City of Basketball Love

By Josh Verlin (@jmverlin)
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A rough night for Erik Reynolds II used to mean a rough night for Saint Joseph’s.

As Villanova found out the hard way on Tuesday night — take Reynolds away, and the rest of the Hawks can make you pay.

Even with Reynolds II locked down for the majority of the evening, the rest of the Hawks’ rotation stepped up, leading the hosts to an 83-76 win in front of a raucous crowd of 3,326 at Hagan Arena on Tuesday evening. 

That they did it without Reynolds II playing at his best — the star senior is averaging 14.3 ppg on 35.9% from the floor and 25.0% from 3-point range, well below his junior year numbers — is a good sign for a team with A-10 championship hopes. Reynolds finished with only nine points on 3-of-14 shooting (0-4 3PT), the electric scorer and two-time all-A-10 selection yet to go off this season.

“Knowing that we have a lot of threats on the floor at one time and knowing that teams can’t just focus on one person or two people, the fact that they have to worry about everybody on the court at once because of our movement and our concepts, it’s amazing,” Reynolds II said.

Sophomore guard Xzayvier Brown had one of the best games of his young career, finishing with 18 points and a career-best 13 assists for just his second collegiate double-double. He said it was the second-most assists he’s had in a game, shouting out longtime Roman Catholic stat keeper Tom “Hockey Puck” McKenna, who passed last week, for tallying 15 assists he had in a game his junior year at Roman against Father Judge. 

“I always trust my teammates,” Brown said, “and I just felt like ‘Nova gave me opportunities to pass to my teammates. I got in the paint and made some good reads and my teammates connected on their shots, so that’s how I got it.”

Brown grad was unflappable with the ball in his hands all night long even as his shot wasn’t falling for long stretches (4-18 FG), coming up with one big play after another — including a feed to a plunging Rasheer Fleming for a critical dunk with 24 seconds left to keep the Hawks up fives points. Reynolds found a streaking Fleming six seconds later for one more slam, effectively sealing the win for St. Joe’s (2-1, 1-0 Big 5).

It was the second straight win in the Holy War rivalry for St. Joe’s, following a run of 11 straight ‘Nova victories in the city’s most contentious rivalry. It’ll take quite a few more to catch up in the overall series, which Villanova leads 55-27 all-time.

Does Saint Joseph’s getting a couple back in the win column mean that it could be time for a new top dog in Philadelphia? 

“That’s blasphemous to me,” St. Joe’s coach Billy Lange said. “That program’s got two national championships and multiple Final Fours. I will never say it. When we do it, then maybe I will, if we do it. 

Xzayvier Brown (with ball) drives the lane against Villanova. (Photo: Mark Jordan/CoBL)

Fleming led four Hawks with 19 points, the 6-9 junior forward going 7-of-9 from the floor, with five rebounds and a couple blocks. Junior guard Derek Simpson added 16 points in his best game yet as a Hawk after transferring over from Rutgers this offseason, adding six rebounds and four assists in 37 minutes of work, opening the game with a pair of 3-pointers.

Sophomore wing forward Anthony Finkley rounded out the group by setting new collegiate highs in points (12) and 3-pointers made (4), going 4-of-6 from beyond the arc in 25 minutes off the bench. Finkley entered the evening with a career high of 10 points, achieved against Loyola (Md.) last year, the only other time the Roman Catholic product hit more than one 3-pointer in a game. 

“The kid has put in incredible work, anyone that saw him in high school, if you look at his physical profile right now,” Lange said, “so for him to get to this point, it’s not magic. And we needed him tonight.”

Both St. Joe’s and Villanova came into Tuesday night with one ugly loss already on their resumes. The Hawks lost to Central Connecticut State last Friday, two days after the Wildcats dropped one at home to Columbia. That left the Big 5 opener, already an important early-season game for both, with a little extra “prove-it” factor on both sides, neither wanting to take a second loss just eight days into the 2024-25 slate. 

Emotions ran high at Hagan, which was just a few last-row seats shy of a sellout for the 5 o’clock tipoff. 

Things came to a head with just under seven minutes left in the first half: first, a tie-up situation in front of the Villanova bench saw players from both teams get physical and have to be separated. On the restart, Reynolds earned a technical after a Villanova player went flying to the floor, almost causing further issues between the programs.

There were no additional problems, though both teams played plenty hard on both ends the rest of the way, bodies flying all over the court.

“It feels amazing to get this done in front of our home crowd, because of how much energy they give us, how much work we put in each and every day,” Reynolds said. “Given how much the Big 5 means to the city, it means a lot, so I’m very appreciative.”

Villanova (2-2, 0-1) got 24 points and nine rebounds from Eric Dixon (8-22 FG, 4-10 3PT) and 22 from Jhamir Brickus (9-15 FG, 2-6 3PT), but had nine assists and 16 turnovers while St. Joe’s had 20 dimes and only 10 giveaways.

“I thought they got into us, I thought their pressure affected us, I thought they got us a little out of sync, defensively they came after us,” Villanova coach Kyle Neptune said, adding “and I thought they played harder than us tonight.”

After going without a bucket in the first half thanks to a lockdown defensive effort by Villanova’s Wooga Poplar, Reynolds finally got onto the scoreboard with 16:25 in the second half, coming off a screen and getting downhill for a layup and-one, the old-fashioned 3-point play putting the Hawks up by a point. A Finkley 3-pointer the next possession down led to the largest roar yet of the night, part of a 17-2 run that put the hosts up 55-44 with 13:22 to play. 

Villanova had a response, a 16-4 spurt to put the Wildcats up by a point, 60-59, with 6:38 left. That was the Wildcats’ last lead, the Hawks coming back with a 14-5 stretch of their own, capped by a Brown fastbreak layup with 2:09 to play. 

The Hawks will play Penn (2-1, 0-0) on Friday at the Palestra for the right to defend their Big 5 Classic title from a year ago. 

“I understand how much a game like this elevates the Hawk Hill community,” Lange said. “I get to wake up tomorrow and come in here and coach these guys up and get ready for our next one, but I’m thrilled for Saint Joseph’s and the direction of our university and I understand what a win like this means for everybody.”