Geoff JohnsonVillanova facing North Carolina in the first round of March Madness is as good as it gets; Wildcats and Tar Heels will clash Friday at 7:20 PM ET at Kansas City Mo.
Villanova was humiliated by Louisville in the Big East Tournament, so they need to bounce back strong.
“Definitely [I was doubting myself]. There is definitely a second where you have to look at yourself first,” Nova’s coach JayWright. “When that happens, you have to look—the coach always has to look at himself, and he has to say, ‘What am I doing here that is responsible for how we’re playing?’ And maybe one of the things at that time, was myself as a head coach, I wasn’t patient enough with this young group. I was trying to put on them, the kind of urgency, that they weren’t ready to handle.”
“At the beginning and middle part of the year, I don’t think anyone of us thought we were going to get to the tournament,’ Wright said .”I think if you asked us early in the year, ‘Would you sign up for the NIT?’ We’d , ‘Hell yeah, as long as we can keep playing and be in the postseason.’”
North Carolina lost to Miami in the ACC championship and for the third time on the season, and many doubts came up to surface.
“I’ve got nothing to complain about with my team today,” Roy Williams said. “I’m really proud of my team. And I’m not talking about the entire year. I’m talking about today. I’m unbelievably proud of what they’ve accomplished and how far they’ve come when everybody was abandoning ship earlier. … My team gave great effort today, my team was tough today, my team was attentive today. And yes, we made a couple of mistakes, but that’s the game of basketball.”
