City of Basketball Love

Stephen Pianovich (@SPianovich)
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A box score can tell you a lot about a basketball game. And the one from Villanova’s drubbing of Oklahoma on Saturday looks like one might expect.

It outlines a complete domination by the Wildcats. A nearly flawless performance which is rarely seen on the biggest stage in college basketball. Here’s a deeper dive into the astounding numbers Villanova posted against the Sooners:

71.4 - Villanova made 71.4 percent of its shots. An incredible mark from a team that seemingly could not miss in the second half. Well, Villanova did miss five times in the second half, believe it or not, but the team shot 77.3 percent in the final 20 minutes. The Wildcats somehow improved on their 66.7 field goal percentage from the first half and shot better from the field (17-for-22) than they did from the free throw line (14-for-19) in the second half.

“We talked to our guys about that a lot,” Villanova coach Jay Wright said about shooting at Houston’s NRG Stadium. “We actually got four shooting workouts in. Thursday, Friday, Saturday, today, a walk-through, then pregame shooting. We're going to be good. We're going to be good. We kept telling them. I think they believed that.

“We didn't shoot the ball well in here on Thursday. Friday we did shooting drills. We started shooting pretty well. Our shootaround today, we shot it pretty well. I think that really helped.”

0-1 - That was Daryl Reynolds' shooting mark from the field. He was the only Villanova player to attempt a shot and not shoot at least 60 percent from the field. Josh Hart went 10-for-12 for a team-best 23 points; Ryan Arcidiacono missed just one of his six shots; Daniel Ochefu was 4-for-5; Mikal Bridges hit three of his four shots off the bench. Kris Jenkins scored 18 points, went 6-for-10 from the floor, hit four of his seven 3-point attempts and lowered the Wildcats’ shooting percentages. It was a ludicrous offensive night from just about every player.

20.0 - On the contrary, Oklahoma shot a lousy 31.7 percent from the field and that mark came after the Sooners shot 48 percent in the first half. In a nightmare of a final 20 minutes, Oklahoma hit just 1/5th of its shots, going 7-of-35. In that second half, no Villanova player missed more than one shot from the field, while just one Oklahoma player made more than one shot from the field (Jordan Woodard was 3-for-9).

“Obviously we love when we can hit shots,” Hart said. “But this program is really built on just dialing in defensively, being tough.”

9 - Buddy Hield was limited to just nine points on 4-of-12 shooting, which included a 1-of-8 mark from beyond the 3-point line. Hield had been averaging 29.3 points per game in the NCAA Tournament and 25.0 per game for the season entering Saturday’s game and fell way short of his scoring standards. The loss to Villanova was Hield’s 132nd and final game in an Oklahoma uniform, and it was just the 28th time in his career that he was held to less than 10 points.