Villanova Survives, but for How Long?

PROVIDENCE, R.I. -- A quarter-century ago they were this tournament's David, but these days Villanova walks with the Goliaths. On Thursday, Scottie Reynolds and the Wildcats absorbed a relentless series of slingshots from a David named Robert Morris and barely hung on to win their first-round game, 73-70, in overtime.

So instead of becoming the fifth No. 2 seed ever to lose a first-round game, Villanova advances to the second round. But how much further can they expect to go? This is the same basic core of the Wildcat team that reached last season's Final Four, and Reynolds' senior leadership sparkled Thursday as he endured a 2-for-15 field-goal shooting day and still patiently led his team to a comeback victory from the free-throw line. But this is still a team that lost five of its last seven games entering this tournament, and for the first 35 minutes Thursday ... well, frankly, they looked pretty bad.

"I think we just had a little bit better depth than they did today," Villanova coach Jay Wright said. "I don't even know if we had better players, just more depth."

These were the words of a man who knew he'd just gotten away with something. Robert Morris was better than Villanova almost all day, right up until the point when their potential game-tying 3-pointer rattled in and out at the overtime buzzer. They outrebounded the Wildcats 21-10 in the first half, held Reynolds to one of the worst shooting days of his career and clearly felt as if they'd been the better team. Explaining the difference in the rebounding from the first half to the second, Robert Morris forward Dallas Green didn't say Villanova stepped it up, rather that he and his team "slacked off a little bit."

But from this point on, the players Villanova plays against will be better, and the slacking-off by the opposition will be harder to count on. The Wildcats survived Robert Morris because their big men were able to block shots (10 of them, to be exact) and because the Colonials' top two point guards fouled out with four minutes left. The margin was so thin that Wright invoked several of this tournament's time-honored cliches to sum up his team's day.

"I'm proud of our guys for gutting it out," Wright said. "Everybody knows this is survive and advance, and this was one of those days."

But now what? A second-round game awaits against St. Mary's, and tougher opponents will be there if they get past that one. Given the way it finished the regular season, flamed out in the Big East tournament and skimmed past a 15-seed Thursday, it's possible this is a Villanova team that's out of gas -- and you should hope so if you had St. Mary's to make the Sweet 16 in your bracket. You can look at the Wildcats as the No. 2 seed, but you must also look at them as a team that, until that last-second shot rimmed out Thursday, hadn't won a game in more than two weeks.

"I forgot what that felt like," Reynolds said with a smile.

He was smiling when it was over, but it was a no-fun couple of days for Reynolds until that point. Because of something they did in practice Wednesday (and about which no one would talk about, other than to describe it as "a teaching lesson," "no big deal," and "over with"), Reynolds and junior guard Corey Fisher were both left out of the starting lineup for the team's first NCAA tournament game. They are the team's top two scorers, and had been the only two Wildcats to start every game this year, but neither Reynolds nor Fisher was in the starting lineup Thursday. They both had poor games -- other than Reynolds' incredible 15-for-16 performance from the line -- but afterward said everything was fine.

"I wasn't disappointed at all," Reynolds said of not starting. "It's what you do as a leader. Coach Wright wanted to make a point to the team, and he knows I can handle that on all cylinders. For me being the leader, the guy in charge of this team, I've got to be sharp at all times. I wasn't sharp for a split-second [Wednesday] and it got me. We learn from it and we move on. Thanks, coach."

Wright, seated next to Reynolds in the postgame news conference, chuckled at the thanks. Later, he insisted he didn't regret the decision or think it had much if anything to do with the shaky performances by Reynolds and Fisher.

"We've been through this before," Wright said. "We were down 14 to American last year in what was essentially a home game in the NCAA tournament. I'm sure those guys would have been more comfortable [starting], but as bad as this seemed, we were actually in this game more than we have been in the past."

Wright's point, several times in his postgame remarks, seemed to be that losing and tough times are OK, because they have value in terms of teaching and helping a team get better.

"It's hard to figure things out when you're winning," he said.

Wright said that the tough times Villanova endured in February and March of this year enabled him to make some key lineup changes, particularly involving 6-9 freshman Mouphtaou Yarou and 6-11 freshman Maurice Sutton. Wright said that it was during a losing streak that he discovered the need to have one of those players on the floor at all times as an "anchor for our defense." Yarou had three blocks Thursday and Sutton had four, proving the point and making a difference in the game against the undersized Colonials.

So if you believe what Wright's selling about learning and improving through struggle -- and if you buy into the value of a senior leader like Reynolds at this time of year -- you can see Villanova getting its legs under it and making a run back to this year's Final Four.

It's just that, if you watch them play ... it's a little harder to imagine it.