Villanova took the court Wednesday night looking to build on Sunday’s win over Georgetown and succeeded in a big way. Putting forth its best offensive performance of the season, Villanova routed Marquette 96-64.
The game was somewhat back-and-forth early, with Marquette taking a pair of one-point leads about five minutes into the game. It would prove to be the only time Villanova would trail all night. Five minutes later, ‘Nova had taken a five-point lead. Of course, this is the Big East, so Marquette clawed back within one three minutes later. ‘Nova would reestablish a lead of seven and would ultimately take an eight-point advantage into the break after Collin Gillespie pulled down an offensive rebound and found Caleb Daniels for a 3 at the buzzer.
“I thought the play at the end of the first half was big, the offensive rebound and 3 by Caleb,” Jay Wright said.
The second half turned into an offensive clinic that allowed Villanova to blow the game wide-open. ‘Nova scored the first five points of the half to push the lead to 13. Marquette would twice cut the lead to nine, but after the second time Villanova ripped off a 10-run in response to push it back to 19, and from there the ‘Cats would just keep building the advantage all the way to the final margin of 32.
Villanova scorched the nets to the tune of 70% shooting in the second half, including 66.7% from 3 (10-15). The Wildcats outscored the Golden Eagles 56-32.
For the game ‘Nova shot 63% overall and 59.1% from 3. The ‘Cats also hit 15-16 from the free throw line.
The Wildcats had an advantage in every area we highlighted heading into the game. ‘Nova forced 16 turnovers while only committing nine, taking a 30-9 advantage in points off turnovers. The ‘Cats were dominant from 3, earning a 21-point advantage from beyond the arc. Just like the first game between these teams, each team shot 16 free throws, but Villanova missed only one of its 16 and had a four-point advantage from the charity stripe. Villanova attempted four more field goals than Marquette and the ‘Cats shot 21-32 from 2-point range against Marquette’s strong 2-point defense.
In addition to taking control of each area we keyed in on heading into the game, ‘Nova also won points in the paint 32-28, second-chance points 12-5, and fast-break points 14-4.
For the second straight game, Villanova moved the ball beautifully. After assisting on 21 of 27 made field goals against Georgetown on Sunday, the ‘Cats assisted on 25 of 34 buckets Wednesday night. Collin Gillespie led the way in that department, tying a career-high with 11 assists. “I think we share the ball as a team really well and we got guys that can all pass, shoot and dribble so like you saw tonight, J-Rob was hitting shots and guys were finding him and he was making the right decisions,” Gillespie said. “We have a lot of guys that can score the basketball, it can be any guy on any given night, and I think we just do a good job of really sharing the ball and recognizing that.”
Jeremiah Robinson-Earl was the star of the night, scoring 27 points on an absurd shooting line of 10-11 from the field, 5-5 from 3, and 2-2 from the line. He also added eight rebounds, three steals and an assist.
“I feel like that just comes with the preparation,” Robinson-Earl said. “I’m a big Kobe guy, and he just talks about when you take thousands of shots in that same situation, you’re so confident going into the game and don’t have to really think about it. It’s just making the right decision and I thought the right decision was to take the shot, so I just stayed as confident as possible and just try to stick em.”
“He’s just so valuable because night in and night out he always does the little things to make you win,” Wright said of Robinson-Earl. “The rebounding, the screening, always guards the best player, great team defensive player so he does that every night. And he’s really developing as an offensive player, he’s been working on this. I don’t think you expect to have a night like this every night, but he’s had some good nights like this. He just keeps getting more consistent every night he steps out on the offensive end of the floor but he never, ever has a poor game defensively or on the glass. Sometimes he doesn’t get a lot of rebounds, but he keeps the opponent’s best rebounder from rebounding.”
The offensive performance will deservedly garner a lot of attention, but the defensive performance was solid as well. Marquette shot 46% from the floor and committed 16 turnovers. Villanova did a nice job disrupting Marquette’s screens with hard hedges and the rotations were much crisper and more consistent than we have seen recently.
“Our first half (defensively) wasn’t as acceptable as how we normally would like it to be so that was an important detail for us going into the second half and I think we did a really good job at that,” Robinson-Earl said. “And it’s just staying focused on the details. Just knowing what ball screen we’re in and how we’re gonna play it and our coverages on the help side or the ball side. Not one person can stop a whole offense, so we all have to stay together on defense and play off each other.”
Ultimately, it was a dominant performance from the ‘Cats. They’re incredibly fun to watch when they’re clicking on offense like that, and it’s great to see them regaining some of the momentum they had on that side of the ball before getting hit with the pause. Meanwhile, the defense took a step forward and Villanova is in a prime position to establish some momentum heading into the stretch run.
“You shoot the ball like that, it’s one of those nights,” Wright said. “You’re happy when you have them, you know you’re not going to have those every night, but we’ll take it.”
