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NEW YORK — They heard the questions for a year. Every day. On campus. Around town. At games.
Ever since the NC State loss in Pittsburgh last March, they heard the same questions, the same doubts, and as they put together another remarkable regular season, the voices only grew louder.
By this weekend at Barclays Center, it had reached a deafening roar.
Would the Villanova Wildcats lose as a high seed in the second round of the NCAA Tournament for the fourth time in seven years?
Was it going to happen again?
“Everyone's been talking about this game and us not getting past this first weekend [the last two years],” Villanova senior center Daniel Ochefu said. “We’re all extremely glad to get that monkey off our back.”
Villanova lost as a No. 2 seed to No. 10 Saint Mary's in 2010 and to No. 7 UConn in 2014 and then lost as a No. 1 seed to No. 8 NC State last year.
A loss Sunday to Iowa would have made Villanova the first school in NCAA Tournament history to lose as a No. 1 or 2 seed three straight years in the second round.
Not only did the Wildcats refuse to let it happen, but they also played a near-perfect first half against an Iowa team that was ranked as high as No. 3 in the country earlier this year and advanced to their first Sweet 16 in seven years with an 87-68 win (see Instant Replay).
A statement win? You better believe it.
Villanova led by as many as 34 points on its way to its most lopsided NCAA Tournament second-round win in school history.
It’s hard to imagine a clearer statement that all the pressure in the world isn’t going to derail this Wildcat powerhouse.
“We’re like a Cinderella in here,” Josh Hart said after the game. “We’re a No. 2 seed but we were the underdogs. We came in, everybody doubted us, [said] we weren’t going to get past the second round. We may as well have been a No. 16 seed. That’s how we took it.
“No one gave us credit. But that’s why we don’t worry about the outside world. We focused on the guys in this locker room. We just came with the approach that, ‘We’re the underdogs. We got to go in and play with that mentality.’ We can’t go in thinking, ‘We’re Villanova, we’re the 2-seed, regular-season Big East champs, now let’s just go out and play basketball.’
“We can’t do that and we didn’t. We came in humbled and we came in hungry.”
Just imagine the pressure of the entire college basketball world watching you, waiting for you to fail yet again as a high seed in the second round?
It’s hard to imagine a group of youngsters handling it any better.
“We were able to be loose with each other,” Hart said. “We weren’t all uptight, like, ‘Oh, we’ve got to win this game. This is how we’re going to be judged.’
“Nothing like that. It was, ‘Let’s go out, let’s do what we do, let’s play Villanova basketball and let’s see where that takes us.’”
It took it right to the Sweet 16 in Louisville, where Villanova will face No. 3 seed Miami on Thursday at 7:10 p.m.
Villanova, now 31-5, is making its 17th trip in school history to the Sweet 16 and fifth under Jay Wright.
“It's definitely a sigh of relief,” senior Ryan Arcidiacono said (see more on Arcidiacono). “I just think the biggest thing is I'm honestly just done answering the questions about getting past the [first] weekend. I know it was always in the back of our seniors’ minds and our team.”
Hart scored a game-high 19 points, Arcidiacono added 16 and four assists, Kris Jenkins had 15 points and six assists, Jalen Brunson contributed 12 points, four assists and three rebounds and Ochefu added six points, 11 rebounds, four assists, three blocks and three steals.
The game was tied at 13 after six minutes before Villanova put together a 14-minute stretch of brilliant shooting and suffocating defense that helped it close the first half on a 41-16 run.
The Wildcats built their lead up to 34 in the second half. Iowa chipped away in the second half but never got any closer than 16.
Villanova shot 59 percent from the field, made 53 percent of its threes, limited Iowa to just 29 percent shooting from three and looked nothing like a team that was allowing pressure to affect it.
This is the first time anybody on this Villanova team has won an NCAA Tournament game over any team seeded higher than 15th.
"The last two years, I’ve been in this locker room at the same time crying," Hart said. "So now to get over that hump and make it to the Sweet 16, that’s a great feeling."
How did they keep their composure?
“We have a really mature group,” Wright said. “The will of a really determined athlete is much greater than any of the pressure that media or coaches or anyone puts on them. They were so determined to win this game and give their best effort in this game that it just superceded everything.
“As a coaching staff, we try to approach each game that way, too. That, you know what, you've put all that work in. Let's just do what we do. Fortunately, it was good enough.”
Hart admitted that all the talk about Villanova not getting past the second round did get to him a little bit.
“It was difficult at times because no matter how we feel, we knew we were going to get hit with the second-round questions,” he said.
“But the seniors are so good at getting us ready for the next game. We know we want to make a deep run. But we had to be focused on worrying about UNC Asheville — they’re a great, well-coached team — and then it was about the next game.
“It wasn’t about the second round. It wasn’t anything like that. Just let’s just go play Villanova basketball.”