City of Basketball Love

Jerome Taylor (@ThatGuy_Rome)
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VILLANOVA – Five points, seven seconds.

That’s what it took for a segment of Villanova’s fans to start heading for the exits, and for some that stayed, they made their unfavorable opinion known with a smattering of boos. 

The cause: St. John’s Daniss Jenkins was fouled while knocking down a midrange jumper. After completing the three-point play, he picked off a Brendan Hausen inbound pass and converted a layup. 

“In a press, we’re always going for a steal. That’s just a fun way to play,” Jenkins, a graduate transfer from Iona, said, recounting the sequence. “Don’t worry about getting beat… I saw the steal, I went for the steal and tried to make a play for the ball.”

The five-point swing gave St. John’s a 17-point lead with 5:26 remaining, and they carried that to an 81-71 victory. 

The 10-point loss ended Villanova’s (10-5, 3-1 Big East) four-game winning streak and undefeated start to Big East Play. It was the first time the Red Storm (11-4, 3-1 Big East) won on Villanova’s campus since the original Jurassic Park was in theaters.  

That inbounding miscue was a microcosm of one of the biggest problems that afflicted Villanova all contest – inbounding against the press. 

“I think [St. John’s] disrupted us with their pressure… I thought they did what they wanted to do and dictated the tempo of the game,” Villanova Head Coach Kyle Neptune said. 

St. John’s tempo control was why Villanova couldn’t tighten a reasonable spread heading into halftime. 

From a timeout at 10:54 in the first half until halftime, Nova outscored St. John’s 21-14 and only trailed 34-28 at the break. 

The problem, though, is that through the halfway point of the season and four games through Big East play, it’s obvious how Villanova will be successful: Defense. 

The Wildcats came into Saturday’s matchup holding opposing offenses to 63.6 ppg – the best in the Big East. 

However, early on in the contest, it was clear that whatever the defensive strategy was to hold down an explosive Red Storm offense wasn’t working. 

Jenkins, Joel Soriano, and company raced out to a 20-7 point lead that caused Neptune to take that timeout at 10:54 to refocus his team. 

“The main message in that timeout was to play harder. We weren’t getting any stops,” TJ Bamba said. “We know what we’re capable of on the defensive end when we’re all locked in and playing hard. The main message was to focus up, play hard, and everything else will take care of itself.” 

After that, the smallest the deficit ever got was six points, twice. Once, when Eric Dixon hit a buzzer-beater to go into halftime, the other time came within the first two minutes of the second half when Bamba laid it in for two of his game-high 23 points.

From then on, it felt like the rest of the game mirrored the start of the first half. At the same time, the team’s offenses were opposites.

Jenkins beat his defenders to get into the paint either off the dribble or using Soriano’s screens en route to 18 points (7-17 fg, 2-5 3pt, 2-4 ft) and five assists. Soriano started the game with a dunk and finished with an uber-efficient 20 points and eight rebounds, shooting 70% (7-10) from the field. 

“I love dunking the basketball,” Sorianio joked about his game-opening jam. “I give credit to my teammates who keep looking for me and trusting me in that situation. I feel like that gives everybody a quicker step, energy, especially on the road, you need plays like that.” 

St. John’s also got 15 points from one of those incoming players, freshman Brady Dunlap (5-8 fg, 3-5 3pt, 2-2 ft), who made his first career start in place of graduate transfer Chris Ledlum, who was sidelined with an ankle injury. 

Offensively, Bamba’s scoring was a bright spot for the ‘Cats. He was joined by sophomore Mark Armstong, who had 14 points (6-10 fg, 1-2 3pt, 1-2 ft) and four assists. 

But like the inbounding mishap that caused some Villanova fans to trek out into the wintery mess Mother Nature stirred up during game time, Dixon’s offensive showing was a microcosm of the team’s performance. 

Dixon was frigid. He went 4-18 from the field and 2-10 from beyond the arc (for 14 points). The team followed suit, especially from deep, shooting 21.4% (6-28). 

“Basketball is not a game where you can shoot 100% from the floor. It rarely ever happens in the game. It definitely never happens for a season. You’re never going to have an entire season without having a couple of games where you're not shooting the ball well offensively,” Neptune said.

“A big concept of ours is catch-and-shoot when you’re open. We have confidence in our guys that if they’re open, they’re going to catch and shoot  and make those shots, and if they don’t, it is what it is.”

Like St. John’s, Villanova is down a starter, with the team’s second-leading scorer, Justin Moore, on the mend. Unlike the ‘Johnnies,’ ‘Nova didn’t overcome being down a man, and that type of outing wouldn’t cut it against a clicking Red Storm team. 

“If anything, we’re lacking that maturity, that leadership. In a game like this, St. John’s was forcing us to play up-tempo. I feel like Justin would’ve calmed us down,” Bamba said. 

“I think in this specific game, they just executed what they were looking to do better than we did, period,” Neptune said. “I think they knew what we were going to do, we knew what they were going to do, and they just did better than we did.” 

The Wildcats' next opportunity to outexecute their opponent will come against a struggling DePaul team, who could be riding a three-game losing streak by the time Villanova sees them at Finneran Pavilion on Jan. 12.