FanHouse Jay Wright

NEW YORK -- Whether it was Villanova's Final Four trip last season or his bench demeanor, Wildcats coach Jay Wright has made a big impression on a majority of the Big East players.

Wright was the top vote-getter in FanHouse's poll of the league's players asking which coach, other than their own, they would like to play for. Wright, who received 29.7 percent of the votes, edged Syracuse's Jim Boeheim, with 24.3 percent.

Two weeks ago at the Big East's media day, FanHouse polled 37 players representing all 16 schools that attended Madison Square Garden on a variety of subjects. The players were guaranteed anonymity for their responses with only one stipulation: they could not vote for their coach, a teammate or their school in any of the categories.

While the players voted for Wright as the coach they would like to play for, Seton Hall's Bobby Gonzalez (24.3 percent) edged UConn's Jim Calhoun (21.6 percent) as the "opposing coach that screams the most."

In an effort to talk about something college basketball-related other than scandals in the summer, let's talk best current coaches. We'll attempt to order the top 25 current coaches in the nation. This is about the present and the future, not the distant past. What a guy did in the mid-90s doesn't matter near as much as the direction his program is currently headed. Past pedigree also matters, to an extent. For the perfect mix of past accomplishments with present achievement and a paved road for future success, look no further than the man atop the list.

PHILADELPHIA -- Dante Cunningham pays attention. He watches basketball. He knows who the good players are, the ones getting all the attention. He's well aware of what North Carolina's Ty Lawson has been doing -- ACC Player of the Year, front-runner (so far) for NCAA tournament most outstanding player. Cunningham is impressed. But he's not scared.

He's been watching Ty Lawson play his whole life.

"As a friend, I'm proud of him for what he's doing," Cunningham said of Lawson on Wednesday, at Villanova's final practice before departing for Detroit and the Final Four. "But as a competitor, I have to sit and understand that he has gotten better. I mean, obviously. He's one of the better players in the country. And we're going to need a great game plan to contain him."

PHILADELPHIA -- Detroit's Ford Field is the place where Villanova's NCAA tournament ended last year, with a Sweet 16 loss to eventual champion Kansas. The site of this year's Final Four, it's the place where the Wildcats' 2009 tournament will end as well. This time, they're hoping they can win a couple of games before that happens.

This time, they think they'll be better prepared for the unique challenge of playing a basketball game in a converted indoor football stadium -- in particular the unusually long walk from the locker room and a raised floor that apparently shakes a bit when you play on it.

Take everything you think you know about this Final Four and toss it in the waste bin with the scrap paper that was once your brackets. The brackets that had Pittsburgh meeting Louisville for the national title. The brackets that were oh so certain Michigan State of the overrated Big Ten would, exactly like IKEA furniture, collapse after one week. The brackets that said Wake Forest was underrated and Arizona's bid was a career achievement award.

Forget it all, because like your brackets, this Final Four will be all about what you didn't know.

BOSTON -- If you felt a shiver or tingle Saturday night, a quaking in your solar plexus, it's because you witnessed an epic basketball game, one of the virtuoso classics of March or any month. I mean, did Bill Raftery need oxygen afterward? This was destined to finish with the boldest, loudest exclamation point possible, given the 15 lead changes, palpable tension and Big East-style physicality in the building.

It was just a matter of who, what and when.

And then, in a magnificent flash, it happened. That the moment would belong to Scottie Reynolds, the embattled Villanova guard, made it grander. In enemy gyms, jerky kids with no lives actually chant, "Scottie doesn't know," which might be intended as a Euro Trip reference but almost certainly is meant as a savage reference to how Reynolds was put up for adoption as a baby by an 18-year-old single mother. He never has met the woman, although, with the urging of his adoptive parents, he has done investigative work and figured out who she is. He's waiting for a good time to call her.

BOSTON -- Tubby Smith is much too dignified to laugh out loud, or LOL in the text-message age. But for all the abuse he took at Kentucky during a decade that was absolutely dreadful -- a national championship, a 263-83 record, an NCAA tournament appearance every season, just horrendous stuff -- who could blame him if he wanted to giggle to himself Friday?

Seems the bluegrass has turned to fertilizer in Lexington.

Duke coach Mike Krzyzewski's voice wavered as he spoke of his admiration for his team, his voice heavy with the weight of another early goodbye. To his left, Gerald Henderson wiped both of his hands across his face as if he was trying to push away the whole forgettable night. Next to Henderson, Lance Thomas sat stone-faced.

Each of them looked like they just ran a marathon, only to finish with 10 rounds in the ring and come up losers in both.

BOSTON -- He looks like a chew toy, or something out of a puppet show. His dreads flop over a headband that would stand out more prominently if not for a midsection best described as doughy. His name is Levance Fields, and sometimes, he'll drive you to exasperation with reckless dribbling into traffic and corkscrew jumpshots heaved for no apparent purpose or reason.