City of Basketball Love

Josh Verlin (@jmverlin)
--

Villanova’s players didn’t have to talk about the 10-ton elephant hanging over their heads before Sunday afternoon’s NCAA second-round game against Iowa at the Barclays Center.

They didn’t have to. Everybody else was doing it for them.

All week long--no, all month long….really, all season long, Villanova’s had to face the questions.

Is this the group that will finally make it past the Round of 32? Does this team have what it takes to make it to the second weekend of March Madness? Can it right the wrongs of the last two ‘Nova squads, each victim to a second-round upset?

“Everyone’s been talking about this game and us not making it past the first weekend,” senior forward Daniel Ochefu said.

“It was difficult at times, just because no matter how we feel, we know we’re going to get hit by those second-round questions,” junior wing Josh Hart added.

Indeed, despite winning 63 games over the previous two years, with two Big East regular-season championships and a Big East tournament title to show for it, there wasn’t the same confidence from the outside when it came to the biggest stage of all. And unfair as it is, this is the only part of the season that matters from a national relevancy standpoint.

Win all the games you want from November through February, but a team that can’t get it done in March and April might as well not bother showing up.

And so the questions rained down, relentlessly, from the local media and the national reporters as well. Is this finally the year? Could this be the team?

“We’re like a Cinderella in here, we’re a No. 2 seed but we were the underdogs,” Hart said. “We came in, everyone doubted us, thought we weren’t going to get past the second round. We might as well have been a 16-seed, that’s how we took it, no one gave us credit.”

In a tournament that already had seen one favorite (Michigan State) upset in the first round and more double-digit seeds (10) than had ever before advanced to the second round, nothing seemed certain.

Yet when push came to shove, when ‘Nova finally got the opportunity yet again to move past that roadblock at the end of the first weekend, all that talk seemed to vanish.

Unlike in years before, Villanova just came out and played its style of basketball. And that, more than anything else, is why the Wildcats walked out of the Barclays Center with the victory they’d sought, 87-68 over Iowa.

“The will of a really determined athlete is much greater than any of the pressure that media or coaches or anyone puts on them,” Wright said. “They were so determined to win this game and give their best effort in this game that it just superseded everything.”

Even though the entire team knew exactly what the perception was before Sunday's game, none of it was discussed in the locker room. It was business as usual, according to all the players.

“(Pregame) was the same that it’s always been," Ochefu said. "Attitude, Villanova basketball and keeping focus inside the 94-by-50 feet and playing 40 minutes.”

That might explain why Villanova's biggest tournament win in seven years was the game that most resembled the way the Wildcats have handled the Big East for the last few seasons: thoroughly.

The 54-29 halftime score was the largest lead any team has taken after 20 minutes in the tournament, thanks to a 7-of-12 performance from the 3-point arc in the first half alone against an Iowa squad that looked exactly like the one that lost six of eight heading into the tournament.

Then again, even if the Hawkeyes had been on their game, it might not have mattered.

“We all know in this locker room that when we hit threes, when we hit our open shots, we’re capable of blowing any team out," Ochefu said.

The most obvious beneficiaries of the win are Villanova’s five seniors, namely starters Ochefu and Ryan Arcidiacono but also walk-ons Kevin Rafferty, Henry Lowe and Patrick Farrell. However, the Wildcats were playing for more than just the student-athletes currently on the roster--they were doing it for those who never got this opportunity in the first place.

“Guys like Mouph [Yarou] and Mo [Sutton], guys like Tajh Bell and Tony Chennault, Darrun Hilliard and JP [JayVaughn Pinkston], Nick McMahon, it goes back to them,” redshirt junior Darryl Reynolds said. “Don’t get me wrong, it feels great to get it for these two [Ochefu and Arcidiacono], but it feels great to get it for everybody to set us up in this position, before we even got here.”

In the Sweet 16, ‘Nova gets a Miami (Fl.) team that finished the regular season No. 10 in the Associated Press poll, out of an Atlantic Coast Conference that already has four teams still alive for next weekend and several others yet to play as of Sunday afternoon.

And though the questions will now turn to whether or not Villanova has what it takes to make the third weekend of the NCAA Tournament--or potentially win the whole thing--that’s much, much better than the alternative.

“It's definitely a sigh of relief,” Arcidiacono said. “I just think the biggest thing is I'm honestly just done answering the questions about getting past the second weekend."