Light Goes On, Villanova Shoots It Out

This one was for Don Larsen, Rocky, Ben Franklin, Dudley Dooright, all the lonely people and all the ships at sea.

Unless Georgetown demands a recount or a saliva test for winners, it’s official: Villanova 66, Georgetown 64.

Villanova Coach Rollie Massimino said Sunday that all his team had to do in order to win a national championship was play a perfect game.

The last perfect game in a big event like this was Yankee Don Larsen’s performance against the Dodgers in the 1956 World Series.

‘Nova threw a perfect game in the second half Monday night, though. The stats say Villanova shot 9 for 10 from the field in the second half, but that one miss wasn’t actually a miss. It was merely an offering thrown up to appease college basketball’s god of swat, Patrick Ewing.

No sense getting the big guy riled up.

Not on Villanova’s big night.

Villanova?

Who are these guys, anyway?

They sort of wandered into town real innocently last week, like a tourist who took a wrong turn off the interstate, stopping to ask for directions.

“Just turn left at the free throw line,” somebody must have told them. “You’ll see the basket dead ahead. You can’t miss it.”

Amen.

Hard to believe that this was the same team that was seeded eighth in the Midnorth regionals, or wherever it was they came from.

So how did they do it? Simple. They came into the big game equipped with the following:

--Poise. Georgetown’s Bill Martin said earlier this season, “If we’re down, a light goes on and something extra happens.”

Sounds like a TV quiz show.

Georgetown was down Monday, through most of the second half, and something extra happened, all right--the light went on and Villanova shot it out.

Villanova forgot to crumble under the pressure of playing a team that experts all over town were comparing with all-time great powerhouses like UCLA, USF and IRS.

Point guard Gary McLain pounded the ball through the Georgetown press time after time, dribbling the ball upcourt with Georgetown’s Martin clinging to him like wallpaper.

Villanova, very simply, was cool.

“Before the game, coach just put it in simple words,” said Villanova guard Dwight Wilbur. “He said all we had to do was believe in ourselves. He told us just to sit there (in the lockerroom) a couple of minutes, sit and believe.”

Said Massimino, “I’ve never said this to a team before, but I told them, ‘You’re not gonna go out there and play not to lose. You’re gonna play to win, and you’re gonna go out there knowing you’re as good as the other team. If you play tentative, we can’t win.”

--Defense. Villanova has 32 different defenses, a Baskin-Robbins-and-1 playbook. Monday, it threw the flavor of the night at Ewing-rocky road.

Ewing was held to 13 shots and scored only two points in the final seven minutes.

“We wanted to go into Patrick,” said Georgetown guard Horace Broadnax, “but they was all over Patrick. So we said, whoever gets the ball, go to the hole.”

--Tempo. The experts (those guys, again) seemed to feel that Villanova would hold the final score down to about, say, 12-9, by setting a tempo something like that of The Tennessee Waltz.

Instead, they set a tempo more like that of Foggy Mountain Breakdown (theme from “Bonnie and Clyde”), that zippy little Bluegrass standard. That wasn’t McLain and Jensen out there, it was Flatt and Scruggs.

Massimino has a signal he gives to his team when it’s time to go into the protect-the-lead stall. He calls out, “We got enough.”

If he called that out Monday night, it was just after the final buzzer.

By attacking boldly on offense, as well as defense, Villanova turned a tournament that was threatening to become the Final Snore into a great event.

--Support. The half of Rupp arena that wasn’t partisan fans of the two teams was clearly on Villanova’s side. Villanova was Dudley Dooright, playing Snidley Whiplash.

Why?

Partly because the Villanova kids charmed the media all weekend with their poise, openness and good nature.

Also because Georgetown coach John Thompson isn’t a merry quipster, and has promoted a team image that many find hard to love. His team, not entirely without justification, has become the team everyone loves to hate.

“We love to be hated,” said one sign in the Georgetown rooting section.

Maybe, but it has to hurt to be booed heavily playing on a supposedly neutral court in a town that prides itself on friendliness.

In retrospect, it was obvious all along that Villanova would win.

I hate to say I told you so, because I didn’t.

In fact, I may have mentioned something about how Georgetown was going to cram the pumpkin down Cinderella’s throat.

Cinderella, my foot. Pass the pumpkin.