City of Basketball Love

Josh Verlin (@jmverlin)
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Ever since his arrival on campus, Kris Jenkins has been touted by the Villanova coaching staff as the team’s best pure shooter.

Through his first two seasons on campus, the 6-foot-6, 240-pound wing forward had shown that ability by hitting just over 37 percent percent of his triples. But after 16 games of his junior year, Jenkins was averaging fewer than 10 ppg while making 29.2 percent (29-of-99) from the 3-point arc.

He started to turn things around on Jan. 13 in a win over Marquette, scoring 20 points on 12 shots, hitting 3-of-6 from beyond the arc. That kicked off a 13-game stretch where he became one of the Wildcats’ most consistent players, averaging 14.7 ppg and shooting better than 40 percent from the 3-point arc.

Against DePaul on Tuesday night, Jenkins took his game to the next level, scoring a career-high 31 points to lead the No. 3 Wildcats to an 83-62 win over the Blue Demons.

"It's not really a difference, it's just staying aggressive,” he said. “My teammates do an unbelievable job of making the right play. Recently, the right play has just been to catch and shoot.”

Jenkins knocked down eight 3-pointers, each of which came off a feed from a teammate. Ryan Arcidiacono picked up three of his seven dimes by kicking to Jenkins for a triple; freshman wing Mikal Bridges, junior wing Josh Hart and sophomore guard Phil Booth each chipped in as well.

And head coach Jay Wright is perfectly fine with Jenkins benefitting from the Wildcats’ usually-stellar ball movement.

“It's not his job to pass,” the Wildcats’ 15h-year head coach said. “We run something for Arch, he hits it to Josh, Josh reverses it to Kris and he's open. It's his job to make shots. He's just great at it, he really is."

There’s more to it than just making and missing shots, of course.

“What he's really improved upon is making decisions on when to shoot it,” Wright continued. “When to drive it, when to put it in the post. I think that's where he is right now. When you make those perfect decisions, you shoot a high percentage."

Jenkins was instrumental early on, going on a personal 14-0 run to help Villanova open up a 25-10 lead near the midway point of the first half. It was 51-33 at halftime, as Jenkins scored 20 points in the opening 20 minutes, and he surpassed his previous career high of 23 less than two minutes out of the break as he pushed the lead to 25 with 18:31 remaining.

DePaul (9-20, 3-14 Big East) never got closer than 17 the rest of the way.

With the win, Villanova (26-4, 15-2) secures its third consecutive Big East regular-season championship, two games up on Xavier with only one to play.

All that's left is a game against Georgetown on Saturday before the Wildcats begin their defense of last year's Big East Tournament championship and the certainty of a No. 1 seed in the NCAA Tournament that would come with it.

Though the program's won 26 games or more in each of the last three seasons--three of the just seven times it's happened in Nova men's basketball history--the Wildcats are still looking for their first appearance in the NCAA Tournament's second weekend since the Final Four run in 2009.

"We really do take pride in the regular season," Wright said. "We evaluate our program by what we do in the regular season, that's how we make all our decisions. (But) we know that we get judged publicly by how you do in the tournament."

Villanova certainly looked the part of a team capable of a deep run into April in a fairly dominant win over DePaul. Wright's squad shot 50 percent (29-of-58) overall and 45.2 percent (14-of-31) from 3-point range while putting up a fantastic 20 assists against five turnovers.

On the flip side, the Wildcats forced 17 Blue Demons turnovers and turned those into 25 points.

But there's always work to be done, as evidenced by the 34-29 deficit on the glass and allowing DePaul to make 56 percent (9-of-16) from 3-point range.

“Our goal is to be the best team we can be at the end of the year," said junior wing Josh Hart, who had 18 points in the DePaul win. That's still our motto. It's something we are trying to be. I haven't used that. Coach hasn't used that exact saying. We're just trying to focus on getting better every day and if we focus on getting better every day, at the end of the season, we're the best team we can be, hopefully it's in April."