PROVIDENCE, R.I (AP) -Scottie Reynolds ended his career in tears, not in another Final Four.
The second-leading scorer in Villanova history expected his senior season to end with a repeat trip to the Final Four and a national championship.
All he got was an ill-timed slump and an early exit.
Reynolds played the worst basketball of his fabulous career at the most inopportune time of the season. He’ll always be fondly remembered at Villanova for his winner that lifted the Wildcats to the 2009 Final Four. This week, the memories of his continuous clunkers off the rim in both games of the NCAA tournament are still raw.
His shooting numbers will haunt the Wildcats as they watch the rest of the tourney:
He was 4 of 26 from the field in the tournament; 13 of 52 (25 percent) over his last four games. His already faint NBA draft hopes may have vanished right along with Villanova’s tournament ride.
That ended when Saint Mary’s big man Omar Samhan dominated the second-seeded Wildcats (25-8) for 40 minutes in a 75-68 victory Saturday.
Coach Jay Wright was sad to see Reynolds’ career finish with a thud.
“He’s had a lot of nights where he made all the big ones,” Wright said. “He knows it’s going to end eventually and it’s not going to be pretty. The night it ends, it’s never going to be pretty.”
Tears streamed from Reynolds’ eyes, his lips trembled as he tried to put his career in perspective. He offered no excuses for the way he played and paid tribute to former Wildcats who molded him into one of the best ever at Villanova.
“I tried to be the best Scottie Reynolds I could be and the best Scottie Reynolds for this program and tried to do what the guys did before me,” he said. “I’ve got great pride in Allan Ray, Randy Foye, Mike Nardi, Will Sheridan, Curtis Sumpter. So many guys, I can just keep naming them. I’ve just got so much respect for those guys. I just wanted to be in the same category as them. Hopefully, I did that to the best of my ability. I’ll let everybody else judge.”
He finished with 2,222 points – 21 shy of Kerry Kittles’ school record. Reynolds and Kittles are the two Wildcats with at least 2,000 points and 400 assists.
urn to school for his senior season.
“I’m just proud about my career here. There’s no shame in losing,” he said. “We had some great times here. We had some great times this year.”
His lone consolation might be that the Wildcats aren’t the only single-digit seed (see ya, Kansas and Georgetown) missing out on the second weekend and beyond.
The Wildcats fell into a funk after a 20-1 start that was the best for a program that began play in 1920, and a No. 2 national ranking for only the third time in team history.
The seeds for this tournament upset of the preseason Big East favorite were planted late in the season when they stumbled to a 2-5 finish. Reynolds lost his stroke and a season without a consistent interior presence burned them against big-time post players like Samhan.
“A lot of times this year, we were just winning off talent,” Reynolds said.
Wright noted playing with Final Four expectations almost became a burden on a team with six newcomers. Freshmen like Maalik Wayns and Dominic Cheek, and Duke transfer Taylor King had no idea what it was like to compete last April in Detroit.
“There’s so much expectation on this team, but a lot of the guys on this team really haven’t earned that,” Wright said. “And there’s also not just expectation, there was a lot of praise put on this team that we really hadn’t earned.”
Wayns had his coming-out party in the tournament, and guards Corey Fisher and Corey Stokes return next season to form a nucleus that will keep the Wildcats among the Big East elite.
“Hopefully these guys will remember what it took to get to this point and know how much further they have to get better to get to the point where we were last year,” Reynolds said.
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