Game Title Screen Maker 19151
Dec 23, 2012 - 10 min - Uploaded by Jupiter_HadleyThis is basically a tutorial on how to make a title screen and a score thing so you can correctly die.
HOUSTON — They run the play so often in practice that Villanova Coach Jay Wright hardly needed to draw it up in the huddle. It is instantly recognizable by a simple name: Nova.
It is the Wildcats’ go-to set with less than five seconds remaining on the game clock, and there they were, all tied with North Carolina in Monday’s national title game, with 4.7 seconds left.
The Tar Heels had just put the Wildcats on their heels, storming back from 10 points down in five frantic minutes, tying the game on a circus 3-pointer by the iron-willed Marcus Paige, and breathing new life into a game that seemed to have long since slipped away from them.
But after Wright called the play, the ball went into the hands of the Wildcats senior Ryan Arcidiacono, who raced upcourt, turned and flipped the ball backward to Kris Jenkins, trailing the play. His shot rattled through the rim as time expired.
Cameras caught Wright saying one word: “Bang.”
“It is still surreal,” Wright said later.
Confetti rained. Players dogpiled. It had been 31 years since Villanova’s last national title, in 1985, but the Wildcats had delivered again, 77-74, over the Tar Heels, a No. 1 seed, at NRG Stadium in front of an announced 74,340 fans who exited in delirium or disbelief.
It was the first buzzer-beating shot to win an N.C.A.A. men’s national title since Lorenzo Charles’s dunk for North Carolina State in 1983, and the first title game to end on a buzzer-beating 3-pointer.
Jenkins, a 6-foot-6-inch junior forward, had been 280 pounds when he arrived at Villanova, a recruitment that materialized thanks to his adoptive brother, North Carolina’s Nate Britt. The Britts adopted Jenkins in 2007, and Nate was Villanova’s original target as a prospect. But Villanova fell in love with Jenkins’s soft touch.
He was the inbound passer Monday night as “Nova” took shape. It is designed for Arcidiacono to have the license to make three decisions: drive to the hoop, feed to the wing (where a screen was being set) or look for Jenkins trailing behind.
“We knew what play we were going to,” Arcidiacono said. “We work on it every single day.”
Jenkins said, “For him to be so unselfish and give up the ball, it just shows what type of teammate he is.”
Carolina was vying for its sixth national title, and Coach Roy Williams his third, to move him into a tie for fourth on the career list with Jim Calhoun and Bob Knight. He would have surpassed his mentor, the legendary North Carolina coach Dean Smith.
“I promised them, if they do what I said, we’d come back and we’d have a chance to win the game,” Williams said. “We let Villanova have the ball last.”
Game Title Screen Maker 19151 7
Arcidiacono, who was named the most outstanding player of the Final Four, scored 16 points. Phil Booth added a team-high 20 for Villanova. Paige scored a game-high 21 points.
When Arcidiacono arrived four years ago, out of shape, mending a back injury, he knew he had a challenge on his hands. Villanova had been 13-19 the previous season, finishing 14th in the Big East. He started calling his freshman teammates “the redemption class.”
“We wanted to get it back to what the standards of Villanova basketball should be,” he said Sunday.
That meant returning the Wildcats to the Final Four, where they had not been since 2009. Wright’s team lost to North Carolina that year in Detroit, and he vowed to make changes. His team was not going to be distracted by the setting, happy to be there. When the Wildcats left the team hotel for the arena this year, for instance, they sneaked out a back door instead of through dizzying throngs of fans in the lobby.
Both teams were experienced, led by senior guards (Paige and Arcidiacono) on a mission. There were no freshman prodigies expected to dazzle and then ditch college for the N.B.A. This was a throwback game.
It had been a fitful regular season, with no dominating teams and with a crowd of contenders leapfrogging one another at the top of the rankings. That uncertainty produced one of the wildest opening weekends in N.C.A.A. tournament history, with 13 first-round upsets and 10 wins by teams with double-digit seeds.
