Angel hurts after missing final shot

THE sight of Angel Delgado sprawled on the Garden floor and sobbing inconsolably under the basket told you everything anyone needs to know about what defending your Big East tournament championship means, especially when you are defending it against the defending national champion. Delgado missed a last-second bunny that would have, should have, forced overtime, and there were still tears in his eyes long after teammates who revere him, first Desi Rodriguez and Ismael Sanogo, had helped him to his feet. “It never happened in my life,” Delgado said. “This is the first time I’m feeling like this. That’s it, gotta live with it.” He was wracked with guilt for Villanova 55, Seton Hall 53, on another spine-tingling Big East night when his string of 13 straight double doubles had come to an end. “It was my fault, I feel like,” Delgado said. “For me, we got the best team in the country. I got the best guys on my team.” The guys on his team have ridden his broad shoulders to an NCAA Tournament invitation, and they were having none of Delgado’s blame game, they were still picking him up in the locker room when the press conferences had ended. “He tried to blame it on himself that he missed a layup at the end,” Rodriguez said. Then he mentioned Big East Player of the Year Josh Hart converting a three-point play with 9.6 seconds left off a Kris Jenkins missed 3. “He could put the blame on me, I gave up an offensive rebound ... but the layup is not why we lost the game.” The measure of how much respect Delgado (eight points, eight rebounds) has garnered was there for all to see when Hart, the assassin who refused to let Villanova lose, bent over to tell him to keep his chin up. Hart had been there a year ago, losing to Seton Hall in the Big East Championship game, and look what happened from there until the NCAA championship game against North Carolina.

“He’s a very professional guy, and the way he came over and talked to us and told us to keep our heads up ... he’s a great guy,” Rodriguez said. “He just told us, ‘Just keep working, we’re gonna be really good in the tournament,’ and that’s what we want to do.”

Fearless freshman Myles Powell, who drilled three 3s in the first half, hurt for his 6-foot-10, 240-pound friend.

“Angel’s one of my best friends,” Powell said. “Seeing him go down like that, it brought tears to my eyes. I didn’t say nothing to him, I didn’t want no cameras to get what I was saying to him or anything like that, so I just waited til he came here, said a couple of words to him.

“The words I said to him, he listened to me. At the end there what I was telling him, he just told me that he loved me and I told him I loved him, too, and I just told him to pick his head up, because if it wasn’t for him, he’s the heart and soul of our team, we probably wouldn’t be here without him.”

Hart heaved the ball that Delgado could not believe had not gone in the basket to the other end of the Garden and exulted.

“Just missed it,” Delgado said. “That’s it.”

Then Hart immediately stopped when he noticed Delgado’s anguish.

“I told Angel, ‘You’re a heck of a player and just keep going, you’ve got a bright future,” Hart said. “And we felt this feeling last year. And I said, ‘ You have this feeling right now. NCAA Tournament time, don’t have this feeling again.’ ” It meant the world to Delgado. “It means a lot because he’s a great player,” Delgado said. “I got all the respect for him. I hope he does good in life because he’s a great kid and a great player.”

Seton Hall suffocated Villanova in the first half, and led 27-20 because the Wildcats were 7-fot-26 (26.9 percent) from the field. Then Hart’s 14 points in the second half helped close the show.

“We’re the type of team that we bounce back,” Delgado said. “I think we will make a run and everything will be good.”