NEW ORLEANS — Away from the basketball court, Collin Gillespie tends to carry himself with all the openness and naked emotion of a special agent with a secret to guard and a mission to complete. His father is a Philadelphia police detective, internal affairs, and it’s easy to see that Jim Gillespie passed down the discretion and discipline that his job demands. Get Collin one-on-one — not for a game to 11, just for a conversation — and there’s always the sense that he’s sizing you up, and you’ll get nothing but name, rank, and serial number from him until he’s comfortable enough, until he trusts you enough, to give you more.
To know that about Gillespie was to understand that Saturday night promised to test the strength of his implacable exterior in a way that nothing in his Villanova career had before. Yes, he had torn the medial collateral ligament in his left knee 13 months ago, an injury that prevented him playing at all in last year’s NCAA Tournament. But this national semifinal matchup against Kansas, his 156th game for the Wildcats, threatened to be his last game for the Wildcats.
The Jayhawks were deeper, more talented, the better team, especially with Justin Moore’s absence from Villanova’s lineup because of his torn Achilles tendon. All that was assured for Gillespie — for the two-time Big East Player of the Year, for the conference’s scholar athlete and its conference tournament MVP, for one of the most consequential players in Villanova history — was that he and his teammates would spill their guts on the Superdome court.