All the while, Villanova and North Carolina quietly established themselves as a cut above. The Tar Heels, the No. 1 seed in the East Region, had yet to win a tournament game by fewer than 14 points. The Wildcats, a No. 2 seed from the South Region, had to upset the top seed, Kansas, to reach the Final Four. But on Saturday, they delivered a performance for the ages, setting records for margin of victory (44 points) and highest field-goal percentage (71.4 percent).
That magic had worn off, slightly, by Monday, though Villanova still shot 58.3 percent from the field and 8 of 14 from 3-point range.
It was a sloppy start to the game, with the teams combining for four turnovers and only five field goals in the first five minutes. But Carolina, which had missed its first 12 3-point attempts in Saturday’s win over Syracuse, delivered on five of its first seven, including three in a row from the same corner.
Carolina was leading, 32-30, with two minutes remaining in the half when Joel Berry II knifed through Villanova’s defense for an uncontested layup, prompting Wright to call timeout. Adobe indesign cs6 trial download windows. The Wildcats went into the locker room at intermission trailing, 39-34, despite shooting 58 percent from the field.
Villanova even outscored Carolina in the paint, 18-12, in the first half, a rarity against the Tar Heels’ interior size. A dry spell for the Tar Heels early in the second half allowed the Wildcats to retake a 49-46 lead with 12 minutes 45 seconds remaining. It would grow to double digit thanks to 3s by Jenkins and Arcidiacono with 5:29 left.
Williams said he tried everything in the huddle to motivate his group. He was making his fifth appearance in the national title game. He was hobbling on along the sideline on bad knees. He had been irritable with reporters in recent days, sensitive to inquiries about retirement or the continuing N.C.A.A. investigation into Carolina’s long-running academic fraud.
But he had brought U.N.C. to its first Final Four since 2009, its last title, and few expected the Tar Heels to leave quietly.
Brice Johnson slammed a putback and Berry hit a 3. Paige missed a layup, fought for the rebound, and burst back up for the layup to cut Villanova’s lead to 1 with 22 seconds remaining.
“I’ve coached a lot of guys, but I’ve never coached anybody tougher than that kid,” Williams said of Paige.
But after Paige’s final heroic shot — a double-clutch 3-pointer he needed to adjust in midair — there was just enough time for one more play.
“One step, two step, shoot ‘em up, sleep in the streets,” Jenkins said, echoing a phrase his coach has used all season.
In an atrium inside the Davis Center, Villanova’s practice complex, twin 19-inch monitors inside a glass trophy case show a looping highlight montage of the 1985 men’s basketball national championship game. At the press of a button, a song can accompany it: “One Shining Moment.”
Wright presses the button each time he enters the building. The music has echoed in the ears of fans like him for 31 years. It lasted as the benchmark of athletic achievement for a small Roman Catholic college from the suburbs of Philadelphia. But now there are two.
HOUSTON — At halftime of their national semifinal game against Oklahoma on Saturday, the Villanova Wildcats huddled together, leaning close, some on their tiptoes, to hear their team preacher, Ryan Arcidiacono.
His voice was rising, and his face was reddening.
“Let’s keep pushing,” he said as several of his teammates whooped and hollered.
Then, “We can’t be lackadaisical like we were against Kansas!”
And “Don’t talk about it, be about it!”
His midgame sermon lasted just a few minutes, eliciting nearly every word of agreement short of “hallelujah” from his fellow Wildcats.
Then the preacher, who just happens to be a point guard, returned to the court with his team. The Wildcats started the half 14 points up. They ended 44 points up as they headed to Monday’s championship game against North Carolina.
In a title game between two teams that have been dominant in this tournament, small differences are likely to matter.
Could be that North Carolina’s Brice Johnson shows exactly why he is projected to be chosen high in the second round of the N.B.A. draft. Or could be that Villanova’s Josh Hart continues to score and score.
