June 28, 2005
The Nova Notebook, by Villanova director of media relations Mike Sheridan, appears each week beginning in the fall and continues through the basketball regular season. In April through August, there are monthly entries. In the June edition we visit with guard Allan Ray.
As Allan Ray waits to cross Ithan Avenue on an idyllic early summer afternoon, a car pulls over and the driver shouts a question at Villanova's top scorer in 2004-05. The native of the Bronx, N.Y., politely answers the inquiry, smiles, and the driver pulls away.
In the last three months Ray has grown accustomed to being approached by total strangers eager to speak with him. This conversation was one of the few instances where the topic did not involve the whistle heard round Villanova, a traveling violation called against Ray that wiped out a basket in the final, frantic moments of the Wildcats 67-66 loss to eventual champion North Carolina in the NCAA Sweet 16.
"It seems like every time I go somewhere, people talk about it," Ray states. "They'll come up to me and say something like, `that wasn't a travel.' Everybody has something to say about it. There's not much I can say.
"It definitely is hard to think about. But we never would have been in that position in the first place if we had made a couple of big plays earlier in that game."
If Ray chose to fixate on what failed to fall into place that night and over the course of three NCAA Tournament contests, it could make for a dreary off-season. After leading the Wildcats in scoring throughout 2004-05, the 6-2 guard became priority one on the defensive game plan in the scouting reports of opposing coaching staffs. Everywhere this marksman went, defenders waited. As a result, Ray endured an uneven NCAA Tournament ride even before the fateful moment at Syracuse's Carrier Dome.
Yet Ray is able to view the whole of his junior season as a positive step forward without being dragged down by one of its final plays.
"I don't really look back at it a lot," he says. "It was tough when it happened. We wanted to win so badly and we did a lot of good things. It just didn't happen for us.
"I would like to have shot the ball better and contributed more points in the tournament. But I feel like I did some other things out there to help our team, on defense, rebounding and by just playing hard. It felt good to be a part of the team that finally came through for the Villanova fans."
As he sat on a wall near the main entrance to campus, Ray could reflect on what took place in the last 12 months with a sense of pride. As a junior he was named second team All-Big East and first team All-Philadelphia Big Five. He has already amassed 1,434 points and, with a strong finish, could become only the seventh player in Villanova history to score 2,000 points in his career.
More importantly, Villanova enjoyed its best campaign in more than a decade (24-8) and advanced to the Sweet 16 for the first time in 17 years.
"I think it was a great accomplishment," Ray says of the team's worksheet. "Randy (Foye), Curtis (Sumpter) and Jason (Fraser) and I came in as a heralded recruiting class. It took us some time to get this going the way we wanted it to, but it was just a great feeling to see it come together.
"As a freshman and sophomore, you know you have some time left. We felt some urgency last year and it helped us. Everyone bought in to what Coach (Jay) Wright was saying and understood what was needed."
Ray shared the captain's duties with Foye and Sumpter and the trio offered wisdom in the ways of Wright's system that wasn't available to them as young players.
"It was kind of hard for us in the beginning," Ray says of 2002-03 and 2003-04. "Coach Wright was still new to Villanova and there really wasn't anyone here who had been in his system for very long. Even though we had upperclassmen like Ricky (Wright), Gary (Buchanan) and Andrew (Sullivan) willing to help, they didn't have much more experience with this than we did as freshmen.
"But as we became juniors we understood what Coach wants from us and we tried to let the young guys see that. We had a bunch of good guys who were willing to listen."
The good news at Villanova is that Ray and virtually every one of his friends are back. The Wildcats return 99.9 percent of their scoring and 99.8 percent of their 2004-05 rebounding. Only walk-on Tom Grace won't return and a promising cast of four newcomers will be on hand to supplement the veterans.
Of course, two members of the "Foundation Foursome" are spending their summer rehabilitating surgically repaired knees. Neither Fraser - who sports a cast on his right hand too - nor Sumpter can do much more than watch their pals work on their games as they concentrate on healing from spring surgeries.
The pain of inactivity is something Ray knows all too well - he missed most of his senior season at St. Raymond's High School with a stress fracture in his foot.
"It's definitely tough," Ray says of his friends' predicament. "Watching your teammates play when you are hurt eats at you. At least Jason is used to it. I think it's a little harder on Curt right now because he hasn't been through this before. You wonder about how long it will take you to get back and you just miss playing. I just try to help them stay positive and keep their spirits up."< p> For his part, Ray is gearing up for what promises to be a challenging month of July. Last week, it was announced he is one of 22 collegians invited to the USA Basketball 21 and Under Trials next month. Ray will compete for a chance to become the second `Cat in as many summers to be a part of Team USA's 21and Under squad (Sumpter won a gold medal with that unit last August in Nova Scotia).
"It's a great opportunity," says Ray. "Some of the best players in the country will be there and the competition will be tough. I'm just going to go out to play as hard as I can."
That's the agenda for the short-term. The longer term focus is on 2005-06 and the promise it holds for Ray and his teammates.
"I can't wait for next season to get here," he says. "I know how hard everyone is working this summer. When you get close like we did last year, you really want to make sure you do everything you can to be ready for next year."
Ray hopes one day soon that the final shot of his junior season will be only a footnote in the biography of one of Villanova's most productive guards...
Fox on Foye: Philadelphia's Fox 29 television last week traveled to Newark, N.J. as part of a planned feature on Foye. A crew spent the afternoon with Foye in his hometown. The segment is tentatively scheduled to air on Sunday night, July 3, as part of the expanded sports package on the Ten O'Clock News.
