Wright will return

Even with the vision of missed jump shot after missed jump shot chipping away the paint from the rim, and the sting of defeat still working its way down the solar plexus, it’s easy to imagine Jay Wright finding himself back in the same point of the NCAA Tournament in the not too distant future.

It’s also not too difficult to imagine a different result than the 75-62 defeat to Florida on Sunday afternoon just one game shy of the legacy-making Final Four.

You see, Wright, just 44, is built to last at Villanova. Just this year he was rewarded with 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 any one.

Better yet, Wright’s first group of players to go through a four-year run won more games during that span than any other in school history, all while the coach did all the little things that he prodded his kids to do.

Sure, in the end coach is only as good as his players, but special talent like Randy Foye and Allan Ray always seems to wind up playing for the right coach. And they really seem to make it hard for all of us ‘Nova haters.

More tourney talk
Since Villanova won the 1985 tournament, the Big 5 is 0-8 in regional semifinals. ‘Nova has gone down twice, St. Joe’s nipped by Oklahoma State two years ago and Temple has lost five finals under John Chaney.

But even though the local team has finally been sent home, the early word on this year’s tournament is that it’s the best one in a long, long time. Forget about 11th-seeded George Mason making it to the Final Four for a minute, in 60 games the underdog team has won 20 times, while only three games were decided by 20 or more points.

Add in the five overtime games and the fact that no No. 1 seed made it to the final weekend and it’s hard to argue about how compelling this tournament has been.

Then there is George Mason. A diverse, yet regional school that was only founded in 1957, George Mason not only put together one of the greatest upsets in tournament history when knocking off UConn in the regional final, but also strung together one of the most impressive runs to become the highest seeded team to make it to the Final Four.

Not bad for a team that some of the experts said shouldn’t even be in the field.

Certainly there weren’t too many people who thought Mason would beat Michigan State in the opening round, let alone defending national champion North Carolina to get to the Sweet 16. Then with the victory over Wichita State and the No. 1 team in the country, it seems as if the Patriots are a legitimate contender to win the whole thing.

Now all we need to do is find someone who can name a player on the team.

The T.O. Circus takes its act to Dallas

The news came fast and furious on Saturday morning, and with it the not-so shocking reports that Terrell Owens had signed a three-year deal with the Cowboys.

Seriously, how apt is that? Sometimes sports really do mirror a bad soap opera, and as we all have learned here in Philadelphia, the circus that is T.O. travels with its own big top and ringmaster.

Surely, the fans in Dallas must be pretty excited to get one of the game’s top receivers, but as the folks around here now know, the honeymoon will be short. In fact, people in San Francisco went out of their way to warn us about what was going to happen.

“Sure,” they said. “Things are going really well now. But just wait. Something will happen.”

Who would have known how right they were.

So as a public service to the football fans in Dallas, we’re going to offer the same warning the San Franciscans gave to us.

Just wait. Yes, at first T.O. will look good. He’ll say all the right things and dance appropriately atop the star in the middle of the field. He’ll entertain and charm everyone right up until that moment when someone else gets an accolade or attention that shines the spotlight away from him. Really, it’s only a matter of time before the big top is blown over and all good will blows up in everyone’s face like one of those phony cigars in the cartoons.

So enjoy it while it lasts. Who knows, T.O. may even take the Cowboys to the Super Bowl and he could even last a few years down there before anything really bad occurs. But if history is any indicator of the future, it will end badly with Terrell Owens. It’s just that inevitable.

Alive (barely) and kicking
The great part about the NCAA Tournament is the notion that teams like Wichita State and George Mason can dream about going to the Final Four. Of course we all know that Villanova in 1985 is the only team seeded as high as eighth to win it all, but hey, what does it hurt to dream a little. Right?

But in the opening rounds of this year’s tournament, George Mason, Wichita State and Bradley have kept dancing long enough to at least get fitted for the glass slipper. Better yet – discounting reality and Las Vegas-type odds – there is a 50 percent chance that either Wichita State or George Mason could make it to the Final Four, and that’s really cool.

Luckily for the rest of us, the fact that the trio of Cinderellas have emerged from the opening weekend shouldn’t have much of an effect on the all-important office pool. Oh sure, there are a lot of wounds and a few, “what was I thinking” sentiments, but with 15 total games remaining in the 2006 NCAA Tournament, everyone should still have a chance.

Some more than others, of course. In that regard, we need everything to go perfectly in order to win it. In fact, if either Gonzaga, Boston College, Duke or UConn slip up, we’re done. And surely there are a more than a few Villanova fans out there that want to see that happen.

Excuse Chaney while he disappears

I'm just a blue-collar guy that goes to work ... In any job I've ever had, I've never thought about a time when I would leave. I just go to work.
-- John Chaney

A few years back, an old college friend was stopped at a red light heading down North Broad after a summer school class at Temple when John Chaney rolled up in the lane next to him. But instead of waving hello, Chaney started right in needling the guy all while gathering information.

