City of Basketball Love

Josh Verlin (@jmverlin)
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When Villanova’s basketball was introduced before a Big 5 matchup against Penn, in front of a crowd of 2,200 that seemed to consist almost entirely of students, Jake Nevin Field House got quite loud on Wednesday night.

When freshman center Omari Spellman knocked down a 3-pointer on his first shot from straightaway, Nevin got louder.

When Spellman knocked down his second triple, then picked up a steal at midcourt, took three dribbles and slammed it home, the building got deafeningly loud. And stayed that way.

“Wild atmosphere,” Villanova head coach Jay Wright said. “It’s a difficult place to play for everybody, including the home team. You can’t hear anything.”

It was so loud, Wright said, Villanova had to simplify its game plan for the second half.

The Wildcats were relegated to reading lips and hoping for the best.

“Coach talks about echoing the play or echoing the call,” Spellman said. “I asked Mikal [Bridges] the same question like 50 times tonight, just trying to hear him. I’ve never played in an environment like that before.”

In front of a raucous home crowd witnessing the first regular-season game played at Nevin in over 30 years -- and the first Big 5 game ever in the building -- No. 4 Villanova game those lucky enough to be in attendance plenty to cheer about, rolling over Penn in a 90-62 win.

The win is the 19th in a row in Big 5 play for Villanova (7-0, 1-0 Big 5), extending its city series record.

No team has beaten the Wildcats in a Big 5 game since Temple won 76-61 on Dec. 5, 2012, a span of 1,820 days.

“I don’t like seeing it, I don’t like thinking about it. I don’t,” Wright said. “Now the next one is at St. Joe’s. It doesn’t matter about the streak, we know if you don’t bring it, if you’re one notch below where you should be, you’re going to get beat. We know that.”

Villanova also stayed unbeaten in November dating back to that same 2012-13 season, when it lost its last three contests in the season’s opening month. Since then, the Wildcats have gone 33-0 in November, and it’s a streak that will last until 2018 at the earliest.

Those 2,200 fans in made the 85-year-old gym even louder than Villanova’s typical home, the Pavilion, which seats around 6,500, or its secondary arena, the Wells Fargo Center, which seats nearly 10 times as many as where the Wildcats played on Wednesday night.

Spellman finished with 14 points, one off his season/career high, as one of five ‘Nova players in double figures. The 6-9 redshirt freshman shot 6-12 overall (2-3 3PT), adding seven rebounds and three blocks.

That’s after a three-game stretch at the Battle 4 Atlantis where the former five-star prospect scored a total of seven points and grabbed 15 rebounds over three games.

“I really was just trying to do things I always do in practice, I wasn’t trying to do anything different,” Spellman said. “I tried to make the right play, and good things happened.”

Junior guard Jalen Brunson paced ‘Nova with 17 points on 6-7 shooting. Phil Booth and Mikal Bridges joined Spellman with 14 points apiece, and Donte DiVincenzo added a dozen.

Penn (5-4, 0-2 Big 5) had a better second half than first, when it shot only 34 percent from the floor and fell behind by 18 points at the break.

For the game, the Quakers shot 41.4 percent (24-of-58) overall and 30 percent (6-of-20) from 3-point range, turning it over 14 times compared to eight by the Wildcats. They did out-rebound Villanova 33-32, holding the Wildcats to just one offensive rebound.

“I thought we competed really well,” Donahue said. “I thought our [shots] were as open as theirs. They have a degree of confidence, each of those kids, in themselves and each other. They stepped up.”

The Quakers were led by 15 points and seven boards from A.J. Brodeur, who was 6-8 from the floor. But he was just about the only reliable offensive weapon; Darnell Foreman had 13 points on 5-13 shooting, and Ryan Betley had 11 on 4-of-14 from the floor.

The Wildcats’ offense was efficient all night long, finishing with the 90 points in 74 possessions. They were 33-of-58 (56.9 percent) overall and 8-of-16 (50 percent) from 3, while hitting 16-of-19 (84.2 percent) from the line.

It wasn’t obvious at all that Villanova was thrown off by the change in atmosphere, which was necessitated in part due to the Pavilion’s ongoing renovations; the Wildcats are playing the majority of their home games at Wells Fargo, the typical home of the NBA’s 76ers.

But Wright said there were a few mix-ups, including no place for his team to eat their typical pre-game meal.

“We walked to the cafeteria and ate at the cafeteria,” he said. “We literally had Father Rob [Hagan] doing a pregame homily with all the students around us.”

Despite the undefeated start to the season and top-five national ranking -- Villanova is also the top-ranked team on analytics site KenPom.com -- Wright isn’t close to satisfied with how his team is playing.

“We’ve got a lot to work on,” he said. “We really do.”