After dominating for much of the game, Villanova was forced to scrape and claw its way to victory against Providence on Saturday. This season, we’ve dug through the numbers after each game to identify which ones best told the story of the game, and normally it’s easy to identify 2-5 stats that help explain the outcome. But that isn’t the case for Saturday’s game.

So instead of picking out the specific numbers that defined the Villanova win, we’ll instead examine the strange story that is told by the numbers of the Providence game.

The first thing we need to note is that Villanova’s 7+ minute drought down the stretch skewed some of the numbers in a big way.

Up until the eight-minute mark in the second half, Villanova had completely controlled the game. The Wildcats were up 60-40 with 8:43 to play. They had been very good shooting the ball, hitting at a better than 50 percent clip for much of the game, and had done an excellent job challenging Providence’s shots.

Then the wheels fell off and Villanova was suddenly incapable of putting the ball in the basket. Providence whittled away at the lead, causing a major shift in the numbers in the process.

Villanova played so well over the first 32 minutes that it maintained an advantage in the shooting percentage numbers despite the drought. The ‘Cats shot 45.1 percent for the game to Providence’s 34.5. ‘Nova also had an advantage from 3, 31.8 percent to 24 percent, but that translated into just one more 3-point make. In addition to those two categories, the only other stat ‘Nova had an advantage in was steals (8-6).

Providence took 58 shots compared to Villanova’s 51. The Friars earned 10 more trips to the line (but shot 52 percent and gained just a one-point advantage). Providence outrebounded Villanova 41-36 and dominated the ‘Cats on the offensive glass 17-7. The Friars assisted on 11 of their 20 made field goals to Villanova’s 8 on 23. ‘Nova committed 16 turnovers to 12 for Providence, but seven of those Villanova giveaways came during that disastrous seven-minute stretch.

It’s not very often you see a team go from playing so well to so poorly in the blink of an eye, nor is it very common to see a team have sustained stretches at both ends of the spectrum in a single game. That’s what happened to Villanova on Saturday afternoon, and the numbers from the game mirror the unusual swing in performance we saw from the ‘Cats.

Fortunately, the work that was done during the long stretch of quality play was just enough to offset the ineffectiveness during the poor play, and ‘Nova was able to hold on and escape with an important road win that moved them to the top of the Big East standings with a huge game against St. John’s coming up.