It's a Reynolds Wrap

BOSTON -- If you felt a shiver or tingle Saturday night, a quaking in your solar plexus, it's because you witnessed an epic basketball game, one of the virtuoso classics of March or any month. I mean, did Bill Raftery need oxygen afterward? This was destined to finish with the boldest, loudest exclamation point possible, given the 15 lead changes, palpable tension and Big East-style physicality in the building.

It was just a matter of who, what and when.
And then, in a magnificent flash, it happened. That the moment would belong to Scottie Reynolds, the embattled Villanova guard, made it grander. In enemy gyms, jerky kids with no lives actually chant, "Scottie doesn't know," what might be intended as a Euro Trip reference but almost certainly is meant as a savage reference to how Reynolds was put up for adoption as a baby by an 18-year-old single mother. He never has met the woman, although, with the urging of his adoptive parents, he has done investigative work and figured out who she is. He's waiting for a good time to call her.

I'd say he just gave himself a cool opening conversation piece. Remember Tyus Edney's 4.8-second, court-length romp through the Missouri defense for the game-winning layup, which pushed UCLA toward a national championship in 1995? Reynolds brought back memories with a similar dash, taking a pass near midcourt, winding upstream, sifting through the lane past Pitt's football-like bodies, then flipping up a shot with barely a second remaining as he fell to the floor. Every fan in the arena was standing. Security guards ringed the court in TD Banknorth Garden, sensing an emotional explosion and a rushing of the court by fans. America stopped what it was doing and stared at the TV. How would it end?

With a coating of Reynolds Wrap, ziplocked for posterity. The shot floated through the hoop with a mere 0.5 left, a shocker that gave Villanova its first Final Four berth since 1985, when Rollie Massimino and the Wildcats stunned Georgetown for a national championship in the ultimate college basketball miracle. There was a rush of joy, followed by a pause because time remained and Levance Fields, Mr. Madness, plays for Pitt. When Fields heaved a 65-foot prayer that would have won the game, as he often wins games in the final seconds, every soul in Villanova blue was paralyzed by fear. The ball smacked off the glass, bounced to the floor and vanished in the gathering celebration, which found Reynolds racing over to his coach, Jay Wright, and weeping on his shoulder for almost a minute.



"I didn't even see the ball go in," Reynolds said. "Everybody just rushed the court, and then Coach is pulling everybody by the neck and saying, `The game is not over. There's time left.' And then something crazy could happen, which we've seen before. When the ball left Levance's hands, it was right on target to go in. A little less off the shot and we could be in another position now."

He was asked to describe the play, which involved him taking a pass from Dante Cunningham, who caught the inbound pass from Reggie Redding -- the same inbounder, by the way, who'd thrown a wild, ill-advised, court-length long ball that resulted in a turnover and allowed Pitt to tie the game at 76-76. "It's something we do every day in practice at the end," Reynolds said. "They face-guarded me, and when that happens, Dante makes a flash to the middle of the floor and I make a second cut away from him, going toward the basket. We had a stagger going on the opposite end ..."

Wright cut him off, amazed at the hero's coach-speak and why he was giving up trade secrets. "You can coach with me when you're done playing. You got the job," he told Reynolds as laughter filled the interview room. "You don't have to interview."

"Oh, my goodness," Reynolds said. "Well, I just made a layup."

The mother of all layups, actually.

"In that situation, you have four dribbles and a shot," he said. "That's five seconds. All that goes in your head. That's why we practice that, so we can make an instinct play. It worked tonight. Only has to work once."

We'll never forget this game, this 78-76 masterpiece. Put it on the all-time list with the long lob to Christian Laettner, Keith Smart's jumper, Bryce Drew's catch-and-shoot, Lorenzo Charles' "What's this?" winner and Edney. But the hero's personal story might be better than the game.

"He has struggled in college and he has fought through some adversity," Wright said of Reynolds. "We go on the road and people chant, `Scottie doesn't know' and it never bothers him. He's amazing. I have as much respect for him as anyone I've ever coached."



