynolds, and the 6-foot-2-inch Villanova guard took off, taking it to the hoop with three Pitt players converging on him and sinking a runner with 0.5 seconds on the clock.
Somehow, that makes it sound simpler than it was.
But it wasn’t over until Fields launched his desperation shot, and, given his reputation for late-game heroics, it wasn’t surprising that what is a hopeless heave 99.9 percent of the time would actually be a very legitimate attempt to win the game.
No lesser ending would have done this game justice.
So, yeah, there were a few columns and comments on how this more than simply the best game of the Tournament this year. That it was an “instant classic,” and one of the best ever.
One shot, one play, one slight movement by a defender and maybe this doesn’t happen, maybe the game goes into overtime and the result is different. It was that close.
“We really felt like we should have won the game,” said Dixon, who continued to say how proud he was of his team, especially seniors Fields, Young and Tyrell Biggs. “We felt that we played hard, played smart, but it just didn’t go our way. … It was a split-second play.”
Coaches have said for years that the loneliest feeling in the NCAA tournament is losing in the Elite Eight. Reaching the Final Four has become the standard to which excellence is measured. Fair or not, the Final Four is what gets remembered most.
Wright lost an Elite Eight game in 2006, when the Wildcats were a favorite as a 1-seed. On Saturday they were the surprise as a No. 3 seed, beating the top-seeded Panthers. Wright said he was crushed after that Elite Eight loss to eventual champion Florida three years ago. The swing of emotion is even more dramatic when the game ends as it did for Nova on Saturday.
Tell me about it. The gut-wrenching pain of being on the wrong side of the game. The pain of being the loser.
Pittsburgh-Villanova featured 10 ties and 15 lead changes. The second half had eight ties and 13 lead changes. By the time Fields took the last, breathless shot, we no longer cared that the NCAA had stripped the building of all Celtics and Bruins banners and replaced the parquet with a generic court. By the time it was all over, we finally understood what all the fuss was about.
Villanova won.
The NCAA tourney won.
CBS won.
Boston won.
But Pittsburgh fell hard and it had to hurt.
There’s no easy way getting around the fact in the final few minutes it seemed to slip away from Pitt. Whether it was Jermaine Dixon’s turnover and foul for a 3-point play (whether still bothered by the groin pull from earlier or not), or Sam Young’s turnover, or the poor pass to Blair that resulted in a turnover.
Even then, though, Villanova made their own gaffes that appeared to even things out. And if Pitt had managed to send it to OT and won, it would have been ‘Nova that gave it away at the very end when they appeared to have it in hand — with their own mistakes. It didn’t go that way with the ‘Nova inbounds and Scottie Reynolds score. Instead, it was Pitt that gets the goat ears and Villanova that draws comparisons to their ’85 team. It sucks. It really does.
The one thing noted by many, this was on the supporting cast of Pitt — not the three primary players. DeJuan Blair and Sam Young were named to the regional team. Fields hit the key shots to keep Pitt going. Young did plenty in the NCAA Tournament to advance his draft stock while trying to carry the team many times.
One other story to note. Another piece noting how Coaches Dixon and Wright are poised to be the faces of the Big East in the coaching front in the near future if both are not lured elsewhere.
Could Wright — who grew up in the Philadelphia suburbs, who said he watched teary eyed when the Wildcats beat Georgetown for the title, who was an assistant for five years under Massimino — become the Jim Boeheim of Villanova? Could he and Dixon, in his sixth year as the coach at Pitt, lead the next generation of Big East lifers along with the Hoyas legacy John Thompson III?
This is a conference that launched itself with coaching personalities that ran extra large. So it may sound strange to pose the following question about the Big East, which has Villanova and UConn going to Detroit next weekend and Louisville positioned Sunday to make it a threesome, but here goes: are the upper-tier Big East teams the generic power coach’s opportunity of a lifetime, or are they more a place to build a résumé on the way to the dream job and score?
Yes, we know how much Jim Calhoun makes at Connecticut, and how he is not giving a dime back. But Ben Howland left Pitt for U.C.L.A., opening the door for Dixon, his assistant, in April 2003. Tom Crean bolted Marquette to rebuild at Indiana. John Beilein traded his Big East post at West Virginia for the Big Ten at Michigan. Some people believe that Rick Pitino, a longtime adventurer, is about due to get restless at Louisville.
We will see with questions looming in the next few weeks.
The last word, though will go to assistant Brandin Knight (who impressed Andy Katz on the sideline) about the end.
The assistant coach bid a few somber goodbyes and walked slowly back to a quiet Pitt locker room full of shattered dreams and broken hearts.
“Anytime you see kids end their careers like this, it’s difficult,” Knight said. “Levance (Fields) has been like a little brother to me. It’s tough. The uncertainty of a guy like DeJuan Blair, what his future may hold.
“Levance, I will never get to see him wear that No. 2 jersey again. Tyrell Biggs the same way, and Sam Young. I am going to miss them dearly.”
We all will.
