Wildcats weather the storm

WHEN THE POWER goes out, it's never a good thing. Yet when the weather conditions closed Villanova University on Wednesday, the basketball team scrambled to make the best of its predicament.

"People around here were offering us places to come practice," said coach Jay Wright, whose sixth-ranked Wildcats (20-2, 8-1 Big East) host Seton Hall (13-9, 4-5) tonight. "But every time we'd say, 'OK, we'll go there,' they'd call back and say, 'We don't have power [either].' "

They ended up at Haverford School. Five minutes later, the lights went out. So they opened all the shades on the windows.

"It was semi-light," Wright said. "It wasn't dark, but it definitely wasn't light. But it was fun. We were yelling stuff like, 'We have got to get going before it gets dark.' It was like back in the day, when you were playing outside.

"They were into it. They made it fun."

Then they went out for dinner together at Chipotle.

"There was no timetable," Wright said. "It wasn't like we had classes. So we hung out. We all came in cars, no vans, like you did when you were younger. It really was some good bonding. At this time of year it can get kind of monotonous. So it broke up some of that staleness. It was different."

Since there was no heat in the dorms, half the players spent the night at Ryan Arcidiacono's house in Langhorne. The rest went to Kevin Rafferty's home in Malvern.

"We couldn't watch film, so they liked that," Wright said. "We let them split the guys up. It was very laid-back.

"The first plan was to bring them all to my house. But where I live, we never have power. And I did. Then Ryan's dad called, and Mrs. Rafferty called, said they'd love to have the guys. Perfect. So they just stayed there, waiting to hear when the power came back on here."

Yesterday afternoon they got the word that it was finally OK to return to campus.

"You could tell it actually turned into a nice experience," Wright said. "But now we'll see how we play on Friday."