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Let’s March, Nova Fans!

By AJ Balinski

Courtesy of Villanova University Archives

 

Courtesy of Villanova Athletics

All Wildcats know basketball is a big deal on Villanova’s campus–students go all out to support both the men’s and women’s teams, whether at “The Finn” or their downtown home, the Wells Fargo Center. Above, we flash back to the legendary 1985 team, which met President Ronald Reagan after winning the championship, and to Shelly Pennefather ’87, a standout player and now a cloistered nun known as Sister Rose Marie of the Queen of Angels.

This year, both the men’s and women’s basketball teams will be facing off against Virginia Commonwealth University in the National Invitation Tournament and the Women’s Basketball Invitation Tournament, respectively. Villanova has only played VCU once before, with the men’s team sprinting to a win by more than 20 points and the women’s team narrowly losing by two.

On campus, the men’s team hosts VCU Wednesday, March 20, at 9 p.m., and the women’s team follows Thursday, March 21, at 7 p.m.

Check out some of our favorite Villanova basketball memories from past tournaments and keep those V’s high as Villanova looks to advance!

 


AJ Balinski ’26 CLAS is a Communication major from Gibraltar, Mich. She works as a Communication & Marketing Student Assistant at Falvey Library.

 

 


 


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Foto Friday: Sweet 16 Sendoff


Good luck to the (#4) Villanova Women’s Basketball team as they take on the (#9) University of Miami today at 2:30 p.m. Tune into ESPN to watch! #MarchMadness #LetsMarchNova #Sweet16 #FotoFriday


Kallie Stahl ’17 MA is Communication & Marketing Specialist at Falvey Library. Photos by Joanne Quinn, Director of Communication & Marketing at Falvey Library.

 

 


 


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Photo Friday: And Then There Were Four

On Wednesday, March 30, the Villanova community sent the Wildcats off to the Final Four in New Orleans. Good luck to the Villanova Men’s Basketball team as they take on the Kansas Jayhawks on Saturday, April 2, at 6:09 p.m. Go, ‘Cats—Nova Nation is behind you!


Kallie Stahl ’17 MA is Communication and Marketing Specialist at Falvey Memorial Library. Photos courtesy of Joanne Quinn, Director of Communication and Marketing at Falvey Memorial Library.

 


 


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TBT: Final Four

By Anna Jankowski

This Saturday at 6:10pm, the Wildcats will face the Jayhawks in the first Final Four game of the NCAA tournament. Campus is abuzz with excitement and Villanova team spirit! Check out this pin from the 1985 NCAA tournament when the Wildcats made an appearance in the Final Four. That year, the team went on to win the Championship. We are wishing our Men’s Basketball Team the best of luck this weekend as they attempt to bring home another trophy!


Anna Jankowski ’23 CLAS is a Junior Communication Major from just outside Baltimore who ​​works as a Communication & Marketing Assistant in Falvey.


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Weekend Recs: Women’s History Month

By Jenna Renaud

Happy Friday, Wildcats! Falvey Memorial Library is delivering you another semester of Weekend Recs, a blog dedicated to filling you in on what to read, listen to, and watch over the weekend. Jenna, a graduate assistant from the Communication department, scours the internet, peruses the news, and digs through book stacks to find new, relevant, and thought-provoking content that will challenge you and prepare you for the upcoming week. 

As the month of March wraps up, so does Women’s History Month! This week we are spotlighting a variety of news articles, websites, videos, and more that celebrate women. Whether you have three minutes or  three hours, there’s a recommendation for you. Missing a recommendation or want to celebrate the accomplishments of a women in your life? Find us on Instagram (@villanovalibrary) or Twitter (@FalveyLibrary) and leave us a comment.  

If you have 3 minutes… scroll through this timeline celebrating the accomplishments of rule-breaking women from 2013 to 2022. 

If you have 5 minutes… take some time to learn about the gender pay gap with this comprehensive guide from The Skimm. 

