Some Wildcats hope for a break from the Big East

Reggie Redding stood in the quiet Villanova locker room at Madison Square Garden and echoed what probably were the thoughts of his teammates and coaches, not to mention those of other Big East teams headed for the NCAA tournament.

"You know each other so well in the Big East," Redding said after the Wildcats lost to Marquette in the Big East tournament quarterfinals, "and you get so used to playing against each other, knowing each other and our strengths and weaknesses.

"In the [NCAA] tournament, you might match up with someone that's hopefully not in the Big East, and you have to play harder and more together than the other team."

Redding's use of the word "hopefully" drew chuckles from his listeners, but he's right. Perhaps the best thing for the 10th-ranked Wildcats at this juncture is to get away from Big East competition and find brand new opposition in the NCAAs, which willl begin Thursday.

The Cats (24-7) discover the identity of their first-round opponent today, when the NCAA Division I Basketball Committee announces the pairings. Depending on how conference tournaments shook out over the weekend, they are expected to take a No. 3 or No. 4 seed into the madness, and most bracket projections have them playing in Providence, R.I.

That's not to say Villanova will be going in as an unknown. Fourteen of its 19 conference games, counting the postseason, were on national television, and it's well known that coaches casually like to watch other games on TV when they're not preparing their own teams.

But maybe being out of the Big East will change 'Nova's luck. The Wildcats enter the NCAAs having gone 2-5 in their last seven games, including back-to-back losses to West Virginia and Marquette.

This will be Villanova's sixth consecutive NCAA trip under coach Jay Wright, who has compiled an 11-5 record and led his team into last year's Final Four in Detroit.

A big factor for the Wildcats in the tournament will be matchups. They have had problems with patient teams that like to play a half-court game, and patience has not been a strong characteristic of this team. The Wildcats have also struggled against teams with a strong inside presence.

Wright said his team would work on defense and decision-making on offense based on the Marquette result. The Golden Eagles worked the shot clock down on most of their possessions, yet still scored 80 points, the most they had scored all season against a team that will make the NCAAs.

It also would help the Wildcats if Scottie Reynolds can free himself from all the attention opposing defenses devote to him. Reynolds shot 5 of 16 (1 of 9 from three-point territory) against West Virginia and was limited to 10 points on 4-of-10 shooting (and zero free throws) by Marquette.

To Reynolds, it doesn't matter whether the opponent is an unknown quantity, or one that knows Villanova's style of play almost as well as the Wildcats do.

"It's really give or take, pick your poison of what you really, really want," he said.

"Last year, we had teams that we didn't really know. Then we came up against Pitt [in the East Region final] and we knew them. You saw that game, you saw how that was, so we expected that. The teams that you do know, you know what to expect. The teams that you don't know, it's hard to predict what's going to take place."