By now you've seen it from every angle and in every language -- including Russian.
The situation was about as tense as it gets in sports: one shot to win the national championship, or risk watching your 10-point lead slip away in overtime. But when Marcus Paige's miracle heave tied the game with 4.7 seconds left, Villanova knew exactly what to do. “We run that play every day — end of every practice,” Wildcats junior Phil Booth told the New York Times. Actually, it's a bit more complicated than that. In virtually every practice, the Wildcats have what they call Wildcat Minute. It is an end-of-game drill deliberately set near the conclusion of practice, when everyone is physically exhausted and mentally cranky — precisely as they would be at the end of a tight game. The Wildcat Minute starts with 60 seconds on the clock and a certain situation, and then Wright takes the clock and hacks more and more time off it, as if he is shaving slivers from a block of cheese, each new situation demanding a new play, a new solution.The scout team is encouraged to be physical with the starters — no defender is going to be whistled for a blocking foul. The scout team knows the plays as well as the starters do.
“It never works in practice,” the assistant coach Ashley Howard said.
There was no late game panic because it was eradicated long before it ever had a chance to take root.
And when the play goes off as designed, act like you've been there before.