PHILADELPHIA -- Thin as whips. Sharp and quick as whips, too. They leave scars, Kerry Kittles and Lawrence Moten, nasty painful scars.
Kittles and Moten are plotting, they must be, plotting as they stand face-to-face, plotting when they're going to twist some poor defender into knots and leave another caught in a pick. It's their way, Kittles and Moten.
Kittles, the guard from Villanova, and Moten, the guard from Syracuse, weaving, slipping through holes, popping up at the unlikeliest places, so much alike, so hard to tell apart.
Moten has a little more hair, a big tattoo on his arm and both socks high up to the knees. Kittles wears one sock knee high, one not. So that was it. Watch the socks, look for the tattoo.
If you wanted to pick a winner Tuesday night in their personal battle, if you needed to say who was the better player, too bad. You couldn't pick.
Their coaches could, of course. Jim Boeheim, the sour-faced Syracuse coach, said: "If Lawrence Moten isn't the best player in the Big East, then I don't know anything about basketball."
More diplomatically, Villanova coach Steve Lappas said: "I'm prejudiced, but I think Kerry is the best all-around player in the league."
Moten, a 6-foot-5 senior, scored more points -- 36, including a lovely leaning layup with 34.9 seconds left in overtime, the last basket Syracuse would score in its 89-87 loss to Villanova at the Spectrum.
Moten passed Derrick Coleman last night as Syracuse's all-time leading scorer, and he needs just 12 more points to move past Terry Dehere as the Big East's all-time leading scorer.
Moten was scoring in the first half, when his teammates were more likely to hit the tuba than the basket, and he was scoring in the second half, when the Orangemen almost won the game in regulation.
Boeheim said that "we would have been down by 20 at halftime" without Moten. He was right.
But this doesn't mean Kittles wasn't wonderful. He was. Kittles, a 6-5 junior, is so smart and patient. He took his time in the first half, feeding his teammates, watching the ebb and flow. It was as if Kittles were a surfer, paddling around in the shallow water waiting to catch the big wave.
So Kittles didn't get his first basket until there were 3 minutes, 53 seconds left in the first half. But it was a big one, a swinging, twisting layup, and then the second was even bigger, a slam dunk that came after Kittles had cradled the ball down around his shoestrings, then, swoop, jammed it in. You could feel the wind whistle in Row 10.
Kittles ended up with 20 points, three steals and five assists. It was the last assist that was worth the most to watch. He was double-teamed, of course, as overtime ticked away, and with about nine seconds left Kittles knew not to force the shot.
He faked, split the double team, and, barely able to see over the defenders, found Chuck Kornegay alone under the basket. Kornegay's layup, the winner, came courtesy of Kittles.
Since Villanova lost its senior point guard and co-captain, Jonathan Haynes, five games ago, Kittles had averaged 24.5 points, 8.1 rebounds, 5.0 assists a game. He had shot 36 of 59 from the field and made a tidy nine baskets in each game.
It had taken some prodding to get Kittles going. He seems shy on the court, a wallflower uncomfortable with taking over. Then Lappas would grab Kittles by the hand or shoulder and yell at him. You're the guy, Lappas would say.
Kittles has a magical fadeaway jump shot and a first step that is race-car fast.
For a while Kittles and Moten traded baskets, traded fallaways, traded jump shots and steals and slams.
The scoring trade stopped a bit, but Kittles doesn't just score.
"I don't force things," Kittles says in a bare whisper. His voice is hoarse, he is coughing hard, and it turns out he played last night with bronchitis.
Kittles was complimentary about Moten, too. "He was making everything," Kittles said.
Moten was standing in another corner of the hallway now, and it was easier to tell Kittles and Moten apart. Kittles was smiling. Moten wasn't.