Fans of college basketball teams come and go, but a few stay loyal forever.

In the past 15 years, Summit Hill's Dave McAndrew has driven three hours round trip to Philadelphia over 140 times to watch Villanova home basketball games.Bill Poluka, formerly of Nesquehoning and Tamaqua, started rooting for the Blue and White in 1967 at the age of eight.Both fans recently returned from their bucket list trip to Houston, Texas where they witnessed their Wildcats crush Oklahoma and then go on to defeat North Carolina on a last-second shot to win the NCAA National Championship.McAndrew, like Poluka, began following Villanova basketball when he was eight. His father took him to see them play at the Palestra in Philadelphia."I was raised a Catholic and Villanova is a Catholic university so there was an early connection for me," said McAndrew, who is a living Wildcat history book and recalls many of the basketball's program's records and statistics.Through the last 54 years, the long time season ticket holder has seen great players like Howard Porter, Rory Sparrow, Kerry Kittles and Eddie Pinkney lead the Wildcats to outstanding seasons."I sit three rows behind the bench, so close to the game I can smell the sweat," McAndrew added with a laugh. "I often take my sons, David and Daniel, and my daughter, Shannon with me."He sits behind head coach Jay Wright's wife and regularly talks to her about the games. He knows Rollie Massimino, who coached Villanova to its first national championship in 1985, a victory over Georgetown that McAndrew calls the greatest tournament championship game upset ever."It was when David slew Goliath," he remarked.He can tell you that in the past three years, Villanova's record is 98-12, which no college in this country can match. He's been on Wright's, "Inside Villanova Basketball" team program twice.The retired teacher and former basketball coach at Panther Valley, Jim Thorpe, and Marian has traveled to three Caribbean islands, as well as to Florida and California, to watch his team play in preseason tournaments at Thanksgiving time.Poluka started watching the Wildcats on WPHL TV and now records every game he can when he can't watch them live. His initial interest wasn't grounded by anything in particular."I didn't go to school there. When I was little, my dad took me to a couple games a year when Jack Kraft was the coach. I still read every game's recap in the papers when I can't get to games." He paused to add. "It's just something about them that I have always liked."Poluka does not name a favorite player, but he loves coach Massimino."I guess it's an Italian connection thing," he said with a chuckle.Both McAndrew and Poluka have known each other for years, but their roads to this year's Final Four in Houston were quite different.Within three minutes after the Cats beat Kansas in the Elite Eight, McAndrew booked a flight and hotel for him and his two sons."We got lucky," he said. "Twenty-four hours after we purchased at a good price, the cost of airline tickets went up 500 percent."On the morning of the win over Kansas, Poluka kiddingly said to Tommy Strohl, a friend who's never seen a Division I college basketball game in person, "if they win, you want to go to Houston with me?" Strohl said yes. Following the Villanova win, Poluka acted on his thought from earlier that morning. An airline flight, hotel reservations, and the all-important Final Four game tickets quickly followed.The McAndrews stayed in the same hotel as the team did. On the day before the championship game, and after Villanova defeated Oklahoma in the semifinals by the widest margin in tournament history, the father and sons saw Wildcat player Kris Jenkins in the hotel lobby. In the title game, with merely a second left to play and the score tied against North Carolina, Jenkins would nail a three-point shot to win the title for Villanova."We got pictures with him, but that's not the best part of the story," said McAndrew. "We told him that he would hit the biggest shot in the game and would remember it for the rest of his life."Jenkins just smiled. But the McAndrews' prediction proved prophetic as Jenkins shot ended what many are calling the greatest championship basketball game ever played.Both McAndrew and Poluka said it's hard to put into words what it's like to watch a game of such magnitude with 73,000 fans."We knew for sure that there were hundreds of other fans from our region at the games too," said McAndrew. "They came from Lehighton, Pottsville, Tamaqua and Lansford to root for the Wildcats."Poluka, who watched the event with Strohl, had trouble controlling his emotions right from the tip-off."I thought if we played well and lost, I could live with that," said Poluka. But even when we went up by 10 points with six minutes to go, I was very nervous.""I sat in awe after we crushed Oklahoma," said McAndrew, "but I didn't know I was yet to watch the greatest game ever played, and in my opinion, North Carolina was up against the best defensive team we have ever had at Villanova."In the final second of the championship game, North Carolina's Marcus Paige hit a double clutch, off balance three-pointer to tie the score setting up the dramatic game-ender by Jenkins."Oh my God!" Poluka said, when he saw Paige's incredible shot to tie the game. "I still thought there'd be no overtime. I expected we'd get off a good shot and when it went in, I jumped up and started to cry. Next to my kids being born, it was the greatest feeling in the world.""It was a punch right into my stomach," said McAndrew, referring to the basket by Paige."Then when Jenkins took his shot, I wasn't sure at first if it beat the buzzer, but when I looked up, all this confetti was falling down on my face and I knew it was good."McAndrew and Poluka celebrated their team's championship at after-game parties."It was wonderful to enjoy this life long dream with my sons," said McAndrew. "Villanova coach Wright came to our hotel to make a speech. It was definitely a family high in sports for us.""About two o'clock in the morning, I stood up in the lobby of our hotel and led about 50 fans in singing the Villanova fight song," said Poluka. "A student came up to thank me because she wanted to do that all night long."Dave McAndrew and Bill Poluka have been fans through Villanova's two national championships that were won 31 years apart.So what happens next?"For now, I'm going to enjoy the fact my team is a champion, and they won the right way," said McAndrew. "They beat a school 20 times bigger than theirs. Villanova basketball has a 100 percent graduation rate, and I can root for their players for four straight years unlike a Kentucky team where the kids play one year and go pro.""They're going to be good again next year," said Poluka. "But right now, I'm going to keep watching my recording of the greatest game ever played."