Villanova suffered its first loss of the season Monday night, falling to Big 5 rival Penn 76-72. There weren’t a whole lot of positives to take from the performance, but some pretty glaring concerns emerged. Here are the most troubling issues from Monday night.
Villanova didn’t live up to the things Villanova loves to preach
Anyone who has paid attention to the program has heard the taglines. “40 minutes of Villanova Basketball.” “Defend and rebound.” “Sometimes you aren’t going to make shots, but you can always control the defensive effort.” “Always outwork/outhustle the opponent.” Villanova not only failed to embody one or two of these tenets, but all of them.
40 minutes of Villanova Basketball? As we noted in our game recap, it was more like two minutes of Villanova Basketball. And the most frustrating part is that in those two minutes, Villanova looked to be the vastly superior team. If Villanova had been able to replicate those two minutes for any kind of extended period, it likely wins the game going away and we’re not talking about any of this.
Defend and rebound? Penn, a team that entered Monday’s game shooting 48.1% on two-point attempts and 34.1% on threes shot 59.1% and 41%, respectively. At one point in the second half, the Quakers were shooting 69%. Sure, Penn made a handful of tough looks, but not enough to explain away the defensive effort. Furthermore, Villanova was outrebounded 38-35. So, Villanova neither defended nor rebounded.
Sometimes you aren’t going to make shots, but you can always control the defensive effort? Now, I don’t think that the team let the offensive struggles impact the effort or focus on the defensive end. But regardless of the reason, the team did not control the defensive effort nor was it able to rely on that end to help it win the game. Another swing and a miss.
Always outwork/outhustle the opponent? This one can be a bit harder to quantify, but Penn clearly looked like the hungrier team on Monday night. The raw rebounding numbers are a bit skewed because Villanova had 16 more FG attempts than Penn and 18 more misses. As such, ‘Nova pulled down 15 offensive rebounds to Penn’s 10. But the ‘Cats managed to corral 36.6% of their offensive rebound opportunities, while the Quakers grabbed a whopping 43.5% of theirs. It felt like Penn was getting the better of 50-50 balls and was generally moving around the court with more energy. That makes ‘Nova 0-4 on the things that are supposed to define, supposed to be the very foundation of, the program.
Where is the energy?
Speaking of energy, where was it? In the season-opening win over American, Villanova was flying all over the court, playing with passion, intensity and joy. The Wildcats looked a little flat against Le Moyne, and even flatter Monday against Penn.
We touched on this a bit in the previous section, but it’s just so jarring to see the difference between the American game and the Penn game. In the American game, it would take more than one person to use fingers to count the number of times a Wildcat hit the deck and several people to count the number of instances that could be described as a “Villanova Basketball play.” Heck, there was three such instances in a single sequence in the win over American. On Monday, you wouldn’t need more than one hand, let alone more than one person.
It’s hard to find any explanation for the drop off. Opponent? Penn is the best team the Wildcats have seen so far this season and are a city rival. That shouldn’t have been the problem. Looking ahead? Maybe, but you would think the looking ahead trap game would have been Le Moyne, not Penn. Further, such a thing should happen with such an experienced team. So, hopefully that wasn’t the issue either.
Whatever the reason, the energy in the two games was night and day, and that’s concerning, especially since the trend is in the wrong direction.
Just didn’t play Villanova Basketball
We’ve already established that Villanova played Villanova Basketball for about two minutes, and that the failure to do so was encapsulated by the failure to live up to any of the tenets that define the program. But there are a few things that didn’t get mentioned in our discussion of those issues.
One was that there seemed to be a lot of mental lapses. There were miscommunications on both ends of the court, with passes to no one and players getting lost on defense. There are times when you won’t play your best, when you won’t make shots or the other team seemingly can’t miss or the talent or execution of the opponent is simply too much to overcome…but very rarely are there times when Villanova isn’t locked in mentally. That appeared to be the case Monday night.
Another is a more specific discussion of the defensive issues. In addition to the mental lapses, the Wildcats seemed largely to be playing defense more with their hands than with their feet. They weren’t moving well, weren’t staying in front or beating Penn to the spot. This is reflected in the 34 free throws Penn shot. Yes, some of that is due to Villanova fouling late to extend the game, but the ‘Cats didn’t really start doing that until under a minute remained. Many of those free throws were piled up prior to intentional fouling, largely the result of “handsy” defense by ‘Nova and Penn being the more aggressive team.
What to make of things
Two things here: first, it’s never wise to overreact to one game and second, it’s very early in the season and, despite the cohesion Villanova played with against American, the Wildcats are integrating a lot of new pieces. That can take time.
So, it’s not time to panic. Maybe this was a hiccup. Maybe it was just a bad night. Maybe it is part of the growing process. If you’re a particularly optimistic person, you might even say it could be one of those beneficial losses that exposes flaws with enough time to fix them and/or wakes a team up that may have started to get complacent.
Still, the totality of the failure is concerning, and the difference between the team we saw to open the season vs. the one we saw Monday night were polar opposites. The Villanova roster is talented, deep and experienced. There’s a good chance Monday’s loss becomes an afterthought in a very good season. At the same time, it was a disappointing performance that raised some legitimate questions. Time will tell if it was a blip or the revelation of persistent issues.
It will be interesting to see how ‘Nova responds on Friday when it hosts a Power 5 opponent in Maryland.
