After searching left, right and down the court for an open man, Nardi tossed the ball in . . . and right to Texas guard D.J. Augustin.

As recently as last season that might have been enough for Wright to pull Nardi off the floor. Not because he was frustrated with his guard, but because he knew Nardi would be so frustrated with himself, he would have been virtually useless to do anything else.

This time, whatever self-recriminations Nardi had, he kept them inside and in check. The senior shook off the bad pass and, as Texas threatened in the final 2 minutes, there was Nardi skying twice for defensive rebounds, all but rendering the Longhorns' threat obsolete.

When Randy Foye graduated, he took his 1,966 points to the NBA, as well as the Wildcats' identity. He personified Wright's vision of his Villanova teams - a scrappy, rough-and-tumble bunch that doesn't allow height and weight to dictate how they play.

If anyone was going to fill that void this season, it would be Nardi. Curtis Sumpter might be the team's best player, but as television analyst Bill Raftery rightly noted on a recent broadcast, Nardi is the heart and soul.

But to become the epicenter, Nardi had to stop his lifelong pursuit of basketball perfection and instead just play. That he has largely explains why the Wildcats, who play tonight at 7:30 at Providence, are starting to resemble the type of team Wright demands.

"In the past, he was so high- strung and he put so much pressure on himself that if he wasn't making shots, it would just spiral," Wright said. "I've seen such a great maturity in him this year. We feed off Mike, and that's why it was so important for him to mature and not have those emotional ups and downs. He's been just great.''

Though they are the best of his career, it's not the numbers - 14 points a game, 4.5 assists, 2.7 rebounds - that speak to the change in Nardi. It's the clapping. Where once a grimace would follow a missed jumper, now Nardi merely claps. So what if his palms are red; his teammates see no flickers of frustration in his face.

"They're looking at me," Nardi said. "If I look panicky or take a quick shot, they're going to think, 'Oh, my God, we have to start scrambling.' I try to keep the same attitude, because I know we need that confidence."

Long ago, Nardi figured out he never would be Sumpter, a lithe 6-7 forward blessed with jumping ability. He was going to be "the skinny white guy out there playing," the one every ordinary Joe could be.

"One of my coaches told me, 'You have to outwork everybody. You have to be in the gym all the time, you have to know the game really well and you have to be a great floor leader,' " Nardi said.

He made that message his mantra. The thump of a basketball dribbling in the garage was the constant background noise in Sheila Surma's North Jersey home. If Nardi's St. Patrick's High School team practiced in the morning, Surma drove her son over early for extra shooting. If they practiced in the afternoon, she knew he'd stay late, and after dinner and homework, she got used to him dashing off to the gym yet again.

Admirable certainly, but such single-mindedness can be both a blessing and curse. The good shows itself at Villanova, where, thanks to Nardi, players who used to mess around after practice and call it extra work now stick around with a purpose. On game day, Allan Ray would force himself to make 200 shots before deeming himself ready to play. The ritual, done after walkthrough, would take Ray an extra hour.

Nardi gave him the idea.

"Randy and Allan were the kind of guys who would play 5-on-5 anywhere, any time, and Kyle [Lowry] was always in the gym, but what he was doing wasn't productive," Wright said. "Mike taught all three of those guys how to do practice to get better."

The flip side is that his drive for perfection grew almost to a debilitating obsession, where he equated every missed three-pointer with failure. Midway through last season, Nardi's numbers tumbled, dropping from 12 points over the first 19 games to 7.5 down the stretch, including a 4-for-25 effort in the NCAA Tournament and a scoreless outing against Boston College in the Sweet 16.

The vultures circled, questioning everything from Nardi's heart to his ability, cruel attacks for a player already tougher on himself than the harshest critic could be.

A midseason bout with tonsillitis that hospitalized him for a week and cost him 10 pounds, sapping much of his leg strength, was never mentioned, at least not by Nardi. Even now, he insists he was "fine" after he left the hospital, though his waiflike frame in March and the April 6 tonsillectomy would say otherwise.

"Michael is such a perfectionist at everything," Sheila Surma said. "Whether it's basketball, his attire, schoolwork, whatever it is, he wants it to be perfect. He was so critical in everything he did, because he thought he had to do his best or he wouldn't get to the next level. It was so hard for me. As a parent, you know it's eating him up inside."

Surma and her husband, Scott, tried to talk to Nardi about it, so did his coaches, friends and family.

"It's like trying to tell a smoker to stop smoking," Surma said. "They have to figure it out for themselves."

Last season's success will always loom heavily around this team, a sometimes-stifling presence impossible to live up to. When Villanova lost to Syracuse on Jan. 13, more than a few people pointed out that, less than 2 weeks into the Big East, these Wildcats had as many losses as last year's 28-5, Elite Eight squad did all season.

Wright has reminded his players repeatedly that they must run their own race.

"I worry that they feel the pressure of living up to those guys," Wright said. "That team won more games than anyone in school history. We could win a national championship and not have the same year. I don't want them to feel like, because it's not like last year, they must not be doing the job. They are doing the job, but they're doing it their way. I think Mike really understands that."

Realizing that this team mostly needed guidance and stability, Nardi has stopped using statistics to value his worth. Outsiders will judge his final season at Villanova by whether he keeps the string of NCAA Tournament appearances going.

He won't judge it that way.

"I think it's important to not even worry about the tournament, but to play hard and never give up," he said. "That's what I want my legacy to be. I want people to say that when Mike Nardi was here, they played every game hard, whether they won or lost." *