If you have 6 minutes… read about how last month the U.S. national women’s soccer team settled in the equal pay dispute. 

If you have 2 hours and 15 minutes… watch one of my favorite movies, Little Women, directed by Greta Gerwig. 

If you have the weekend… watch some of the NCAA women’s basketball tournament. Villanova’s women team may not be there, but that doesn’t prevent you from putting a bracket together and watching some games with friends and family. Find the full weekend schedule here. 


Jenna Renaud is a Graduate Assistant in Falvey Memorial Library and a Graduate Student in the Communication Department.

 


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Weekend Recs: March Madness

By Jenna Renaud

Happy Friday, Wildcats! Falvey Memorial Library is delivering you another semester of Weekend Recs, a blog dedicated to filling you in on what to read, listen to, and watch over the weekend. Jenna, a graduate assistant from the Communication department, scours the internet, peruses the news, and digs through book stacks to find new, relevant, and thought-provoking content that will challenge you and prepare you for the upcoming week. 

We are mere days away from Selection Sunday and anticipation grows as March Madness teams are selected and the tournament commences. To help you prepare and get excited, I’ve compiled recommendations you can dive into over the weekend from a 5-minute article to a link to the Villanova archives, where you can spend hours looking at old Villanova basketball photos and more! Enjoy and go, Wildcats! 

If you have 5 minutes… keep up with Villanova Bracket Watch as we inch closer and closer to Selection Sunday. See how the rules of the tournament and where all the teams stand now may impact Villanova moving forward.  

If you have 14 minutes… read this article with predictions on which 68 teams will make it into the 2022 NCAA tournament.   

If you have 33 minutes… listen to the March Madness 365 podcast hosted by college basketball analyst and correspondent Andy Katz. Each week he breaks down the biggest news in men’s college basketball and makes his predictions.  

If you have 1 hour… watch Perfect Upset: Villanova vs. Georgetown, the 2005 sports documentary about the Villanova Wildcats’ shocking win against the heavily favored Georgetown Hoyas in the 1985 NCAA Division I Men’s Basketball Championship. 

If you have an afternoon… spend some time digging through the Villanova Digital Collection and their collection of Villanova basketball items. The archives include everything from images and media guides to tickets and more! 


Jenna Renaud is a Graduate Assistant in Falvey Memorial Library and a Graduate Student in the Communication Department.


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TBT: Villanova Basketball

We may not be able to be in the stands this basketball season, but that doesn’t mean we can’t show our Wildcat Pride and cheer on our team! This week’s TBT takes us back to a photo inside the Villanova Field House in the 1970s during a basketball game. This photograph comes from the University Archives and can be found in Villanova’s digital collection.


Jenna Newman is a graduate assistant in Falvey Memorial Library and a graduate student in the Communication Department.


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Foto Friday: Gameday Swag and Snacks

Shawn Proctor, Communication and Marketing Program Manager, and Kallie Stahl, Communication and Marketing Specialist

Happy Friday, Wildcats! Thank you for your commitment to the Slow the Spread directive and for putting our community first. Shawn Proctor, Communication and Marketing Program Manager, and Kallie Stahl, Communication and Marketing Specialist, had a fun time distributing game day swag and snacks during the “Game Watch @ Home” last Saturday, Feb. 13. Many thanks to all the students who stopped by and best of luck to the Villanova Men’s Basketball Team as they take on UConn this Saturday. Let’s Go, Nova!


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100 Seasons of Villanova Basketball Now Available in the Digital Library

By Rebecca Oviedo

This past year, in celebration of Villanova’s 100 seasons of men’s basketball, and in partnership with the Department of Athletics’ External Operations Unit, Falvey Memorial Library’s Distinctive Collections & Digital Engagement has added a significant contribution of basketball-related images and content to the Villanova Digital Library. The items from University Archives include nearly 400 photographs and negatives, and more than 60 additional items, such as media guides, schedules, tickets, and scorebooks.

