The vision of missed jump shot followed by missed jump shot chipping away the orange paint from rim was still fresh. The sting of defeat was still working its way down the solar plexus and into the pit of the stomach of those Villanova players who vainly tried to keep pace with the North Carolina Tar Heels all night long in Saturday’s National Semifinal.
The pain and the inevitable “what if…” had not quite set in as Saturday melted into Sunday.
Still, even though accepting the loss in the Final Four will be difficult, it’s easy to imagine Jay Wright back in the same spot of the NCAA Tournament in the not too distant future.
It’s also not too difficult to imagine a different result than the 83-69 defeat to Carolina, just one step away from the National Championship game.
You see, Wright, just 47, is built to last at Villanova. He still is not halfway through a contract extension that lasts until 2013 and will compensate him well enough to keep him in those sharp-looking, single-breasted suits. More importantly, Wright seems to have received the extension for doing something that is often rare in sports these days…
He paid his dues.
Aside from the long car rides beating the recruiting trail as an assistant at Rochester, Drexel and Villanova, before taking over at Hofstra, Wright has restored the luster to ‘Nova that was lost during the angst-filled final days of Rollie Massimino’s run on the Main Line. He has embraced the Big Five series instead of brushing it aside as a trite hometown obligation, while turning his program into a bona fide powerhouse that isn’t going to tiptoe up and surprise anyone.