By Sam Federman (@Sam_Federman)
VILLANOVA, Pa. — A week after its biggest resume win of the season to open up Big East play, Villanova sleepwalked through the first 30 minutes of what would have been its worst loss of the season, and likely would have stayed that way for a while.
DePaul – which had the second-worst KenPom rating in the Big East coming into the game – held a 50-40 lead, and led for much of the night by multiple possessions inside Finneran Pavilion. Then, Bryce Lindsay ignited. Tyler Perkins did, too. Those two led Villanova back, and the Wildcats got enough stops down the stretch to survive with a 71-66 win on New Year’s Eve.
Villanova actually made four of its first five shots before going ice cold. The ’Cats made just three of their next 23 after that, and DePaul built up a seven-point edge in the first half behind a bunch of alley-oops. The Blue Demons also controlled the game better on the glass than many of Villanova’s opponents, as the Wildcats struggled to end possessions for the first portion of the game.
Lindsay’s first burst came in the final two minutes of the first half, when he made a layup and then canned a trey to cut the lead from seven to two, but Matt Hodge missed a three that would have given Villanova the lead, and RJ Smith pushed it back out to four.
The alley-oops continued early in the second half. Brandon Maclin had a strong game for DePaul, connecting with bigs NJ Benson and Fabian Flores for lobs. DePaul made five of its first six shots of the second half, then extended the lead to 50-40 with 11 minutes to play.
But the beauty of having an elite shooter like Lindsay is that at any moment, when any game looks as bleak as it may, if it is not a total blowout, then you’re still in it because he can get hot.
And that he did.
“Every time he shoots it, I think it’s going in,” head coach Kevin Willard said.
“Offensively, I changed my pace up,” Lindsay said. “These guys tell me every day that I’m being too casual sometimes, so I just ran a little harder to get shots.”
Lindsay made back-to-back threes, then Perkins connected from deep to respond to Smith’s three. Perkins made another one to tie the game at 56, and Devin Askew pitched in to give Villanova its first lead since early in the first half.
From there, Villanova closed the game out, extending the lead to as many as nine before winning by five. The Wildcats’ zone helped keep DePaul out of the paint in the closing minutes.
“They kept running the same play,” Willard said. “We had to take that away and make sure they weren’t getting too many easy layups.”
For the Blue Demons, who have now faced the three top teams in the metrics in its first three Big East games (St. John’s, UConn, Villanova), Chris Holtmann has some concrete goals.
“We’ve got to rebound the ball better,” Holtmann said. “(We) can’t have ten turnovers in the first half. So some of the things we can control, that’s what we’ve got to do.”
His Blue Demons return to the floor at Wintrust Arena on Saturday against Xavier, while the Wildcats are back in action that same day at Hinkle Fieldhouse against Butler.
