Rehrig’s stable of cars continues to grow

As the stable for car owner Ralph Rehrig continues to grow the philosophy will remain the same; Win races. Rehrig has a storied history in racing as a car owner. Rehrig has fielded cars since 1999 starting

Ernie Saxton with Legend Cars. From that point he has entered Slingshots, Late Models, TQ Midgets, and SpeedSTRs in competition.

Rehrig made the call to Tom and TJ Mayberry to join the SpeedSTR fields some years ago. Rehrig’s relationship with the Mayberry family starts with Tom when he was driving Modifieds for Jerry Eshelman in the early 1980’s. Mayberry, who is a long time resident of Sellerville and can be found on weekdays at Fred Bean Collision in Doylestown, was a very successful racer at Grandview Speedway.

Both Tom and TJ have shown strong runs in recent events. TJ came very close to visiting victory lane two years ago at the Action Track USA.

TJ ended the season with a second place finish following top five runs and ended the season with a third in the point championship battle.

What was a two-car team transitioned into a threecar group last year when Justin Thompson was added as a third driver. Thompson spent the season splitting his

in his left knee in the first half of Villanova’s 72-60 victory over Creighton last Wednesday. He is expected to have surgery sometime soon, possibly this week.

Moore is third on the team in scoring (12.7) and rebounding (4.3), and second in assists (3.0). He was expected to step into the point guard role but that plan had to be scrubbed when he went down against the Friars. The loss of both Moore and Gillespe leaves the Wildcats (16-5 overall) woefully thin in the backcourt heading into the Big East tournament. Starter Caleb Daniels is the only other guard who has played significant minutes this year.

With Moore on the bench, Wright was forced to play

little-used sophomores Chris Arcidiacono from The Perk School and Bryan Antoine for extended minutes against Providence. Arcidiacono played a career-high 25 minutes and Antoine saw a career-best 22 minutes. Wright credited Arcidiacono with settling the Wildcats down in the second half to help Villanova battled back and nearly pull out the victory.

“I thought Chris Arch did an incredible job,” Wright said after the game. “He was really good. He got us under control and brought energy to us defensively. I thought he was outstanding.”

The Wildcats are the top seed in the Big East tournament, which begins Wednesday. Villanova takes on the winner of Wednesday’s game between ninthseeded Georgetown at No. 8 Marquette in the quarterfinals on Thursday (Noon, FS1).

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The honors continue to mount for Gillespie and teammate Jeremiah Robinson-Earl.

Gillespie and RobinsonEarl are among the 15 finalists for the John R. Wooden Award, given annually by the Los Angeles Athletic Club to the most outstanding player in college basketball.

The announcement was made Monday, one day after both were named to the AllBig East first team in a vote by the conference coaches. Teammate Jermaine Samuels received honorable mention.

Robinson-Earl, a 6-9 sophomore forward, was one of two unanimous selections to the first team. The other was Seton Hall senior forward Sandro Mamukelashvili. Also named to the first team were Julian Champagnie (St. John’s), James Bouknight (Connecticut)

and Marcus Zegarowski (Creighton).

The Big East Player of the Year will come from the first team. That award will be announced Wednesday.

Robinson-Earl leads the 14th-ranked Wildcats (165) in scoring (15.2) and rebounding (8.4). He is eighth and second, respectively, in those categories in the conference. He also ranks 11th in field goal percentage (48.3).

Gillespie was having the best season of his career before his campaign ended when he torn the MCL in his left knee against Creighton last week. The 6-3 senior guard averaged 14 points and ranked third in the Big East in assist at 4.6 per game.

Samuels had 21 points in Villanova’s 54-52 loss to Providence last Saturday. The 6-7 senior forward is averaging 11.4 points and 6.3 rebounds per game.