Villanova and Ohio State hope to put on NCAA footwork clinic

PITTSBURGH – Sunday’s NCAA Tournament second-rounder between Villanova and Ohio State inside PPG Paints Arena could, in many ways, be a referendum on footwork, who does it better?

It’s the little things that keep you advancing through March Madness. Ohio State coach Chris Holtmann knows it. He took some questions Saturday about his time at Butler facing Jay Wright’s teams.

“I’ve stolen so much from him and his program — he has no idea because I didn’t tell him,’’ said Holtmann, who is on a personal three-game winning streak against Villanova, with Ohio State winning in 2019-20 and Butler taking the last two matchups in 2016-17, which probably helped Holtmann get the Ohio State job.. “I just watched his practices, watched his teams, anything that he was doing in terms of teaching I would watch. Even to this day, I have stolen a lot from him.”

Such as … footwork.

“I mean, I’ve got an assistant who is all about two-foot plays and jump stops and two-point percentage, and really a lot of that is from Jay,” Holtmann said. “The fundamentals of footwork, the fundamentals of playing on balance on drives and on the interior, the idea of an offensive rebound being an immediate kick-out for a three is something that I think a lot of teams have stolen.”

Acting like it was preordained that even this veteran Villanova group would win the Big East tournament and get a No. 2 seed, it wasn’t like that a couple of months ago when ‘Nova got annihilated at Baylor and began its Big East season at Creighton, getting annihilated again. A home-and-home with Marquette meant a home loss and a road loss.

But that 10-point defeat Feb. 2 in Milwaukee was the last time Villanova didn’t have a chance on its last possession, only losing once in 12 more games.

“I think sometimes we got a little rattled, if you want to say, and kind of got out of character and lost focus on what we were supposed to be doing,’’ Villanova guard Collin Gillespie said Saturday of that stretch where some games got away from them.”

Is Ohio State undergoing a similar late-season revival? If the Buckeyes are, it just began in the first round, shutting down Loyola. Ohio State showed up as a No. 7 seed after losing in the first round of the Big Ten tournament to Penn State, dropping three to teams that didn’t make the NCAA Tournament.

“I think we’re going to do it … and like [teammate Malaki Branham] said, we have no choice but to do it,” said Buckeyes guard Jamari Wheeler, a Penn State transfer. “We want to keep dancing.”

“If they would have had their guys together, this would have been a 2 or 3 seed, I think,” Wright said of Ohio State having some injuries, making the point how postseason performances are judged on what round you win or lose in, when the real story is matchups.

Defending Ohio State means slowing Branham, a freshman, and forward E.J. LIddell, both future NBA players. But Villanova’s Justin Moore said, “When other guys are making plays besides them, they’re a really great team, very explosive. We’ve got to be able to contain all of them but also pay attention to those two guys.”

Nobody was predicting anything resembling a pretty up-and-down game.

“They’re going to bump you off cuts, they’re going to be really, really physical on the interior, and if you can’t play with force, you can’t be effective against these guys,” Holtmann said of Villanova. “It just won’t happen. …They’re too physical, they’re too old and too strong.”

Again, it comes down to … well, you know. The well-documented evolution of Villanova’s offense, from Ryan Arcidiacono to Jalen Brunson to the current group and their game-changing ability to turn an offense inside-out, guards posting up inside — it starts close to the floor.

“I’ve stolen a lot of things from a lot of people,” Wright said. “That stuff, all that footwork stuff, more came from watching games, watching our games, and trying to figure out what really affects winning and losing. Like what were the plays that affected winning and losing and then what do we need to do to eliminate those mistakes?”

In other words, what also to strip away. Runners and floaters? Not from Villanova guards. And don’t look for them from the Buckeyes either.

“Our early years, we turned the ball over a lot,’’ Wright said. “Like what were we doing that was affecting winning and losing, and a lot of times it was turnovers or shot selection, and how do you teach that. A lot of the ways we teach that is footwork.”

So that’s it, the code is cracked?

“I don’t mean to minimize all the strategy that goes into this tournament, but if you catch a hot team or you get a bad matchup, you’re done — that’s the beauty of this,” Wright said toward the end of his press session. “If you’re lucky enough to win it, I always thought I would — if we ever won it, I would know, ‘OK, I got the answer.’ And once we won it, I realized I’m further from the answer than I ever thought, because there was a lot of luck that went into this, and you never know when it’s going to help you or when it’s going to hurt you.”