Scottie Reynolds made another pilgrimage last night to Verizon Center, a place that’s never been his own but one for which he reserves a special kind of reverence whenever he arrives in Chinatown to play basketball.
We’re not just talking the 16- and 24-point games he’s had for Villanova against Georgetown. Reynolds also famously was knocking down three-pointers over Gilbert Arenas a couple summers ago when he was practicing with the under U.S. team for the Pan-American Games. Okay, that was on the practice court.
But Reynolds took his worship to a new level against Maryland on Sunday, and it had nothing to do with his 25 points and 8 rebounds, both season highs, in the 95-86 Villanova victory. Grabbing a towel and getting down on his hands and knees, Reynolds helped wipe the floor after a fan had chucked his beer — from nearly the lower level suites, by the way, if the guy who got ejected was indeed the culprit — onto the court after Landon Milbourne was called for an offensive foul with 8:13 remaining and Villanova ahead, 72-63.
“I was just trying to get it going,” said Reynolds. “It wasn’t a big deal, but I saw that there were spots there, that the floor wasn’t clean. I just went down and cleaned it. I don’t think it was that big of a deal, but I just wanted to get the game going. I didn’t want my players just waiting around. I think that somebody else would’ve done it, too. I was just the first person to do it.”
Yeah, right. But neither Villanova head coach Jay Wright nor Maryland guard Eric Hayes — Reynolds’ former AAU teammate — were suprised.
“He’s a great player but he really is a great representative of our program and our university,” said Wright. “It’s not phony. It’s what he does all the time. He’s like the all-American boy and proud of it, and the guys respect him for it. He’s not an angel. He’s not perfect. But that was typical.”
“That’s what kind of guy he is,” said Hayes, who finally got a chance to play against his good friend, scoring a respectable 20 points himself. “He’s a great guy, and I wasn’t surprised at all that he went over and did that.”
But it’s only fitting that it would happen at a place that in many ways is the Herndon native’s basketball Mecca.
“It’s definitely special,” said Reynolds of his second win in three games in D.C. with the third-ranked Wildcats. “This is like my Madison Square Garden, if you will. But when you step on the court, it’s for the Villanova that you wear on your jersey. Its for the guys that you put on all that preparation for in the summer, and we know that, I know that, and that the guys know that around me. I just want to go out there and set an example that it wasn’t about me coming here and playing for the crowd. It was playing for my coaches and teammates.”
He’ll return one final time on Feb. 6 to face Georgetown.
