Pandemic can’t stop Selection Sunday excitement

Usually, Villanova is surrounded by several hundred of its closest friends and family members on Selection Sunday. Not this year, though. Instead getting together in the Finneran Pavilion or the Villanova room in the Connolly Center as in year’s past, the Wildcats watched the NCAA Tournament the selection show in a meeting room in a hotel in New York City, where the team has been hunkered down for safety reasons since losing to Georgetown last Thursday in the quarterfinal round of the Big East tournament.

“We’ve stayed in the bubble,” Villanova coach Jay Wright said during a Zoom call Sunday night. “We were kind of told when we came up here by the NCAA that it’s best to stay wherever you go so you don’t go back and possibly contract the virus so we’ve stayed in this hotel.”

“It’s another part of this season that’s really strange.”

The Wildcats aren’t complaining. They’re dancing and that’s all that matters. Villanova (166) is the fifth seed in the South Region and takes on 12th-seeded Winthrop (23-1), the Big South Conference champion on Friday. It’s the first meeting between the Wildcats and Eagles.

“We’re so excited to start this final portion of the season,” Wright said. “We always talk about never taking this for granted. It’s such an honor

play in the NCAA Tournament, but I think this year, more than ever, just to make it to this point and know that you have a chance to play in the tournament is an incredible accomplishment.”

For most of the Wildcats, like sophomore Jeremiah Robinson-Earl, this was their first Selection Sunday experience as collegians. They didn’t get to go through the process last year after the Big East and NCAA Tournaments were canceled because of the coronavirus pandemic.

“I was super fired up watching the Selection Show and I’m just super excited to get after it in these next couple of practices and play on Friday,” Robinson-Earl said.

The Wildcats are expected to leave for Indiana, where the entire tournament will be held, on Monday, Wright said. The tournament starts with the First Four on Thursday. The tournament kicks into high gear with the first and second rounds on Friday through Sunday.

Winthrop ranks 30th nationally in scoring (79.5 ppg.) and have topped the 80-point mark 13 times including all three games in the Big South Tournament. Winthrop has hit the 90-point mark three times and 100 once. Its only loss was a 57-55 setback at home to UNC Asheville on Jan. 29. The Eagles have won seven straight since then.

The Eagles are led by Chandler Vaudrin, a 6-7 redshirt senior point guard who averages 12.2 points, 7.2 rebounds and 6.9 assists. He’s the only player in the country with three triple-doubles this season.

“This is a tough matchup for us,” Wright said. “They’re similar to Creighton, who has given us trouble. They have a lot of three-point shooters, great skill level, great offensive execution and play fast.”

Drexel didn’t get any break in its first-round matchup. The Dragons (12-7) are the No. 16 seed in the Midwest Region. Its reward for winning the CAA title is a first-round date with No. 1 seed and Big 10 champ Illinois (23-6), the overall No. 3 seed on Friday. This is the first meeting between the Dragons and Illini. Illinois is the third overall seed in the tournament and has won seven in a row.

The Dragons have won four in a row including three in the CAA tournament to win thei league title and clinch their first trip to the NCAA Tournament since 1996.

“Every challenge is an opportunity,” Drexel coach Zach Spiker said. “It’s about your mindset, and what your outlook on life is, and your perspective. We’ve got a group that I think is really excited. We haven’t been to the tournament in 25 years, and we’re in the tournament. And we have a very talented opponent. Guess what? If you’re a 15 seed you’ve got a very talented opponent. If you’re a 14, they would be very, very good. It’s the NCAA Tournament.”

Drexel watched the Selection Show in Indianapolis, where they have been since Saturday.

“There is a lot of suspense,” forward James Butler said. “You don’t know where you are going to be placed. When you finally see your name go us it’s like wow, we’re really here. It’s our match up, excited, and ready to start preparing for the game.”

In a year in which the pandemic shuttered movie theaters for months, Academy Awards nominations went to two female filmmakers for the first time and a historically diverse slate of actors Monday but, ultimately, David Fincher’s “Mank” — a very traditional contender about Hollywood itself — took the lead.

