Wildcats have enough Hart, finish mission
JUST because you win a national championship, just because you got to stand on top of a ladder on top of the college basketball world with a scissors in your hand and a net to snip, just because that “One Shining Moment” serenade you have seen and heard in your dreams belonged to you at last just 11 months ago, just because you are driven to become the first ones to repeat since Billy Donovan and Florida in 2006 and 2007, doesn’t mean you don’t relish reminding Madison Square Garden who you are and what Villanova has built. Villanova’s relentless March through the Madness last year did not include a Big East Tournament championship. If you don’t think it bothered Jay Wright and Josh Hart, then you don’t know Jay Wright, you don’t know Josh Hart and you don’t know Villanova. You see, Villanova had won the Big East Tournament championship just twice, and when they won it in 2015 it ended a 20-year drought. You see, Syracuse and UConn may have left the Big East, but Villanova didn’t. Hart left his heart in New York at last year’s tournament championship game, taking the blame for the heartbreaking upset loss to Seton Hall. Saturday night, he left Creighton in critical condition. Hart attack. Hart scored 11 straight Villanova points in the first half to spark his team, the Big East Player of the Year on his way to 29 points and tying Patrick Ewing and Peyton Siva with his second MVP award in the conference tournament. Of course, Hhart being Hhart, he talked ababout slicing ththe trophy up ininto 13 pieces as he sat alongside hihis proud teammmates inside LaLance Thomas’ KKnicks locker. “They deserve ththat as much as I dodo,” Hart said. He was Big EaEast Sixth Man of the Year when hehe won it in 2015. He is arguably ththe best player in ththe country now. LionHart. “Seton Hall cacame in [Friday night]ight] and punchedpunc us in the mouth,” Hart said, “and we knew that’s something we couldn’t have happen today.”
It was fitting that he was the one with the ball dribbling out the final seconds of Villanova’s 74-60 easy victory.
“I think he’s the best, most complete player in the country,” Wright said.
Wright’s wife, Patricia, planted a kiss on Hart’s cheek on the court before the trophy presentations.
“When I think of Josh Hart, I think of he’s the hardest-playing guy in the country,” former Villanova coach Steve Lappas told The Post by phone. “He’s got talent obviously, but beside his talent, it’s really the heart and desire that he brings to the game. That’s his true talent.”
Wright marveled at that talent when Hart shredded St. John’s in the quarterfinal.
“When we came up here to New York,” Wright said, “I sensed something different in Josh.”
I mentioned this to Hart, and he said, “I feel like the last several games, my attention to detail has been as best as it’s ever been, and I think he was very comfortable with that.”
It was Lappas, Rollie Massimino’s assistant that magical night at Rupp Arena when Villanova shocked Georgetown in 1985, who won the school’s first Big East Tournament championship by beating UConn.
“There’s a great picture in my basement, it’s my favorite picture, cutting down the net in Madison Square Garden,” Lappas Told the Post by phone. “For a kid that grew up on 181st Street and use to go down there and watch Looie [Carnesecca] and Jack Powers at Manhattan and those guys play when I was 16 years old and you’d sit up top, it was the experience of a lifetime.”
Lappas, a CBS Sports college basketball analyst, recognizes why Wright and Villanova will have a shot to repeat.
“Elite coaches’ teams play the same way all the time,” Lappas said. “They are as unselfish as it gets. … They play as hard on every possession as it gets. They play with a purpose on every single play. They play the way they play on every single play. And that’s them.”
Defense wins championships, and Villanova defense suffocated explosive Creighton (6-for-24 from behind the arc, 17 turnovers). The Wildcats expect the No. 1-overall seed at the Dance when they begin to chase history.
“We gotta be coachable and we can’t get complacent,” Hart said. “We gotta keep getting better, we’re not as good as we can be yet.”
In the euphoric Villanova section, they held up their hands and made the shape of a heart. You gotta have Hart, and Villanova sure does.