Villanova's Jay Wright seeks consistency
You look at Villanova's resume thus far - 21-2 record, first place in the Big East, ranked No. 1 for seven weeks and No. 4 this week, statistically the conference's best defensive team, starring a national player of the year candidate in Josh Hart - and you wonder why Jay Wright worries.
You look at Villanova's resume thus far - 21-2 record, first place in the Big East, ranked No. 1 for seven weeks and No. 4 this week, statistically the conference's best defensive team, starring a national player of the year candidate in Josh Hart - and you wonder why Jay Wright worries.
Well, first of all, he's a head coach, and worrying is what head coaches do. But the Wildcats haven't exactly been dazzling in their last three games, and Wright knows much improvement is needed as they enter the final month before postseason play begins.
The Cats take on St. John's (11-13, 5-6) Saturday night in their final game of the season at the Wells Fargo Center. Even though they defeated the Red Storm, 70-57, on Jan. 14 at Madison Square Garden, Wright said afterward that his team "didn't bring it," and that he was "disappointed in our effort."
Wright wasn't that harsh Wednesday night after Villanova almost gave up all of a 13-point lead on the road before finishing strong to beat Providence, 66-59, but he did express concern.
"We are not playing great basketball right now," he said, "but we are finding a way to just scrap and dig and claw and find a way. That's a good thing, I guess, but we still have a lot of work to do."
If you cut Wednesday's game into four 10-minute quarters, the Wildcats shot great in the first and third and poorly in the second and fourth. After they took a 57-44 lead with 8 1/2 minutes to play, they scored just two points in almost seven minutes and saw their advantage cut to two before Jalen Brunson accounted for the game's last seven points.
"I've been talking about our consistency," Wright said. "We get leads, and we just relax. We just get away from our basic concepts. We did it at Marquette, and it cost us. We did it at Butler, and it cost us. There's been a lot of games where we've been able to recover, this being one of them. It's our challenge, this team's challenge."
Wright was referring to the Wildcats' only defeats this season. They lost, 74-72, to Marquette on Jan. 24 after leading by 17 points, and were 13 down to Virginia five days later before a strong second-half rally and Donte DiVincenzo's tip-in at the buzzer gave them a 61-59 win.
Then came the win over Providence, in which Villanova continued to fall well short of playing a complete 40-minute game. At least its defense held up well, holding the Friars to 39.6 percent shooting and notching 11 steals, as seniors Hart, Kris Jenkins and Darryl Reynolds posted their 118th victory as a class, the most in program history.
In the latest Big East statistics, the Cats lead the league in scoring defense (62.2 points per game), field-goal percentage defense (41.5) and three-point defense (30.1). In conference games, their points-allowed average of 63.8 is nearly eight points better than second-place Butler.
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