Or maybe, just maybe, Arcidiacono will be the difference. Not because of his scoring. After all, in his four years as a Villanova captain, he has averaged fewer than 13 points per game, per season. But it could be because of his leadership and spunk.
Those intangibles could mean a lot in a game between teams so evenly matched.
Every team at the Final Four has an outstanding leader, the on-court coach who keeps the team on track and motivated. Marcus Paige does that for the Tar Heels. Arcidiacono fills that role for the Wildcats. Those two are the best leaders of college teams in recent history. Very different ones, but so good.
Paige is deliberate and thoughtful and admits to “yipping and yapping and coaching” on the court throughout every game. Arcidiacono is fiery and aggressive. Both set the tone for their teams and keep them under control. Both also keep their teammates rapt when they speak — and those fellow players respect them so much that they listen and follow through on their advice. Several Tar Heels said they considered Paige their team dad. Several Wildcats said Arcidiacono was the team’s official big brother.
“Marcus’s jersey is going to be hanging from the rafters at Chapel Hill someday,” North Carolina’s Theo Pinson said. “So why shouldn’t I do exactly what he says? We don’t question him.”
Guaranteed, though, that Arcidiacono would win a hustle contest against Paige. He is known for chasing loose balls. In chasing them, he often runs into, or over, the scorer’s table.
His acrobatics have become so legendary that upon arriving at NRG Stadium here, Patrick Farrell, a Wildcats senior, took one look at a big video screen that was affixed just below the scorer’s table and laughed.
“Ooh, that video board is going to have big problems if there’s a loose ball and Arch goes after it,” Farrell said to an assistant coach. “How long do you think it will last?”
Arcidiacono’s legend will last much longer.
Villanova Coach Jay Wright considers him one of the greatest players in Wildcats history. Just look how he has helped transform the program, the coach said.
Arcidiacono arrived at Villanova in 2012, after the team had gone 13-19 the previous season, and was named a captain. Since then, he has ushered the Wildcats to three Big East conference regular-season titles. Now the team is on the precipice of winning its first national title since 1985.
Arcidiacono won’t admit to playing an integral role in that ascendance, but he has. Instead, he insists that he has just been a support player. Of course, he’s one who studies strategies and statistics and the history of the game, and who keeps the team chugging away on the court with both his actions and words — but is still a support player.
“Throughout my whole career, I just thought that I’m not the most athletic on the court, but I could try to outsmart everyone to try to gain any little advantage I could have,” Arcidiacono said.
One recent advantage: his skills as a speaker. His teammates have noticed that his talent as an orator has improved since his freshman year, when he came in as a more reserved, lead-by-example kind of guy.
Farrell, who shares an apartment with Arcidiacono and two other teammates, said Arcidiacono had always talked a lot about the game. Ask him who won, let’s say, the 1997 national championship, and Arcidiacono will know right away — and will also tell you the ’96 champion and the ’98 one, too, Farrell said.
This season, though, Arcidiacono has blossomed as a motivational speaker. And all of his teammates have been impressed by the change.
Game Title Screen Maker 19151 Program
“I haven’t seen him read any motivational speaking books or watch any videos, but maybe he’s done it when we’re not watching,” Farrell said. “I have seen a few John Wooden books in his room. Whatever it is, he’s speaking to us with more of a flow than he ever has.”
Farrell could see Arcidiacono as a coach someday — probably at Villanova, which is about 30 miles from Arcidiacono’s hometown, Langhorne, Pa. If he doesn’t coach, maybe Arcidiacono could become a salesman, like his father, Farrell said.
“He would be good selling things, because he can talk anyone into anything,” Farrell said.
This week, Arcidiacono’s job is to talk his team into winning a championship. He has said, over and over, by text and by phone and in his prepractice speeches and on the court during workouts, that the Wildcats’ goal is to win it all.
One game to go, he said. Just one more push. So everyone must lock in and focus.
“We’re all in this together,” he told them before practice on Sunday.
All together, with Arcidiacono leading the way, loud and clear.