“Where are you off to?” Chaney asked between cracks about driving as if the old friend were fleeing the scene of a crime.

My friend told Chaney that he was off to visit a friend who had just undergone surgery and was in the hospital. In a conversation that lasted the length of time it takes a signal to turn from red to green, Chaney somehow deciphered the name of the friend and which hospital he was in.

In fact, my friend wasn’t even sure if he gave Chaney any revealing information until he was getting up to leave the hospital room. That’s when a package filled with Temple Basketball shirts, posters and a handwritten get-well card arrived.

“Who does that kind of thing?” my friend asked when re-telling the story.

John Chaney, that’s who.

“It took me a while to realize that everything he did, he did for me,” said NBA star and Temple alum, Eddie Jones, a few years ago. “It was all for me, never for him.”

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
As long as I'm in this city, I'm a lightning rod. People don't like me for a lot of reasons and I create all of them. I love it when they hate me. All my closest friends hate me.
-- John Chaney
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

On a day that everyone knew was looming, the 74-year-old Chaney finally decided to take a cue from the last line from one of his favorite old Frank Sinatra standards and begged a full house in a conference room at the university’s Liacouras Center on Monday to, “Excuse me while I disappear.”

Fortunately for the people close to him – which seems to be just about half of the city – Chaney will not disappear. We won’t let him. Oh sure, he might sleep in to 6 a.m. now, or he might turn up on TV here and there or find a seat in the stands “with some peanuts and a beer, telling lies.” He just won’t be stalking, ranting and cussing along the sidelines looking like an unmade bed with his tie off-center, top two buttons undone and a sweater vest hanging on for dear life. That’s all over.

But he’s not going anywhere. There are just too many stories to tell.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
A blind man ain't got no business at a circus.
--John Chaney
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Like the one where he tried to keep Ramon Rivas out of a huddle during a timeout so that his brawny center would not hear the play after his teammates ignored the coach’s plea not to pass him the ball even though he was wide open.

“There's a reason why a guy's open, you know what I'm saying? He's always going to be open if he can't shoot. There's a reason. They leave him open.”

During Monday’s announcement, Temple’s president David Adamany told of how Chaney donated money to the school’s plea for funds for the library. Adamany revealed the story as if it tales of Chaney’s generosity was a new thing, which is hardly the case. In fact, Chaney dipped into his own pocket to help pay for the new basketball arena and he was renowned for taking sponsorship money from the likes of Nike and turning it over to the school and the underprivileged.

“If you’re going to reach the ceiling, you have to lift the floor up,” he said Monday. “If you can get a youngster to reach that ceiling, he’ll reach back and pick somebody else up.”

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Winning is an attitude.
-- John Chaney
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Surely, generosity from the well-heeled isn’t really a big deal and it’s not anything people should celebrate. It’s a duty, according to Chaney.

“I remember an old poem by a man named Walt Whitman who once said, ‘I celebrate myself.’ I didn’t come here to celebrate myself. I came here to recognize people and recognize this university for giving a 50-year-old man a chance to come and coach,” Chaney said.

Oh, but Camden’s Uncle Walt could have been writing about Chaney in his epic Song of Myself. After all, it’s the line following, “I celebrate myself, and sing myself,” that tells the story:

For every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you.

So Chaney should celebrate himself. After all, his allure and the reason why so many people love him has nothing to do with basketball.

Read this column on CSN.com

Primeau contemplates his future

Keith Primeau is one of those athletes that one watches when they want to learn about the nuances of sport. Tall and sinewy like a forward in basketball, it’s plain to see that Primeau will do almost anything if it means that his hockey team will win one more game. Whether it’s his off-ice preparation spent with hours on the stationary bike in the team’s training room, or with lap after monotonous lap up and down the bleacher steps in the Wachovia Center after a game, count on Primeau doing the work.

Don’t exclude the team-bonding grunt work, either. As the Flyers’ captain, Primeau takes on the responsibility of helping a new teammate find a place to stay and showing him around his new town. He also organizes the team parties, gauges the team’s mood and acts as an intermediary with the coaches and team brass, and has the thankless task of being front and center for the press every day.

“I learned a long time ago that my job is not just to perform on the ice,” Primeau said in an interview a few years ago. “So much more goes into your professional being as a hockey player. Media relations, public relations – I accept this. If I can deflect some of the attention away from the younger guys and allow them to play, I’ll do that.”

The same goes for the intangibles on the ice, as well. In that regard, Primeau is one of those players whose true worth is not seen in the every day box scores. Maybe he’ll block a goalie’s view by positioning himself just so in the slot so that Simon Gagne can blast one. Maybe he can deliver a check that pries the puck loose in the offensive zone to set up a goal.

Or maybe he can sense that the team needs a pick-me-up and gets into a fight.

