DETROIT — They had a parade and pep rally in Herndon, Va., this week. Scottie Reynolds, Herndon’s favorite son, has gone down in college basketball lore along with Danny Ainge, Tyus Edney, Keith Smart and Mario Chalmers.
Villanova’s hero appreciates home. The man whose last-second shot beat Pittsburgh last Saturday and shot the Wildcats into tonight’s Final Four didn’t even have a college home late in his senior year in high school.
Yet this month he has two goals: win a national championship for a school he once didn’t want and reunite with a mother who once didn’t want him.
But life for the junior guard changed a while back, and it changed forever when his driving, twisting layup over Pitt guard Gilbert Brown gave third-seeded Villanova a 78-76 win.
“It’s been unbelievable,” Reynolds said at a news conference Friday leading up to tonight’s 6:47 MDT game with top-seeded North Carolina. “Everywhere I go, that’s the only thing anybody talks about.”
If events had fallen Reynolds’ way, they might have been talking about him even more around the Big 12. The 2006 Virginia player of the year and McDonald’s All-American at Herndon High School had committed to Kelvin Sampson and Oklahoma the year before.
When Sampson bolted after the 2006 season for Indiana, Reynolds wanted to go with him. It didn’t work.
“I was definitely thinking about going to Indiana, and some of the recruits that were already going to Oklahoma actually were thinking about going as well,” Reynolds said. “It just didn’t happen that way. Losing your coach, losing a lot of things that you put into the recruiting process and bringing guys to Oklahoma, it was definitely tough.”
Sampson had his own plans. Reynolds didn’t have one. However, Herndon coach Gary Hall called his good friend at Villanova, Jay Wright. The coach had fallen in love with Reynolds while scouting Chris Wright, now at Georgetown, at the Nike Peach Jam Invitational. Hall called and asked Jay Wright if he’d be interested in a five-star recruit. Wright said, sure, but he’s going to Oklahoma.
Not anymore.
The relationship with Villanova didn’t start well. Reynolds showed up on campus sight unseen and felt like an American in a foreign country. The roster was filled with Philadelphians and New Yorkers.
“I understand where he’s coming from,” said sophomore forward Antonio Peña, a Brooklyn native and Reynolds’ best friend. “New York players like to showboat. Virginia players are more about getting the job done. He wasn’t used to playing with the pace of our players.”
Reynolds became a loner. He stayed in his dorm room much of his freshman year. He got into fights. Even when he averaged 14.8 points as a freshman and was Big East rookie of the year, he didn’t open up.
Tired of running up a major phone bill talking to Hall, Reynolds turned to a closer source of security: Jay Wright. He opened his soul and Wright made him feel more welcome with the cool, kind demeanor that shows on the sidelines.
“He had a great relationship with his high school coach,” Wright told The Boston Globe. “When you recruit somebody and he tells you, ‘The guy I’m listening to is my high school coach,’ you think right away, ‘OK, this guy’s got a lot of people in his ear and he’s choosing his coach.’
“That’s a guy you want.”
Reynolds blossomed last year to 15.9 points and this season is at 15.2, though he shoots only 40 percent. More important, he has gone from wallflower to team leader. He’ll likely be the one assigned to stop Ty Lawson from racing the Tar Heels into their transition game.
Reynolds has another goal this month. He wants to meet the mother who gave him up to an Alabama adoption agency when he was born. She was 18 and already taking care of her grandmother.
The father didn’t stick around. Reynolds understood her choice, and, after all, it turned out well for him. His adoptive parents, Pam and Rick Reynolds, moved to Chicago, then to Herndon in the Washington suburbs.
Still, when he turned 19, Reynolds was able to look up his birth mother’s file in the adoption agency. However, it was a closed adoption. An investigator he hired found her and gave him the information.
She just doesn’t know it yet.
“I know how to contact her if I need to,” Reynolds said. “She’s got some things going on. I’ve had things going on.”
Like playing the top team in the land in the biggest game of his life. In his dream, Reynolds knows exactly where to meet his birth mom: in Herndon, his home, in another parade.
John Henderson: 303-954-1299 or jhenderson@denverpost.com
