City of Basketball Love

Josh Verlin (@jmverlin)
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Jay Wright got a few minutes extra to prep his squad coming out of halftime.

When the Wells Fargo Center’s clock was having some issues to begin the second half -- the PA announcer called for an electrician to the scorer’s table -- the Villanova coach quickly gathered his troops for some further notes on breaking down the Providence defense.

“It gave me something to do,” he said. “[The players] are fine, it’s me, my head is spinning at that time, I’ve got so much going on in my head, just allows me to talk and share it with them. They know what they’re doing.”

With seniors like Josh Hart and Kris Jenkins leading the way for the No. 1 Wildcats, there’s only so much that needs to be said anyways.

Though Villanova didn’t play its most impressive all-around defensive effort of the season, typical terrific outings from Hart and Jenkins plus several lockdown stretches were enough to hold on for a 78-68 win over Providence.

Hart, Villanova’s 6-foot-5 do-everything senior and the frontrunner for national Player of the Year honors, continued his stellar final college season with a 25-point, six-rebound, four-assist outing.

As usual, he got plenty of help from his partner-in-crime, the 6-6 Jenkins, who had 19 points on 7-of-12 shooting, including making half of his six 3-point attempts.

“I think both of them are two of the best players in college basketball, we’re lucky to have them on our team, very lucky,” Wright said. “Because they can do everything, they defend, they rebound, they’re leaders, they score, they pass. They’re just complete players; we’re very, very fortunate to have them.”

With the win, the VIllanova senior class of Hart, Jenkins and Darryl Reynolds moved within one win of tying last year’s senior class, Ryan Arcidiacono and Daniel Ochefu, for most wins in a four-year career (117).

It was the second of three Big East games this season that Villanova (18-1, 7-1 Big East) will play in the usual home of the NBA’s Philadelphia 76ers, after beating Marquette by a dozen last week; the Wildcats will also host St. John’s on Feb. 4 in the 20,000-some seat arena as well as Virginia in a non-league game next Sunday.

Villanova’s had plenty of success at Wells Fargo, putting up a 15-2 record in the building since 2012-13, though one of those two losses came to Providence last season.

Villanova never trailed, taking the lead on a Hart 3-pointer a little more than a minute into the game and making Providence play catch-up the rest of the way.

It was a four-point Wildcat lead at halftime, and the advantage was nine with 12 minutes to play when the home team made its move.

Back-to-back 3-pointers by Jenkins and sophomore Jalen Brunson made it a 17-point game, and that was followed by two Mikal Bridges buckets -- a dunk and acrobatic layp -- to push the advantage to 20, its largest of the day.

Providence (13-8, 3-5) didn’t help itself with turnovers. The Friars gave it away eight times in the second half alone, finishing with a dozen for the game.

“I thought Villanova took advantage of every mistake we made,” Providence coach Ed Cooley said. “The game was lost the first five possessions of the second half, we had wide open shots, missed layups and turnovers. They capitalized on every turnover.”

Cooley won’t have to wait long for a chance at revenge -- the two teams will meet each other 10 days from now, on Feb. 1 in Providence.

Four Villanova players finished with four-or-more assists, led by Brunson, who dished out six dimes against one turnover while also chipping in 13 points of his own.

Villanova’s opponents had been under 30 percent from 3-point range on the season, but a Providence team that doesn’t usually rely on the long ball lit up the Wildcats for 13 triples on the afternoon.

Four of those came off the hands of junior Jalen Lindsay; Friars leading scorer Rodney Bullock had three 3-pointers en route to a team-high 17 points.

Lindsay hit three consecutive 3-pointers to play to turn what had been a 20-point Villanova advantage into a nine-point lead with under five minutes to play before the Wildcats closed out strong.

“Good win against a good team, just couldn’t put them away,” Wright said. “They’ve got some shooters, and we’ve been talking about this, we’ve got got to get some consistency defensively. We had times during the game where we were really good defensively, and times where we broke down, but we’re still a work in progress defensively, definitely.”

Part of Villanova’s defensive woes in this one can be attributed to foul trouble. Redshirt junior Eric Paschall played only 10 minutes due to picking up four fouls in his first four minutes of action, forcing the Wildcats to play more zone defense than they’d like to with their typical seven-man rotation shortened by one.

But after using the zone defense effectively last year, Wright knows his team needs to add that weapon to the arsenal if it wants to make a run at defending its national championship.

“Some of it’s because of our lack of depth, and some of it is we got good at it last year,” Wright said. “I don’t know where it went, but we’ve got to get...we need it, it was good for us last year. And Ochefu was a big part of that in the middle, he was really, really good at it, smart. So was Arch, Arch took great pride in it. We’ll get there, though.”