’Nova family savors victory
Title-winning shot caps ‘magical ride’
Bewildered and buried in confetti, Ryan Arcidiacono looked every which way for one particular person.
“Where’s Coach?” he said to no one and everyone at the same time. Someone pointed over Arcidiacono’s right shoulder, at the man in the pinstriped navy suit. The two locked eyes.
“Coach, Coach,” Arcidiacono said. “I didn’t give you a hug yet.”
The two embraced for a minute, Jay Wright and the player in whom he sees so much of himself.
“Archie, Archie,” Wright said softly.
He then went silent, the moment a quiet blip amid on-court chaos and net-cutting. They didn’t need words now, just like they don’t need words to communicate most of the time. They’re so alike, they know just what the other is thinking.
In this moment, as they celebrated Villanova’s national title, their thoughts were one and the same: They knew they’d just won arguably the greatest college basketball championship game ever. PLAY CALL: ‘NOVA’ The Villanova coaching staff draws up specific plays for particular endgame scenarios.
The plays differ based on the time left on the clock: zero to four seconds; four to seven; seven to 12. But they’re routine, as players regularly practice them and know which one will get called in whichever situation presents itself.
With 4.7 seconds left in Monday’s title game — after an acrobatic three-pointer from North Carolina guard Marcus Paige that tied the score — Villanova called a timeout.
“I didn’t have to say anything in the huddle,” Wright said. “We have a name for it, so that’s what we’re going to do. Just put everybody in their spots.”
The name of the play is “Nova,” assistant coach Baker Dunleavy said, laughing at its simplicity.
“We might have to come up with a new name for it now,” he added.
Kris Jenkins inbounded the ball to Arcidiacono, who dribbled upcourt. Daniel Ochefu set a screen, and Arcidiacono went right. Behind him, he heard a voice yelling, “Arch! Arch! Arch!” and he flipped the ball back to Jenkins, who was trailing the play. Jenkins planted his feet well beyond the three-point line and launched the ball.
He crouched down, seemingly willing the ball into the basket. On the sideline, Wright said, “Bang!” — “I always say ‘Bang!’ in my head whenever we take a shot,” Wright said hours later. “I can’t believe I actually said it out loud.”
As the ball swished and the buzzer sounded, Jenkins raised both arms and etched his spot in NCAA tournament history.
“It never works in practice,” Dunleavy said. “Because our scout team knows what we’re doing.”
So the way “Nova” actually works is this: It’s designed for the ballhandler, first and foremost. The first look was for Arcidiacono, for him to drive and take the shot. Josh Hart, screening for Phil Booth, set up the backup plan. Jenkins went from being the last resort to the right read because no defender got remotely close to him — even though he takes shots like that all the time. Even his brother, North Carolina guard Nate Britt, knew he’d make that shot.
“The defenders usually follow the ball,” Jenkins said later. “I knew when I gave Arch the ball, he was going to be aggressive. They were going to try to take Arch away because he’s hit big shots in his career. When they all followed the ball, I just knew if I got in his line of vision, he would find me.”
And, as Wright put it, “Kris Jenkins lives for that moment.”
But as the moment unfolded live, Wright barely reacted. Worried there would be time left on the clock, he remained calm to set an example for his players to do the same. Only when his assistants engulfed him in hugs and he got an OK from the official did he allow himself to celebrate.
It took mere minutes for his wife, Patty, and legendary former Wildcats coach Rollie Massimino to find their way to Wright. The three hugged, and Patty kept repeating, “You did it, you did it,” to her husband, mostly just to convince them both it really had happened.
Massimino told Wright he loved him; the two are forever linked now, even more than before — the two coaches to lead Villanova to a national championship. Massimino did it in 1985 with an underdog team that upset Georgetown with 78.6% shooting in what became known as the perfect game.
This, however, was college basketball’s perfect ending.
“It did feel like you were on some type of magical ride,” Wright said. “That must have been what it was like for the ’ 85 team. I think they’re always going to remain so special. That was the ultimate upset, the ultimate Cinderella. We were a No. 2 seed. We were a pretty good team. I think we’ll both have our own places in history.”
‘THIS IS OUR FAMILY’
At a quarter past 1 a.m. local time, the Villanova bus rolled up to the Royal Sonesta hotel, which was filled with liquored-up Wildcats of all ages, iPhones raised to capture the moment in case it’s a lit- tle fuzzy the next morning.
Arcidiacono led the Wildcats onto a makeshift stage, followed by Ochefu, a piece of the net around his neck. Teammates were Snapchatting the crowd as they joined them on stage.
Wright served as the emcee and main attraction. He told the crowd that he was so confident the Wildcats would win Monday he’d written out his little celebratory speech ahead of time. (Privately, however, a half-hour later, he admitted that he’d also thought long and hard about how he’d talk to his players if they lost and how he’d reassure them they’d had a special season amid their heartbreak.)
Wright thanked God, the parents of his players and the players themselves. He gave the crowd more reasons to love their beloved seniors — he told a story about how, after the rough first half, Arcidiacono and Ochefu told the coaches to stay out of the locker room while they got their teammates right.
A few players took the stage, starting with Jenkins, who thanked Wright for thinking he was good enough to be a Villanova basketball player back when he was a chubby kid who tagged along on Britt’s recruiting visit. When Hart, a junior, got his turn at the microphone, the crowd nearly drowned him out with chants of, “One more year! One more year!” His teammates joined in.
Fans switched to “Arch-ie! Arch-ie!” for the final speaker, a player Wright has said will go down as one of Villanova’s alltime greats: Arcidiacono. “I’ll stay another year if you want me to,” he joked, to the delight of the room.
Players were hungry, families were waiting and Wright just wanted to unwind with a glass of wine, so he wrapped up the celebration with what sounded like a toast: “We at Villanova are good at doing three things together. We pray together. We go to basketball games together. And we drink together.”
Wright ducked into a side hallway, where he grabbed a burger — extra tomatoes, no bun — to scarf down as the clock ticked toward 2 a.m. He gathered his players one last time to tell them where to find their parents and girl- friends and to be smart about the way they celebrated.
Former Villanova star Curtis Sumpter was standing by the doorway, waiting for an opportunity to steal a moment of his old coach’s time. He told Wright he had to come to Houston, had to come to the hotel right at this moment, even though he had to be on a plane in about two hours to get back to his player development job with the Philadelphia 76ers. “This is what we are,” he said. “This is our family.”
Family is a word thrown around by just about every college basketball program in the country. It means something different everywhere you go. But here, it means a connection between generations, between teams. Former players say sitting at a Villanova practice or game feels like coming home.
When Ochefu held the national championship trophy on the stage on the court after the game, he spoke through tears, thanking coaches, teammates and all those who came before him.
TEAMWORK AND TRUST
There certainly was something magical, as Wright put it, about this season’s Villanova team. Its core was old, veterans in an age of college basketball that seems to be dominated most years by freshmen. Its roster might not have a single player who will be picked in the NBA draft’s first round, another rarity in this era.
But in the truest sense of the word team, there’s no comparison and no anomaly.
These are players who are talented individually but significantly better when they’re together. It’s a bunch of guys, such as Arcidiacono, who are more than happy to pass up the chance to score a championship-winning basket for an open teammate.
“You have to have a guy that you trust to make the right decision, not be selfish, want to be the star himself — and that’s Ryan,” Wright said. “You got to have a guy that can make the shot, be smart enough to know where everybody is going to be and also be a guy that can make free throws if he gets fouled. That’s Ryan.”
That’s also Hart. And Ochefu. And Booth, Brunson and everyone else. It’s who they are. It’s their family.