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		<description>RUWT? News for Villanova vs. Pittsburgh 3/28/2009</description>
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		<pubDate>Sun, 22 Nov 2009 13:01:35 GMT</pubDate>
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				<title><![CDATA[Reynolds' layup lifts Villanova in thrilling finish]]></title>
				<description><![CDATA[BOSTON (AP) -- It was physical. It was defensive. It was just 
the way they like it in the Big East.

With bodies clogging the lane and 3-pointers clanging off the 
rim, Scottie Reynolds made a half-court dash for a last-second 
basket to give Villanova 78-76 victory over Pittsburgh and send 
the Wildcats to their first Final Four since the 1985 team made 
its stunning run to the NCAA championship.

"That was kind of the greatest year in the Big East history, and
we've had discussions whether that year was better than this 
year," said Villanova coach Jay Wright, whose third-seeded 
Wildcats are the lowest remaining seed - just like they were in 
'85. "It's all kind of happening the same. ... If history 
repeats itself, I'll take it."

Reynolds scored with 0.5 seconds left to help the Wildcats 
(30-7) beat one conference rival and join another on its way to 
Detroit. Connecticut advanced to the national semifinals 
earlier; Louisville could make it three from the Big East with a
victory over Michigan State on Sunday.

The only other time a single league sent three teams to the 
Final Four: 1985, when Patrick Ewing's Georgetown beat St. 
John's in the semis before losing to Villanova in an epic 
championship game. Rollie Massimino's Wildcats were a No. 8 seed
- the lowest ever to win it all.

"I'm really happy - for Villanova, for the players. It's just 
tremendous," the old coach said after the new one, Jay Wright, 
came to his courtside seat for a congratulatory hug. "I told him
I'm so proud of him. He's be on another level for a long time. I
knew him when he was a baby. Now he's a superstar."

Pittsburgh (31-5) is the first No. 1 seed to leave the brackets 
this year despite 28 points from Sam Young and 20 points and 10 
rebounds from DeJuan Blair. The Panthers led 67-63 with 3:24 
left, and 69-68 with just over 2 minutes to play, but Villanova 
responded to the physical play by sinking 22 of 23 free throws, 
including 5-of-6 in the last 46 seconds.

"A moment where it felt like we had it done," Blair said. "And 
then it was anybody's ball game."

Dwayne Anderson had 17 points and four steals, and Reynolds had 
15 to earn the East Regional's Most Outstanding Player honors. 
Villanova will play the winner of the South Regional 
championship between North Carolina and Oklahoma.

The teams pushed and shoved their way through the first 35 
minutes before they started making baskets and making plays. The
lead changed 15 times - six of them in the last six minutes, 
before Pittsburgh's Levance Fields hit a pair of free throws 
with 5.5 seconds left to make it 76-all.

Reggie Redding, who threw the ball away trying a full-court pass
on the previous inbounds play, got it to Dante Cunningham this 
time, and he dished it to Reynolds. The Villanova guard worked 
his way into the lane for a falling-down floater in traffic.

"In that situation, you have four dribbles and a shot. That's 
five seconds. All that goes in your head. That's why we practice
that every day in practice so we can make an instinct play. We 
did that," Reynolds said. "It worked tonight. Only has to work 
once."

The clock expired, and the Wildcats celebrated. But the 
officials immediately moved to put a half-second back on the 
clock.

Fields took the inbounds pass and launched a 65-footer that hit 
the backboard but then bounced harmlessly to the floor.

"I can't tell you how proud I am of our team, the way they 
played all year and how they played in the last 30 seconds," 
Pitt coach Jamie Dixon said. "I can't tell you how proud I am of
them. It's just a game that could have gone either way."

Villanova, which beat Pitt back in January, got there in a way 
that would make the big, bruising Big East proud.

Pittsburgh guard Jermaine Dixon left for most of the second half
after landing awkwardly - in the splits - before Villanova's 
Shane Clark landed on his left leg.

Blair played the second half blood stains from an unknown victim
streaking his shorts. Two Pitt players came over the first-row 
press table during the game, sending monitors and telephones and
a pair of New York sports writers a-skitter.

The Panthers played Steelers-style basketball, but every time 
they sent Villanova to the line the Wildcats calmly sank them - 
until Redding missed with a chance to make it a five-point game 
with 20 seconds left. Blair scored on a layup with 13 seconds to
go, and then Redding tried a full-court inbounds pass that Dixon
gathered in.

Fields sank two free throws to tie it - the 10th tie of the 
game.

Villanova held Pitt to one basket in the first 4:59 and opened a
10-3 lead, making it 22-12 midway through the first half before 
the Panthers scored eight straight. Fields got it started with a
3-pointer, and Blair cut it to two points on a three-point play 
with just under eight minutes remaining.

Pitt trailed by three with several chances to tie it before 
Fields stepped back and hit a 3-pointer - the mirror-image of 
his game-winning shot from the regional semifinal over Xavier - 
to make it 30-all with 1:50 left in the half. After trading free
throws, Young hit a pair with 4 seconds left to give Pittsburgh 
a 34-32 halftime lead.

