Brotherly Love-Struck

Arizona played its best game of the season on Sunday. That’s what senior guard Hassan Adams said. His Wildcats stayed focused in the din of the Wachovia Center where, guard Mustafa Shakur said, “If 20,000 people were here, 17,000 were cheering against us.”

Of course they were. The opponent was Villanova, Philadelphia’s hometown Wildcats, a persevering team with a lineup of four guards and a game plan that took those guards to the middle, always to the middle.

But whatever Arizona threw at Villanova -- ferocious offensive rebounding, stout man-to-man defense, well-conceived shots, so many that Coach Lute Olson said, “I only remember one bad one” -- those Philadelphia ‘Cats withstood it all. If they never shook Arizona, they did enough to become the fourth of the NCAA’s top-seeded teams to move into the Sweet 16 with an 82-78 win over No. 8 Arizona in the second round of the Minneapolis Regional.

Villanova advanced to play Boston College on Friday. Georgetown will play Florida in the other regional semifinal.

Arizona and Villanova walked into the atmosphere of a Final Four on Sunday.

Already, Connecticut had barely beaten Kentucky, 87-83, the warmup act for Villanova and Arizona.

Villanova (27-4) has earned respect this season for winning creatively with an undersized but fast four-guard lineup. It has withstood the loss of Curtis Sumpter, the preseason Big East Conference player of the year, to a season-ending knee injury and the scare of seeing guard Allan Ray nearly lose an eye during the Big East tournament.

Arizona (20-13) had persevered through troubles of its own, through player suspensions (Chris Rodgers and Adams) and a season-ending injury to starting guard Jawann McClellan.

“I thought today we played as well as we can play,” Olson said. “I’m proud of these guys today. We gave it our best. I think we represented ourselves and the Pac-10 pretty well.”

Even though Villanova was playing on a court where it already had won four times this season and even though the noise was deafening, Arizona found itself down by only two, 76-74, with 1 minute 36 seconds left. Arizona had trailed by as many 12 points in the second half as it struggled to find a way to stop Randy Foye, who did end up becoming Big East player of the year.

Foye had scored 20 points in the first half, including an off-balance, 18-foot jumper with less than a second left to give Villanova a 42-35 lead.

But in the second half Olson assigned freshman Marcus Williams to guard Foye. Williams is three inches taller and has arms long enough to wrap around the 6-foot-4 Foye. Williams also had the foot speed to keep Foye in front of him. The switch was brilliant. Foye scored only four more points and slowly Arizona got itself in range.

An Adams layup put Arizona within four, 54-50, with 14:21 left. Villanova pulled ahead by 10, 69-59, as its guards began feeding role players Will Sheridan and Shane Clark for open 10-foot jumpers. But Arizona was feasting on offensive rebounds (the Wildcats had 20) and pulled to within 78-76 after Ivan Radenovic rebounded his own miss for a layup with 16.8 seconds left. But they never got closer.

Olson had a simple explanation for why Villanova is thriving with its undersized lineup.

“Those guards,” Olson said, “are quick and strong. We knew the scouting report and the games we broke down, about nine of them, the guards went to the middle about 85% of the time. We knew that and we tried to keep them out. But it’s easier said than done.”

Ray ended up leading four Villanova scorers in double figures with 25 points. Just 10 days ago Ray had been rushed to a Manhattan hospital after Pittsburgh guard Carl Krauser accidentally poked him in the eye. It was a gruesome moment when Ray’s eyeball popped out of its socket. But by Thursday, Ray was doing a full practice.

“Nothing was keeping me away from this,” Ray said. “Absolutely nothing.”