Villanova hopes to rebound from 76 Classic blunder

VILLANOVA'S basketball team - which has no seniors and five freshmen - is 4-2, after losing two of three in the 76 Classic in Anaheim, Calif. The losses were to Saint Louis (6-0) by 12 points in the second round on Friday and by one to Santa Clara (4-2) in Sunday's third-place game.

But it was the way they went down against Steve Nash's alma mater that caused some head-shaking.

The Wildcats, after trailing by eight three times in the first half, went ahead by nine with 3 1/2 minutes left. They wouldn't score again. But they still led by three with some 10 seconds left. There was a timeout, with Santa Clara set to inbound. The scoreboard said they had five teams fouls, so they could take one more without sending the Broncos to the foul line.

The people keeping the Villanova scorebook had the Wildcats with six second-half personals. But . . .

"The ref came over and said, 'You have five, do you want to foul?' " coach Jay Wright said yesterday, after flying back. "He said he didn't want to miss it. We didn't ask [him to check], because he came right from the table. We were like, 'OK, maybe our book's not right.' So we said yes. And we went out and fouled."

The problem was, Villanova did have six. So with 7.5 seconds showing, Evan Roquemore made the foul shot and the bonus. Santa Clara fouled first-year forward JayVaughn Pinkston, who was making his first start and was 3-for-4 at the line in the game. But he missed the front end and fouled Roquemore going for the deflected rebound. Roquemore made two more freebies at 4.3 to win it.

"The ref came over [after the intentional foul] and said, 'I don't know what to tell you,' " Wright recalled. "I asked if we could put time back on and play it again, since they gave us the wrong info. I guess between the time they told us and the time they put the ball in play they figured out [their mistake]. I've never seen that happen before. I was going to call the head of officials, but I don't think there's anything you can do. It's a human error. I'm not even going to look into [a possible protest].

"The guy who runs the tournament, from ESPN, apologized. In hindsight, maybe we should have asked them if they were sure [at the time]. Right before that, there was a problem with the [number of remaining] timeouts. They messed up, but the ref went to the table and fixed it. I actually saw the ref at the airport. He came up to me and said he was sorry. He didn't even know what to do. What can you do? As we talked today, it sounds more like wrong place, wrong time kind of deal."

Next up is Penn (3-4) on Saturday at the Pavilion.

"We had a nine-point lead with less than 3 minutes to go," Wright said. "And a five-point lead with the ball [at under a minute]. And then in the end, that chain of events caused two bizarre situations. JayVaughn collided with a kid going for a loose ball. He's 270 [pounds]. He's standing with the ball, their guy goes flying. He's a point guard, weighs about 160. Even if they get the ball, I don't think they would have gotten off a good shot. Everything possible that could've gone wrong did.

"Right after the game, we were crushed. But kids are resilient. It was JayVaughn's birthday. So we went to dinner and it was all fine. I tell our kids that when you're going to Final Fours and having success, there are a lot of breaks that you get along the way. We've had our share. You just never count those. You just say you made the right play. But when that happens to you, you add them up. And you remember all those.

"We'll remember this one."