Since 1920, Villanova Basketball has produced three NCAA national championships and a rich history of outstanding players and coaches. Search and view images of such iconic Wildcats and future NBA stars as Paul Arizin, Larry Hennessy, Bob Schafer, and George Raveling under coach Alex Severance; Wali Jones, Hubie White, Jim Washington, Bill Melchionni, Howard Porter, Chris Ford and Tom Ingelsby from the Jack Kraft era; and, of course, selected images from Rollie Massimino’s 1985 NCAA championship team. One of the most photographed: legendary longtime athletic trainer John “Jake” Nevin.

Negative, Basketball (Jake Nevin/ Trainer and Howard Porter), 1970.

The process to convert these analog materials to a digital environment involved many hands and multiple steps.

The work began last summer, with the help of Erik Sherwood, Laura Davis, and Jessica Leventry, three Penn State students participating in the Villanova Athletic Department summer internship program with Assistant Athletic Director/Marketing Jacob Whitten’s team. The students spent two weeks in University Archives transcribing data from University Negatives Collection envelopes housing the negatives and entering the information into a spreadsheet to be incorporated into University Archives and Digital Library databases. They recorded such metadata as box and folder numbers, names, dates, subject headings, and descriptions for each negative.

Laura Davis carefully examines a negative.

Villanova College Basketball Facts, 30th Season, 1949-1950.

In September of the fall semester, several undergraduate Collections & Stewardship Technicians began scanning the items using the library’s Indus Color Book Scanner and a recently added Epson 12000XL Photo Scanner. These students, trained in appropriate collections care and proper handling techniques for rare materials, included Bernadette Goratowski, Martin Han, Courtney Schultz, and Erin Warren. After scanning materials, the students performed several post-processing steps, including rotating, cropping, and tonal adjustment of the digital images. They logged and tracked their work in the same spreadsheet started by the summer interns. Images were then uploaded to a library server to await further description and metadata by Distinctive Collections staff.

Items were scanned through March 2020, when campus was closed due to the growing threat of the COVID-19 pandemic, and sadly the remainder of Villanova’s 100th season of basketball was cancelled. As much of the world’s workforce transitioned online, I continued my work of describing and entering metadata, now from home, a task that surely could not have been completed had it not been for the careful work of our student employees and interns this past year.

Some images still require additional identification and description. I tried to identify players and add subject headings as best I could, and the media guides proved invaluable for this. If you can identify or date any images lacking this information, please email archives@villanova.edu. We have scanned selected images from the University Negatives Collection through 1974, and there are still several hundred images that have not yet been digitized. The collection spans the 1930s to 1985. If you have a favorite past player, let us know by email or in the comments below.


Rebecca Oviedo is Distinctive Collections Librarian Archivist at Falvey Memorial Library.

 

 

 


 


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Throwback Thursday: “That Tailgate Touch”

By Kelly McMahon

picture of students tailgating

Tailgating the Villanova vs. Creighton game this weekend? Get some inspiration from the 1985-1986 edition of the Belle Air and the article, “Partying with that Tailgate Touch.”

Before 1985, students tailgated before football games in the Lancaster parking lot (formerly known as Main Parking Lot before it was transformed into The Commons) with “cars, RV’s (sic), boats, and other assorted vehicles.” After the University created a tailgating policy that prohibited festivities from the parking lots, Villanovans gathered on Sheehan Beach for every home game.

The yearbook published some of the students’ memories of the tailgates, including “I can’t remember,” “I’m not sure but I think I had a good time,” and “I don’t know; is it 1:30 yet?”

 


Kelly McMahon CLAS ’22 is a student assistant in the Communication and Marketing department at Falvey. Like the students in the picture above, she will be tailgating this Saturday for the Villanova vs. Creighton game.

 

 

 

 


 


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Last Modified: January 30, 2020

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