City of Basketball Love

Stephen Pianovich (@SPianovich)
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As part of a tradition, Villanova’s seniors each got to address the team on Friday night, the eve of the team’s final regular season game.

Ryan Arcidiacono was the last player to do so, passing along a message not to take games or wins in high-level college basketball for granted. And in a game that didn’t mean much for the standings, that’s what the No. 3 Wildcats did.

Villanova came out and took care of business against Georgetown, eventually cruising to an 84-71 victory on Saturday afternoon at the Wells Fargo Center. The Wildcats had already locked up their third consecutive Big East regular season title with a win over DePaul on Tuesday, but they didn’t get to hoise the trophy until after Saturday’s game.

That wasn’t the only celebration, either. Arcidiacono and fellow senior Daniel Ochefu got standing ovations from the sellout crowd of 20,173. Both addressing his teammates and getting the applause meant a great deal to Arcidiacono, a Langhorne native.

“I tried to thank the coaches and tell the younger guys don’t ever take for granted winning, because there’s such a small difference between good teams and great teams, said Arcidiacono, who also went over the 500 career assist mark on Saturday.

“…Coming out to the standing ovation, coach said to me ‘How neat is this?’ I don’t even think I said anything, I was in shock.”

It was the seniors whom coach Jay Wright credited with Villanova’s quick start, too. The Wildcats hit 10 of their first 14 field goals and just nine minutes into the game, they led the Hoyas 27-6. Villanova went on to lead by 19 points at halftime as Kris Jenkins beat the buzzer with one of the team’s six first-half 3-pointers.

“Our senior class got these guys ready to play,” Wright said. “They were dialed in on the scouting report. It’s a special group of guys. It takes a lot for 18-22 year olds to be focused like that, and that’s what that was – pure focus.”

Led by Josh Hart’s 18 points, four Villanova players scored in double figures. Jenkins notched 17 points, Arcidiacono had 16 and five assists and Ochefu added 10 points and six rebounds.

L.J. Peak had a career-high and game-high 31 points for Georgetown, but the Hoyas got just seven points on 1-of-11 shooting from leading scorer D’Vauntes Smith-Rivera and shot just 15.4 percent (4-for-26) on 3-pointers.

The Wildcats secured their third consecutive season with at least 27 wins and they are now a combined 84-9 in the last three regular seasons, a winning percentage of .903. However, Wright and his team – which was bounced from the NCAA Tournament in the first weekend in each of the last two years – knows that March is what makes you in the eyes of a lot of fans.

“We just played in an 18-game tournament over two-and-a-half months,” Wright said. “We won that tournament. That’s the toughest tournament. But these are what you get evaluated on, and we know it. We want to have fun with this and lay it all out there. It’s one-and-done, that’s the difference. You know when you lose these games, you don’t have a chance to come back and fix it.”