The Panthers are 27-3 when leading at the half; two of the 
losses were to Villanova, which won the regular-season meeting 
between the cross-state rivals 67-57.]]></description>
				<category><![CDATA[ncaab]]></category>
				<link>http://areyouwatchingthis.com/ncaab/news/92667-Reynolds-layup-lifts-Villanova-in-thrilling-finish</link>
				<guid>http://areyouwatchingthis.com/ncaab/news/92667-Reynolds-layup-lifts-Villanova-in-thrilling-finish</guid>
				<pubDate>Sun, 29 Mar 2009 03:21:38 GMT</pubDate>
			</item>
		
			<item>
				<title><![CDATA[Pitt-Villanova matchup highlights Big East's dominance]]></title>
				<description><![CDATA[By Jimmy Golen
AP Sports Writer

(3) Villanova (29-7) vs. (1) Pittsburgh (31-4), 7:05 p.m. EDT

BOSTON (AP) -- Pittsburgh and Villanova endured a bruising Big 
East schedule to qualify for the NCAA tournament. They arrived 
that much better prepared to advance to the Final Four.

But first, one of them has to get past the other.

The cross-state rivals will meet in the East Regional final at 
the TD Banknorth Garden on Saturday in a game that puts the Big 
East in the national spotlight. Though it sometimes gets 
competition for bragging rights from the likes of the Atlantic 
Coast Conference, there is no questioning the toughness of a 
league that once experimented with allowing a sixth foul so its 
bruisers could stay in the game.

"The Big East is going to be tough, no matter what," said 
Pittsburgh's DeJuan Blair, a 6-foot-7, 265-pound big man who was
the conference's co-player of the year. "The ACC - you really 
can't compare them. They're like rocks and cotton. We're just 
toughness, we're not finesse players."

But if Pittsburgh (31-4) is going to get any further this year, 
Blair might want to be a little more cotton and a little less 
rock.

Born and bred in the Steel City, Blair embodies Pittsburgh's 
playing style and carries its chances of winning the school's 
first NCAA title. He averaged 16 points and 12 rebounds during 
the season and had a pair of 20-point, 20-rebound games, but he 
also fouled out in three of the Panthers' four losses, including
a January 28 loss to Villanova in the schools' only 
regular-season meeting.

"I refer to him as a beast in a very complimentary way," 
Villanova coach Jay Wright said. "I could see that being a 
Pittsburgh basketball player. Blue collar, like the Steelers, 
that's how he plays, to me."

Blair said he is more disciplined now than the player who picked
up his third and fourth fouls in quick succession midway through
the second half of a surprising loss at Providence. He has had 
three fouls in each of Pitt's first three NCAA games.

"I've been good for the whole tournament. Hopefully, they'll 
keep letting me play the way I am," he said. "I can't get in 
foul trouble for my team to win. I've just got to be out on 
court. Everybody on my team and my family and my coaches and 
everybody just say to stay out of foul trouble. I've just got to
keep playing. I've got to play disciplined. I've got to go in 
acting like I've got two fouls, as my coach told me. I just 
can't get fouls and we'll be hot."

Dixon insists that Blair isn't the problem, or at least the only
one, noting that other players were also in foul trouble in the 
games Pitt lost. And it's not like those losses were to 
pushovers: three of the four were to NCAA tournament teams, 
including not just Villanova but No. 1 overall seed Louisville.

But the coach also noted that sometimes the fouls were not from 
solid, tough play but from carelessness or just a bad call.

"We've talked to him about you can't have what we call silly 
fouls," Dixon said. "And those often aren't from aggressiveness,
(they're) from fatigue, frustration oftentimes or not being 
prepared, not anticipating. And that's where you get your 
fouls."

Villanova (29-7) doesn't have a dominating inside presence that 
can match up with Blair - but who does? - and makes up for it by
sending all five players after rebounds.

"We like to play ugly as well," Wildcats forward Dwayne Anderson
said. "We want guys banging for loose balls."

Anderson said Wright helps prepare his players by turning them 
loose in practice. Hard fouls are customary; bodies bang 
underneath, and sometimes even among teammates it can go too 
far.

"Sometimes coach has to step in and say, 'Hold on. This is not 
boxing, this is not a fight,'" Anderson said. "We try to have 
our practices more difficult than the games."

In the Big East, that's difficult.

It's just the 10th time that two teams from the same conference 
have played for a spot in the Final Four - the second time for 
the Big East. But that's just the tip of the conference's 
dominance this year: Five of the last 12 NCAA teams remaining 
were from the Big East, and heading into Friday night's games 
there was a chance at an all-Big East Final Four.

Only once has a conference placed as many as three teams in the 
Final Four: The Big East, in 1985, when Villanova won its only 
national championship.

"As coaches and promoters of our leagues sometimes we tend to 
overexaggerate and inflate some things that never really seem to
come to fruition," Dixon said. "But if anything has lived up to 
it, it would be this conference and what's happened this year. 
As the year went on, now as we go in the postseason play, to be 
in this position is quite remarkable.

"Usually you beat each other up, but somehow we've had some 
teams survive it. And to be in this position, however it ends 
up, I think it did what is very hard to do, live up to coaches' 
lofty proclamations."]]></description>
				<category><![CDATA[ncaab]]></category>
				<link>http://areyouwatchingthis.com/ncaab/news/92586-Pitt-Villanova-matchup-highlights-Big-Easts-dominance</link>
				<guid>http://areyouwatchingthis.com/ncaab/news/92586-Pitt-Villanova-matchup-highlights-Big-Easts-dominance</guid>
				<pubDate>Fri, 27 Mar 2009 23:37:34 GMT</pubDate>
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