Villanova Might Be the One

Can you be the top-ranked team in America, and can you win a national championship, when the greatest praise given to you is that you're just good enough to win almost every night?

Villanova might find out. In fact, one could make a case that it should have found out already.

Kansas might very well be the best team in the country, deserving of the No. 1 ranking it held as the season began and now has regained -- and oblivious to how close the wins have been lately. And it's impossible to make a case that anyone is sleeping on Villanova when it's ranked No. 2. But to see what both Villanova and Syracuse are doing so far, in a conference that has eaten its own all season long as well as on the national stage, is to wonder whether the Wildcats' time is about to come.

Villanova arrives in Washington -- weather permitting -- for Saturday's game against seventh-ranked Georgetown at 20-1 overall and 9-0 in what is, at worst, the third-best conference in the nation this season. At least one gauge, Jerry Palm's CollegeRPI.com (whose criteria is based on average RPI for each conference team), ranks the Big East first; in any case, them, the Atlantic Coast Conference, even in what's widely perceived as a down year, and the Big 12 are just a hair apart with about a month of regular-season play left.

There's nothing wrong with Kansas (21-1, 7-0) being unbeaten in the Big 12. Villanova pulling it off in this year's Big East might be better. The Jayhawks have gotten two scares in the past week, against Kansas State and Colorado on the road, and it's tough to say whether that says more about Kansas' makeup or less. There's no doubt, though, that most people will take Kansas' roster over Villanova's -- and, in turn, would take its record against the gauntlet it has run in the Big East over what Kansas has faced in its conference.

In fact, most who would have guessed which Big East team would threaten the No. 1 spot, would have picked Syracuse, thanks to its signature wins early, its 8-1 start in conference, and the way it blindsided the whole country, reloading after all its player losses from last season. The Orange have proven their credentials for such consideration. But Villanova -- which had holes itself to fill after last year's Final Four berth -- has even managed to surpass them so far.

Yet, those seeking the tangible reasons for the roll Villanova is on right now, with 11 straight wins and major separation from nearly all of the conference, end up finding an answer that doesn't seem like a real answer. Even Jay Wright, in describing his team's latest win this week, 81-71 over Seton Hall, put it pretty mildly: "We're playing pretty good basketball, and we're finding ways to win.''

And it's hard to argue, because on Saturday he faces one of the teams against which he found a way to win three weeks ago at home, 82-77, after his team had squandered most of a big lead and allowed Greg Monroe to go for 29 points and 16 rebounds. ("He was uncontrollable for us,'' Wright said.) That happens a lot, Villanova winning even when it's not obvious how.

But it just keeps winning, with Scottie Reynolds playing like a national player-of-the-year candidate, with four guards starting for most of the season, and with the help of, among others, a big man (Antonio Pena) who's more at home on the perimeter; a freshman forward (Isaiah Armwood) who Wright had planned to redshirt; a fellow guard (Reggie Redding) who didn't rejoin the team until after the fall semester; and a freshman center (Moupthtaou Yarou) who missed all of December while recovering from Hepatitis B.

No one player besides the incandescent Reynolds can be pointed to as one an opponent has to control, again making the Wildcats unique in a league with both loaded teams with multiple threats (Syracuse, Georgetown, West Virginia) and others with one-man wrecking crews (Seton Hall with Jeremy Hazell, Pitt with Ashton Gibbs, even resurgent South Florida with Dominique Jones).

Villanova has yet to play West Virginia -- it goes to Morgantown on Monday -- or Syracuse; their lone meeting this season at the Carrier Dome February 27 will be the game of the year in the Big East if both stay on track. Still, what the Wildcats have done against a league with 13 teams harboring serious NCAA tournament hopes is mind-boggling.

Describing what made the difference in the Seton Hall win, coach Bobby Gonzalez could only come up with: "They were a little better than us when they had to be, and that's why they've won 11 in a row and why they're ranked where they are.''

Asked that same day how Villanova has managed to stay clear of the tangle in the rest of the Big East, Georgetown's John Thompson III answered, "By not losing.'' He wasn't being sarcastic, either.

"I've said from the beginning, and most coaches in this league will agree with me, the difference between 1 and 16 is minute. It's not a lot,'' Thompson said. "They've done a good job of, in what is a game of inches, taking the inches that are given to them so that they stay at the top, where the rest of us have not done as good of a job. So that at the end of the game, it's still a game of inches, and in this league, the separation is inches.''

To be separated from the pack in the Big East this year makes you one of the elite teams in the country. Three teams have done that so far, two well enough to be in the top three in the national polls. Only one has managed to stay perfect in conference play.

Based on that, a case can be made for Villanova being No. 1 right now. Put another way, right now it's as hard to make a case against the Wildcats as it is to beat them. If they beat Georgetown on the road Saturday, the case might be impossible to make.