Villanova beats Kansas for another title shot

With AP Photos.Kansas never found a way to slow Villanova’s record-setting 3-point barrage in the Final Four.

The coach knew his Jayhawks had to close out on Villanova’s deep well of 3-point shooters and contest all those deep shots if they were going to beat the Wildcats in Saturday’s national semifinals.

“He’s unbelievable. He’s one of those dynamic scorers from the post, he’s a great passer, made some unbelievable passers today with both hands”, Villanova assistant coach Ashley Howard said. Our challenge has been that we were so good offensively earlier in the year that we got lazy defensively.

Team chaplain Sister Jean Delores Schmidt became the face of the team, which brought Loyola to the Final Four for the first time since the school won the 1963 national championship.

It took until the final weeks of the season, but the dominant team the sport lacked this season has emerged.

MI had the nation’s No. 3 defense efficiency-wise and put Loyola on lockdown in the second half, forcing the Ramblers into a rash of turnovers to race away.

“You don’t even – you can’t say it’s a dream come true because you don’t even dream about it”.

“I feel bad for Kansas”, Villanova coach Jay Wright said. But I’m going to bet the under here because the teams will be a bit exhausted after just one day of rest and the Wolverines’ defense is underrated. Some of the others, just maybe. “At the end of the year, I got hurt, and I just got lazy”. “Last night they focused a lot on him, showed him a lot of double teams and he was just making the right play – passing the ball, wasn’t forcing anything”. Another shooting performance from Villanova like the one we saw in the Final Four, and they’ll likely be cutting down the nets again on Monday night. And the Jayhawks still got shot out of the building from the opening minute. Villanova is also one of the better defensive teams in the nation, but can score with anybody, something evidenced by its 95 points against Kansas. Does Villanova cut down the nets for the second time in three years, or does MI do it for the first time since 1989?

“They’ll be hard for anyone to deal with”, Self said, “if they shoot the ball like that”. “They did everything today”.

About a minute into the second half, Paschall drained a 3 for Villanova’s 14th of the game, breaking a Final Four record first set by UNLV in 1987.

Staring down a 10-point deficit against an underdog that seemed nothing short of blessed during the madness of March, Moe Wagner and MI clamped down on Loyola-Chicago and ended one of the most memorable NCAA Tournament runs ever.

“It was big because there’s times you’re not going to be able to make shots”, Brunson said. “So not dropping our heads was one of the main adjustments we had to make”. The rest of the leadership trust includes juniors Mikal Bridges, Eric Booth and Eric Paschall, and scrappy sophomore Donte DiVincenzo.

“If we didn’t get stops, it was getting back to being a five- or six-point game”, Wright said. “So we’re definitely going to look to come out and do that on Monday”. He’s got pieces from the 2016 National Championship. “He just lost his coach, but he felt they were family, and that’s what he was looking for”.

So while, as Kansas coach Bill Self said of Villanova Saturday night, “They’d be hard for anybody to deal with if they shoot the ball like that” – “that” being 18-for-40 from deep – it is likely the Wildcats won’t shoot the ball like that Monday against MI.

Later in the half, Self was yelling to his team “Don’t back off!” on the defensive end as though trying to re-emphasize a point from a scouting-report long since ripped to shreds.