One instance of Primeau picking a fight that stands out more so than any other was the little tête-à-tête with the Devils’ Randy McKay in Game 2 of the 2000 Eastern Conference Finals. During the second period where New Jersey was skating circles around the Flyers and were on the verge of taking a 2-0 lead in the series, Primeau took the bumping with McKay as an invitation to do something. So before the crowd at the First Union Center (that’s what the building was called back then) knew what happened, Primeau dropped his gloves, rolled up his sleeves, checked to make sure his helmet was fastened and called McKay out.

It wasn’t important whether or not Primeau beat McKay. The message was loud and clear.

“I thought our team needed a spark,” Primeau said at the time.

But that scrap came barely a week after Primeau suffered a concussion in a game in Pittsburgh. Though he was carted off the ice on a stretcher and rushed to the hospital after taking a big hit from Pittsburgh’s Bob Boughner, Primeau missed just one game and envisioned his wife sitting in the stands with her head in her hands as he brawled with McKay.

“I realize it may not have been the best thing to do,” Primeau said before telling me that he had three prior concussions that he knew of before the one in Pittsburgh. “I’m a father and a husband, but at the same time I’m a hockey player… “

Maybe that’s why Primeau has merely decided to put his career on hold six years and at least three head injuries later. He is a hockey player. In fact, Primeau still had not decided whether he was going to shut it down for the season just a day before his emotional press conference last Tuesday.

Primeau says he is sitting out with the hope of prolonging his career, which is a great. It’s hard not to root for a man like Primeau. But when he admitted that he still had post-concussion symptoms from the head injury he suffered last Oct. 25, maybe the writing is on the wall. In fact just the term concussion softens what the affliction really is – medical people call them traumatic brain injuries.

Needless to say, multiple brain injuries could result in the most of dire circumstances.

Still, we hope that Primeau can recover in time for training camp next September, and we hope to see him back out there on the ice real soon.

But not at the expense of being a father and a husband.

'Nova making a run

It was nearly 21 years ago when a friend’s big brother came home for spring break from a Big 5 school that will remain nameless. With the big national championship showdown between the upstart Villanova Wildcats and the fearsome Georgetown Hoyas only hours away from tip-off, I was excited to gain some insight from someone who had been in Philadelphia during ‘Nova’s magical run.

“It must be crazy in Philly, huh?” I asked. “How exciting is it to see a local team go on such a remarkable run?”

The response to my question floored me. Certainly my naiveté was never more evident than it was at that moment. Everyone, especially someone going to school in Philadelphia, had to be rooting for ‘Nova.

Right?

“Exciting?” my friend’s brother said. “I hope Georgetown destroys Villanova. I hope it’s the biggest blowout in NCAA history.”

As it turned out, that Big 5 student – and many others like him – didn’t get his wish that April night in 1985. But better yet, the most important lessons learned was that anything can happen in a sporting event, and there’s something about Villanova that elicits extreme feelings. Like the New York Yankees or Dallas Cowboys, there is no in-between with the Wildcats. You either love ‘em or hate ‘em.

And depending on whether one attended a Big 5 school, those feelings could take on a furious ardor.

So as the days start to get a little longer and the leaves return to the trees, ‘Nova haters will have plenty of chances to exercise their bile. The ‘Cats, you see, are going to make a run to the season’s final weekend. You can book that trip to Indianapolis now because these ‘Cats are legit.

Sure, they lost going away to UConn in Storrs in a game that can’t-miss contenders figure a way to pull out, but not before showing something. You see, playing UConn on their home court is like walking across the mouth of a Venus flytrap – it’s only a matter of time before you get sucked in and are never heard from again.

But it wasn’t like that for Villanova. Coming off a dramatic win at Cincinnati in the equally dreadful Fifth Third Arena, ‘Nova jumped out of the proverbial frying pan and into the fire in the midst of a stretch in which it plays on the road against five big-time opponents. Then comes the Big East Tournament at Madison Square Garden.

Talk about tough.

“We're learning that teams are playing to another level against us. We're learning how to handle that,” coach Jay Wright said last week.

‘Nova handles it by sticking to a rock-solid foundation of basketball basics. Like Novocain, Villanova is so sure its game plan will not fail. Just keeping pounding until it works. In the win in Cincinnati, ‘Nova set the stage for the game-winning shot – which came on a basic pick and cut play – by taking a charge in the lane as the clock was ticking down.

Against UConn on Sunday, the Wildcats’ four-guard offense overcame a sub-par shooting effort by challenging an interior defense that lead the nation in blocked shots for the past four seasons. Sure, ‘Nova had eight shots blocked in the first half, but when it took a lead with a little more than 10 minutes remaining in the game on a shot by Allan Ray, well, that was a moment that resonated in defeat.

More importantly, the loss provided many lessons from which to draw from during the upcoming post-season run.

“We will learn from this,” Wright promised afterwards.

As much as it might be painful for some to admit, Wright’s club will likely be doing a lot of the teaching, too.