During the post-game celebration, Reynolds received the love that often has eluded him. A star as a freshman -- he once scored 40 against Connecticut -- he has endured ups and downs in his Villanova experience, in part because Wright employs a system that downplays individuals and emphasizes team. He didn't arrive on campus as a happy camper, having been burned when Kelvin Sampson bolted Oklahoma for Indiana, forcing Reynolds to vacate his original commitment to OU and sign with Villanova. Like a lot of people these days, Reynolds isn't fond of Sampson, who left Indiana amid a recruiting scandal.

"I put my faith in one person and all my eggs in one basket, and I felt like I couldn't trust anybody no matter what they said to me," he told reporters on the eve of the East Regional final. "Having nobody that I knew on the team (at Villanova), I didn't have anybody to talk to. I just stayed in my dorm room and just waited for the next day to come and waited for the next day to get on the court."

In those tough times, when he clashed with Wright over philosophy, he relied on the parents who raised him. He sometimes wonders if he'd be alive without Rick and Pam Reynolds, who made him part of a family with five other kids in a childhood spent in Virginia and Illinois. Who knew he'd grow up to star in a tale that will live in NCAA tournament lore? "Oh, man, it's so many emotions going through my head," he said. "It's something that you think about as a youngster, advancing to a Final Four or winning a championship."

And to think it almost didn't happen. Why oh why did Redding, with a two-point lead and eight seconds left, fire a ball from his own baseline to the other baseline, overthrowing Cunningham? Pitt's Jermaine Dixon retrieved the ball and tossed it to Fields, who was fouled and, of course, made two free throws with five seconds left to tie the game. Wright made it clear that the Statue of Liberty gimmick wasn't his call.

"We have to be (OK with it) because we put him in that position," he said. "It's easy to watch film and criticize and critique, but it's hard to be the guy that's in the battle and make the decision. So we always tell them in those end-of-game situations, we have to trust your decisions. If that would have cost us the game, we would have applauded Reggie for the guts to make the play. Now, as a sensible basketball person, I can say it probably wasn't a great decision. But within our team, and we did talk about after the game, he knows we trust him on that and we would have been there to pick him up if that would have cost us."

I'd call him a coach I'd want to play for. The family atmosphere is why Wright and Villanova have become the darlings of March, finally breaking through to the Final Four after several flirtations. You might say Pitt choked, having led by four points with three minutes left before committing two quick turnovers, one when the talented but maddening big man, DeJuan Blair, inexplicably traveled after playing a high-risk game with foul trouble in the first half. Jamie Dixon will continue to hear criticism about why he can't reach the Final Four, which will become doubly difficult next season without seniors Fields and Sam Young and possibly without Blair, who might declare for the draft and take his sizable butt to the NBA. Pitt is now 1-7 against top-five seeds in the big tournament.

"Obviously, it's a game that I guess people will talk about as far as a great game," Dixon said. "But right now, all we're reflecting on is a disappointment. But I'm not disappointed at all in the effort or character we displayed."

And Pitt's defensive effort on the last play? "We did a pretty good job of what we did," he said. "They floated (the pass to Reynolds) up there, and it was really a jump ball and could have gone either way. I don't know if that was exactly what they had planned. I would doubt it. But as far as the kid, he made a tough shot. Scottie Reynolds made a tough shot."

The better and smarter team won the game. The team that hit 22 of 23 free throws -- five of six in the final minute -- won the game. Now, prepare yourself for a week of comparisons to the '85 Villanova team. This team was seeded third in the East, much higher than Massimino's outcasts. But a story line is a story line, as Wright knows.

"It's kind of eerie how this is playing out. I hope to God history repeats itself (laughter)," said Wright, who was in Lexington when 'Nova pulled off the shocker. "I worked Rollie Massimino's camp, I was there like a hanger-on. I was part of that family. The thing with Rollie was, if you worked his camp, you might as well have been the top assistant -- everybody was in the family. And my wife was a cheerleader there; she had just graduated.

"(At the time), that was kind of the greatest year in the Big East history, and we've had discussions whether that year was better than this year. So that was similar. Villanova was a great team, but St. John's and Syracuse and Georgetown were the teams that year. Villanova kind of sneaks in. And then it's all happening the same now. I'm not a superstitious person or anything, I don't care. I'm worried about the next game. But if history repeats itself, I'll take it."

I don't know if history is repeating itself. But I do know history was made Saturday night in a sports town rich in legends.