As the Super Bowl dominated the sports consciousness of Philadelphia on Sunday, Villanova and Xavier took the court in a game that had significant implications on the Big East standings. The winner would move into fifth place in the conference, the owner of which happens to possess the final first-round bye of the Big East tournament. And much like another Super Bowl Sunday in 2018, Villanova emerged victorious in a Big Game appetizer for Philly sports fans, this time handling the Musketeers 80-68 thanks to a dominant second half.

“I was proud of the way our guys competed,” Kyle Neptune said. “I thought we played a pretty complete defensive game.”

It was an incredibly close first half. Villanova’s largest lead was four while Xavier’s largest lead was five, and neither advantage lasted more than a minute. The Musketeer’s landed the more menacing blow, ripping off an 8-0 run to turn a three-point deficit into that five-point lead, but ‘Nova immediately responded with a 6-0 run to retake the lead and restore the nip-tuck nature of the period. Fittingly, the teams went to the break tied at 33.

A pair of somewhat unsung players made a huge impact for ‘Nova in the first half. Enoch Boakye showed off some offensive prowess early in the game and finished with the half with six points (3-3 shooting) and four rebounds. Meanwhile, Tyler Perkins chipped in seven points on 3-3 shooting while adding three rebounds and two steals.

Xavier shot 52 percent overall and 50 percent from three while taking five free throws to none for ‘Nova. But Villanova was able to offset that by forcing nine turnovers and earning an 11-0 advantage in second chance points on five offensive rebounds.

The second half featured more haymakers.

Xavier landed the first, a 7-0 run that erased a six-point ‘Nova lead and put the Musketeers up one. A Perkins three would stop the run, but Xavier got right back to work, this time with an 8-0 push to open a six-point lead.

But Villanova would respond with an 8-0 run of its own to retake a two-point lead. It started with a Perkins three, and then the Eric Dixon show took center stage.

The Villanova star scored 15 straight points for Villanova, outscoring Xavier by himself 15-6 during the stretch. Up to that point (8:21 in the second half), Dixon had scored just two points on 1-8 shooting. He finished with 24 points on 8-16 shooting.

“For most of the game I thought our game plan and effort level on Eric Dixon was very good,” Xavier head coach Sean Miller said. “He had two points, and really we had him in check at least for the first eight to 10 minutes of the second half. The last 10 minutes I’m not sure how many points he had, but I would say the lion share of his 24 came in the last 10, 11 minutes of the game. He wore us down, they wore us down. Some of it was our execution, some of it was just he’s a tough matchup.

A Xavier jumper cu the ‘Nova lead to four with 6:25 to play, but Villanova was about to blow the game wide open. A 10-0 run gave the Wildcats their largest lead of the game at 16 with 2:31 to go, and the Musketeers wouldn’t threaten again. The 10-run was a part of bigger 14-2 and 19-4 pushes from ‘Nova. The remaining few minutes were a mere formality as ‘Nova cruised to the 12-point win.

Villanova turned it up at both ends in the second half. The Wildcats held Xavier to 46.7 percent shooting overall and 33.3 percent from three while hitting 60 percent of their own shots, including 58.3 percent from deep.

Perkins finished with a Villanova career-high of 20 points on 7-9 shooting, including 4-5 from three. He added five rebounds and two steals.

“I just try to do whatever I can to help the team, whether that’s energy, talking, bringing the juice,” Perkins said.

“I know I bring so much more to the table than just making threes or making shots,” Perkins added. “Defending and rebounding. So when it wasn’t falling, I just knew I just had to defend more and rebound more and help my teammates more, so that’s what I was focused on.”

“We truly look at the game a little different,” Neptune added about Perkins, who had dealt with significant offensive struggles. “We look at who’s out there competing, who’s out there playing hard and he does that. That’s why he’s out there. There were times when he wasn’t making shots. He’s out there, he’s competing. So, make shots, miss shots, we really don’t look at it like that. We just want him to be aggressive offensively, take the right shots but that really doesn’t affect us.”

Perkins impact wasn’t lost on Miller, either.

“But really what happened inside the game was Tyler Perkins, he went 4-of-5 form three, he had 20 points, and when he’s on the court as a productive offensive player that makes the matchup on Dixon even more problematic and we ran into some problems with how well Tyler Perkins played and shot,” Miller said. “He had a couple open looks, and to his credit he stepped up and he made them. Villanova with him scoring and playing with confidence on offense takes on a different form and certainty that was the team that we went against.”

Wooga Poplar was excellent as well with 23 points, eight rebounds and four steals.

It was a solid all-around effort from the Wildcats, and a good win against a team not only vying for that last Big East Tournament bye but also desperately fighting to keep its at-large NCAA Tournament hopes alive. It was also, you might remember, a team which Villanova suffered a catastrophic collapse against on January 14.

It was also an outcome that was a bit different from some other games that remained close heading into the latter stages of the second half.

“We made some tough shots, but we locked in defensively and got some timely stops,” Neptune said about the difference late on Sunday. “Something we’ve talked about over these last couple weeks is really good teams get it done defensively in those moments and that’s what we want to be and that’s what we’ve got to continue to strive for and I think our guys did that. I thought we had a couple key times where it was kind of touch and go there and we were trying to extend the lead and we got some key turnovers and some key stops and rebounds that really put us in position to win that game.”

Villanova will look to keep things rolling and avenge another frustrating loss when it hosts St. John’s on Wednesday.