Skip to content
Link copied to clipboard

Ex-'Cat Nardi on why '05-06 club didn't get this far

JAY WRIGHT'S most talented team was unquestionably the 2005-06 edition. Randy Foye and Kyle Lowry were first-round picks that summer. Lowry, with Toronto, started in the NBA All-Star Game. Foye comes off the bench in Oklahoma City. Allan Ray (2,025 points) actually outscored his classmate Foye in college by 59 points. Will Sheridan, Jason Fraser, Dante Cunningham and Shane Clark battled opponents' bigs. And Mike Nardi was a critical piece for the devastating four-guard lineup.

JAY WRIGHT'S most talented team was unquestionably the 2005-06 edition. Randy Foye and Kyle Lowry were first-round picks that summer. Lowry, with Toronto, started in the NBA All-Star Game. Foye comes off the bench in Oklahoma City. Allan Ray (2,025 points) actually outscored his classmate Foye in college by 59 points. Will Sheridan, Jason Fraser, Dante Cunningham and Shane Clark battled opponents' bigs. And Mike Nardi was a critical piece for the devastating four-guard lineup.

After playing professionally for eight seasons in Italy, Nardi is in his first season on Wright's staff as the director of student-athlete development. After Villanova beat Miami on Thursday night in Louisville, Nardi was asked about his team from 10 years ago that fell a game shy of the Final Four and this team that would make the Final Four two nights later by beating Kansas.

"We've done a great job all year of just sticking together, trying to be consistent, trying to do it every night," Nardi said of this group. "We are flourishing at the right time . . . They're all connected."

Those 2005-06 Wildcats lost, 75-62, to Florida in the regional final, catching a young, big, athletic Gators team filled with NBA lottery picks that was just hitting its best stride on the way to consecutive national titles. Guard minutes are the hardest minutes and those Wildcats, who finished 28-5, were really tiring at the end of that season, scoring just 54, 58, 60 points in three of its four games before Florida. They shot 18-for-73 and 4-for-23 against the formidable Gators.

"We ran out of gas," Nardi said. "We met our match with Florida. We couldn't hang our heads. We went down fighting."

Ten years later, Mike Nardi is going to the Final Four, with a great seat on the bench of a team that has definitely not run out of gas.

"For myself, not being able to do it as a player, for my first year as a coach it would mean the world to me," he said of a possible Final Four, "but I'm just extremely happy for these guys because they've put in the work. They're doing it for each other and it's special to watch."

@DickJerardi