Nova Lifts City With Championship

PHILADELPHIA – The best feeling in the world finally came to fruition as mesmerized faithful cheered louder than your favorite fan.

The Villanova Wildcats win the championship for the first time since 1985 and paraded down Market Street in Philly, the culmination of a 77-74 walk-off game-winner thanks to hero forward Kris Jenkins.

Philadelphia is the best sports city in the world, and that means a championship was well deserved. It was well-deserved mainly because the city has been in a drought of championships for quite some time.

Say what you will that Villanova doesn’t represent Philly, but that sentiment is just wrong all the way around, especially for folks that live and work in Radnor Township, who know that a trip from the township to the city is only a hop, skip and a jump away.

The icing on the cake: the parade was on Market Street in Center City! That says it all.

There are a lot of haters out there who say that Villanova only represents people who went to Villanova.

Well, that’s just stupid. Philadelphians root for all Big 5 teams, which are La Salle, Temple, St. Joe’s, Penn and of course Villanova, unless you went to one of those schools.

Anybody who knows anything about the city knows that its followers fuel off of territory. When somebody wins from Philly or from the nearby suburbs, it’s a big situation.

Philadelphia fans are a passionate bunch of people who really know their sports. It’s not right for people from the area who interchange their teams to say that other fans from Philly can’t be happy that a local team actually won it all.

There are many fans from South Jersey, Philly and the Tri-State area who choose other teams because Philly teams have disappointed them in the past. That’s weak!

Their retaliation is to make those passionate fans feel bad, which makes this championship that much sweeter.

For the fans brought up in the Philadelphia sports culture, the ones who were molded by entrenched brotherly love roots, the ones who are engulfed in the happenings of the city no matter where he or she is in the nation, this championship is for you—middle finger to the haters.

Again, these championships in Philly do not grow on trees. The last championships in Philly in the last 30 years before the sacred Villanova win: 2008 Phillies, 1983 Sixers, 1980 Phillies. Need I say more?

#Basketball #NCAA #Sports #VillanovaWildcats