Sam Donnellon: Villanova's Reynolds excelling in efficiency department
THERE WAS BUZZ and there was banging, two teams hitting the floor and hitting each other as if involved in a seventh game, 20,016 reacting to each play as if that was the case, too.
THERE WAS BUZZ and there was banging, two teams hitting the floor and hitting each other as if involved in a seventh game, 20,016 reacting to each play as if that was the case, too.
"Big East basketball,'' Georgetown coach John Thompson III shrugged when someone suggested there was added nastiness to Villanova's 82-77 victory over Georgetown yesterday at the Wachovia Center.
There will be four more Villanova games there this winter, four more great reasons to come watch basketball in this venue, which is about four more than the professional team that currently plays there can provide.
The 'Cats are as much fun this season as they were last, maybe even more. They are a blast to watch when they are rallying from 17-point deficits as they did in Louisville last Monday, or blowing them, as they did yesterday afternoon. Either way, Scottie Reynolds will make you stand, scream, shake your head, do all the things you used to do when another little guard from Virginia was bouncing around this floor a decade ago.
A senior, Reynolds is a great college player, not Allen Iverson. What's wonderfully similar is how he affects games at critical junctures. He finished with 27 points yesterday, but it's the plays you remember more than the points. Sneaking around the baseline to steal a rebounded ball. Big threes at big times, bullish drives down the lane at select times, even a sneaky rebound to keep a possession alive.
After Georgetown rallied to tie the game with 4 minutes left, Reynolds did this signature right-to-left, cross-through-the-paint, hooklike layup to regain the lead.
"Not one of my favorite moves," Villanova coach Jay Wright would say later. "But if a guy's going to be great, he can't be great within your parameters. It's got to be his . . . He's got to have that freedom."
Reynolds has been given that freedom since he came to Villanova. Wright lived with his kid mistakes, told seniors Mike Nardi and Curtis Sumpter that they would have to play even more efficiently to make up for the kid's sometimes-awful shots and foolish risks. He didn't forgive the kid. But he talked him to death, used catch words to emphasize the right way to play.
This season's is "efficiency" - in all its variations.
"It's taken like 2 or 3 years to get efficient and not just get off shots," Reynolds was saying. " 'Cause I could always get off shots. But taking shots that are good, that I can make, and not just prayers all the time."
Wright said there was only one of those yesterday, a three-on-one drive that resulted in a block and a break the other way.
"You said, 'One a game,' " Reynolds teased Wright when the coach gave him up to a crowded press room afterwards.
And Wright shot right back, "Not that one."
Later, out of Reynold's ear-shot, Wright said, "I want him to be on the attack. I don't want him to think I'm reeling him in. I want him to want to be that player.
"Last year he was working on it. But he wasn't good all the time. This year he's really efficient."
Reynolds likes the word, even if he rolls his eyes a bit about the sometimes-excessive rhetoric. Yesterday, for example, the play that Wright called "the biggest play of the game" was, in truth, an act of insubordination. Leading late by three with the shot clock expiring, Reggie Redding forced up a three that clanked off the rim. Sailing in from the perimeter, Reynolds jumped between two Hoya bigs to snag the ball, landed on the floor, and called a timeout before he could get tied up.
"I really think that's what the great ones do," Wright said. "It doesn't have to be a pass, it doesn't have to be a steal, it's whatever is necessary."
Oh yeah?
"I'm not even allowed to go to the glass," Reynolds said. "But the ball was right there and I thought I could get it. Since I got it, it was good. But if I didn't get it?
"It wouldn't have gone down with me like it is right now."
He's a senior now, not a freshman. He is to freshman Maalik Wayns what Nardi and Sumpter were to him, what Wright hopes Wayns will be to some other highly talented guard who comes along in the future. Wayns chipped in 11 points in 14 minutes, "gave us great energy," Wright said, despite some poor shot choices that, in truth, helped fuel the Hoyas' second-half rally.
But a win's a win, especially in the Big East, where ugly and aggression are the norm. Villanova is now 5-0 in the league, 16-1 overall, ranked fourth in the nation. Really, the Wildcats are the biggest winter show in town right now, which the 20,016 made perfectly clear to anyone listening. They play hard in a hard league where every game feels like a Game 7. And they have a can't-take-your-eyes-off-him player, a guy you can't wait to see what he will do next.
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