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Villanova did not look ahead to Saturday's Big East game of the year at Syracuse. As a result, South Florida can look ahead... to the NIT.

If there was any remaining shred of a whiff of a possibility that South Florida could shock the college basketball world and make its way to the NCAA Tournament as an at-large team, those hopes fully and finally died on Wednesday in Philadelphia. At the Pavilion - Villanova's on-campus gymnasium - coach Stan Heath's USF squad, which had blown key games against St. John's and Notre Dame in recent weeks, had to snag a five-star triumph to compensate for its shortcomings.

The Bulls could have taken the easy route and tended to business against more beatable opposition, but by falling to equal or even slightly inferior teams in the Big East, the guys from Tampa had to take down coach Jay Wright's Wildcats. Moreover, the Bulls had to do the deed on a night when Villanova guard Scottie Reynolds - the man most responsible for his school's ascendancy in the college basketball world - played his final on-campus home game. (Nova will host West Virginia on March 6, but that game will be played at the team's off-campus site, the Wachovia Center.)

Yes, this was a big ask for South Florida, and after Heath's lineup got clocked by the Cats, the moral of the story is this: Beat St. John's and Notre Dame so that must-wins in Philadelphia aren't necessary in late February.

The plain truth of the matter is that Villanova is simply a much better basketball team than South Florida. The Bulls - who frankly overachieved this season and should be thrilled to go to the NIT - were simply not in the same league as the Wildcats on Wednesday.

Villanova's relentless pressure defense - active, quick, rangy, and always alert on its rotations - destroyed Dominique Jones and the rest of the Bulls from start to finish. Jones - who powered USF's early-February surge in the Big East standings and has been one of the league's top three scorers throughout the season - was smothered by extended on-ball pressure. Jones entered this game averaging 21.6 points per contest, but on this night, USF's main man was held to just 12 points on 2-of-10 shooting from the field. (Jones went 6 of 6 at the foul line, which accounted for half of his points.)

More alarming for South Florida was the fact that Jones coughed up six turnovers on a night when the Bulls, as a team, gave away the ball 22 times and hit only 16 field goal attempts. Yeah, it was that bad for the upstarts from the Sunshine State, who never found any comfort or rhythm at the offensive end of the floor. Villanova wasn't quite a model of offensive efficiency; the Cats' four starting guards were only 15 of 36 from the field, and Nova hit only five 3-pointers in 15 attempts. Yet, with their ball hawking brilliance and unceasing energy on defense, the home team cruised to a big second-half lead at the Pavilion and remained one game behind Syracuse for the Big East lead, with Saturday's showdown now set in upstate New York.

South Florida's had a very good season. If, in future years, the Bulls want to go one step beyond the NIT event they're certainly headed for, they'll want to make sure that a date with Villanova isn't a do-or-die situation. 

 

By: Matt Zemek
BigEast-fans.com Staff Writer