Fincher’s “Mank,” a black-andwhite, period drama about “Citizen Kane” screenwriter Herman Mankiewicz, easily topped nominations for the 93rd Academy Awards — delayed two months by the coronavirus pandemic — with 10 nominations, including best picture, best director, acting nods for Gary Oldman and Amanda Seyfried, and a host of others for its lavish craft.

The other nominations were spread among a wide variety of contenders. Six each were scored by six films, all of which are also up for best picture: “Judas and the Black Messiah,” “Nomadland,” “Minari,” “Sound of Metal,” “The Trial of the Chicago 7” and “The Father.” Also nominated for best picture was Emerald Fennell’s “Promising Young Woman.”

History was made in the best director category. Only five women have ever been nominated before. For the first time, two were this year. Chloé Zhoe got a nod for her elegiac road-trip drama “Nomadland” alongside first-time feature filmmaker Fennell for her pitch black #MeToo revenge comedy. “Never going to stop crying,” Fennell, also nominated for best screenplay, said on Twitter.

Zhao, the first Asian woman nominated for best director, is the most nominated woman in a single year in Oscar history. She was also tipped for the film’s adapted screenplay, editing and as a producer in the best picture category. The other directing nominees were Lee Isaac Chung for the tender family drama “Minari,” Fincher for “Mank” and Thomas Vinterberg for his heavydrinking Danish tragicomedy “Another Round.”

For performers, it’s the most diverse group of nominees ever — and a far cry from the all-white acting nods that spawned the #OscarsSoWhite hashtag five years ago. Nine of the 20 acting nominees are people of color, including a posthumous best-actor nomination for Chadwick Boseman (“Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom”), as well as nods for Riz Ahmed (“Sound of Metal”), Steven Yeun (“Minari”), Viola Davis

(“Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom”) and Andra Day (“The People vs. Billie Holiday”) and supporting nominations for Daniel Kaluuya and Lakeith Stanfield (“Judas and the Black Messiah”), Leslie Odom Jr. (“One Night in Miami”) and YuhJung Youn (“Minari”).

Davis, who won for her performance in 2016’s “Fences,” landed her fourth Oscar nomination, making her the most nominated Black actress ever. Yeun is the first Asian American ever nominated for best actor. “Judas and the Black Messiah,” Shaka King’s powerful Black Panther drama, is the first best-picture nominee with an all-Black producing team: King along with Ryan Coogler and Charles D. King. Overall, a record 70 women were nominated for 76 Oscars, the academy said.

The other nominees for best actress are: Carey Mulligan (“Promising Young Woman”); Frances McDormand (“Nomadland”); Vanessa Kirby (“Pieces of a Woman”). The remaining nominee for best actor is Anthony Hopkins for the dementia drama “The Father.”

With moviegoing nearly snuffed out by the coronavirus, the bestpicture nominees had hardly any box office to speak of. For the first time, Hollywood’s biggest and most sough-after awards belong to movies that were almost entirely seen at home.

“We learned a lot of hard lessons last year, but a nice one was that people will find a way to go to the movies, even if they can only go as far as their living rooms,” Aaron Sorkin, writer and director of “The Trial of the Chicago 7,” said in a statement.

Netflix, as expected, led all studios with 35 nominations. The streaming service is still gunning for its first best-picture winner, and this year has two shots in “Mank” and “The Trial of the Chicago 7” — a movie Paramount Pictures sold off during the pandemic. Netflix led last year, too, with 24 nominations, but came away with just two wins.

Other streamers were in the mix. Amazon, in particular, was well represented with “Sound of Metal,” “Borat Subsequent Moviefilm” and “One Night in Miami” — leading to 12 nominations overall. Both Apple TV+ (“Wolfwalkers,” “Greyhound”) and Disney+ (“Soul,” “Onward”) landed their first nominations. The film that tried to lead a box-office revival — Christopher Nolan’s “Tenet” — walked away with nominations for production design and visual effects.