SAN ANTONIO — It’s the rare NCAA Tournament regional final that sounds, feels, and has the sense of a home game for one of the two teams. These elimination games are contested at neutral sites, or are supposed to be. Saturday night at AT&T Center did not sound that way, feel that way, have that sense. The University of Houston is just 200 miles east of here, and its basketball fans flooded this city and filled this arena, and every time their Cougars made a fine play or drew a little closer on the scoreboard, those fans stood and roared as if this were a home game on campus.
And every time they did, Villanova would be Villanova. The Wildcats would take their time, run their offense in their customary exacting manner, snap passes around the perimeter, and make a shot. Or pump-fake, draw a foul, get the free-throw line, and knock down two from there. All season, Houston wanted to rattle its opponents, and for most of the season, it succeeded. But if there’s one thing that the Wildcats do not do, they do not get rattled. Stand a Villanova player on a high wire, have him pour poison from one test tube into another, and you’d be comfortable trusting him not to spill a drop.
That confidence, that discipline, and that collective experience and will are the reasons that, for the third time in the last six NCAA Tournaments, the Wildcats have reached the Final Four. They didn’t beat Houston, 50-44, on Saturday as much as they out-matured them, out-calmed them, out-waited them. There was nothing about the game that was pretty. The Cougars, seeded fifth in the South Region but favored over the No. 2 Wildcats, don’t want to play pretty basketball, and they don’t bother to try. They do everything possible to discombobulate you … except what would happen against an opponent too tough and smart to be discombobulated?
