’Nova defends title, but Providence and Cooley never threw in the towel
NEW YORK » This is what Dave Gavitt had in mind when he came up with the idea of the Big East Conference more than 40 years ago, a packed house on Saturday night with two schools, preferably Catholic ones, battling it out for league supremacy.
It took three years for Gavitt and the Big East to decide that its conference tournament should be held at Madison a Square Garden in New York every March and it’s been a match made in gut-wrenching, nail-biting history ever since.
Outside of Broadway, no one puts on a show in this town quite like the Big East Conference. For sheer drama, it’s the best of the big conference tourneys. The 39th edition of the Big East championship game, the 36th at MSG, lived up to all that came before it.
Villanova needed overtime to hold off fifthseeded Providence, 7666, to win its second straight tournament title, third in the last four years and fourth overall. It was the third overtime game for the Friars in as many nights.
No team has ever done that in Big East tournament history.
“What an incredible college basketball atmosphere here in the Garden,” Villanova coach Jay Wright said. “We just feel so lucky to be part of it.”
The action was so intense that Providence coach Ed Cooley split his pants at some point in the second half and tucked a towel into his waistband to keep the sellout crowd at MSG from seeing if he’s a boxers or briefs guy.
And that’s what’s great about the Big East tournament. It is drama on steroids, and prepares a team for the rigors of the NCAA tournament, which starts with the first four in Dayton.
Villanova hasn’t been in a meat-grinder like this since a 69-68 victory over Seton Hall in Newark, N.J, Feb. 28. The Wildcats have won their last three games by 24, 24 and 19 points, not exactly a tune-up for something called March Madness.
The Wildcats needed to be tested, and Providence took care of that.
Villanova, the No. 2 team in the country and a lock for a No. 1 seed in the NCAA tournament, needed two free throws from conference Player of the Year Jalen Brunson with 30 seconds left to send the game into overtime and an improbable buzzer-beater from Mikal Bridges in overtime to beat a team that many thought would be on dead legs in its third overtime game in as many days. Nope. For the second straight night Providence overcame a double-digit deficit to put a major scare into one of the top teams in the country.
“Being in tough games in this environment, this arena, it’s not an easy environment,” Brunson said. “Sometimes people can crumble. It’s how you respond to it.”
The Wildcats responded like champions.
Brunson calmly drained a pair of free throws to tie it, 90 seconds after he missed the front end of a oneand-one with the Wildcats holding onto a 5856 lead.
“I approach every free throw the same, make or miss,” said Brunson, who was named to the all-tournament team. “(I) just concentrate and focus on the basket and myself … That’s pretty much it.”
Bridges showed the same coolness under fire midway through the extra session. The Wildcats were nursing a 6564 lead when Brunson lost the ball with the shot clock winding down. Bridges picked up the loose ball and buried a 3-pointer as the shot clock expired to extend the lead to four.
Providence never got closer than two points after that.
“I saw JB driving and I was trying to move off the ball and fill behind him,” said Bridges, who was named the winner of the Dave Gavitt Trophy as the Most Outstanding Player in the tournament. “I guess he lost the ball and I saw it. I was just aggressive, catch and shoot, simple.”
That was part of the problem. Villanova’s has had it too easy lately. For a team that has had trouble getting out of the first weekend in the NCAA’s, that was not a good sign. The Wildcats needed a test heading into the big dance because they know as well as anyone that there are no guarantees and that danger looms in every round.
“You don’t want (a close game) when you start the game,” Wright said. “You hope that when you get a little lead you create some separation. But when it’s over, you just know how much this does for your team’s mental toughness. And if you get into tough games in the tournament, you know you’ve been through that recently. was good for us.”
Guard Donte DiVincenzo was a little more succinct.
“We kind of got our identity back,” DiVincenzo said. It