Villanova puts away Georgetown; Big East tourney up next
WASHINGTON - It has been a "Friends and Family" tour for Josh Hart and Kris Jenkins in their final week of Villanova's regular season.
WASHINGTON - It has been a "Friends and Family" tour for Josh Hart and Kris Jenkins in their final week of Villanova's regular season.
The pair were honored on senior day last weekend at the Pavilion and performed in front of quite a few loved ones against Creighton. Then on Saturday, in their last appearance at the Verizon Center as college basketball players, the two D.C.-area natives starred again with many of the same people in the audience.
Hart scored 21 points and Jenkins added 19, and the pair teamed to help the second-ranked Wildcats break open a close game in the final 81/2 minutes and defeat Georgetown, 81-55, before a crowd of 15,143.
The Cats (28-3, 15-3), the Big East regular-season champions for the fourth straight season, move on to the conference tournament. They will start play Thursday afternoon at Madison Square Garden against the winner of a first-round game between the Hoyas (14-17, 5-13) and St. John's.
If there were any distractions with so many family members and friends watching, they didn't show.
Hart, of Silver Spring, Md., went 8 of 15 from the field and added six rebounds, four assists and three steals. Jenkins, a native of Upper Marlboro, Md., didn't convert a three-pointer in four tries but he made all four of his two-point attempts and went 11 of 13 from the free-throw line.
"Kris and myself had people here coming to see us but we've got to focus on playing Villanova basketball," Hart said. "That's why I think we had a pretty good game, because we didn't focus on everything else. With how Coach plays us, when you're out there, and you're playing defense and you're hustling, you're going to have opportunities to score."
Coach Jay Wright said that in situations such as Saturday's with Hart and Jenkins, "They just impress the hell out of me.
"You want to come back, you want to play great," he said. "But they come in and lead their team, do the little things, and not play to the crowd. It's really impressive. I'm really proud of them, and I'm a little bit amazed every time they do it."
The Wildcats took some time to work off some rust resulting from a one-week rest. They shot just 38.5 percent in the first half and led 38-28, went the first four minutes of the second half without a basket and saw Georgetown cut what had been a 15-point deficit to four.
The advantage was just 52-45 with 8 minutes, 26 seconds remaining before the visitors started to dominate. Hart helped launch a 15-2 run with back-to-back three-pointers. Jenkins added two baskets on consecutive possessions, and the margin got to 20, 67-47, with 4:38 to play.
Jalen Brunson added 17 points and Mikal Bridges 12 for 'Nova, which shot 53.6 percent in the second half and 46.3 percent for the game.
With Darryl Reynolds back in the lineup after missing five games with a rib injury, the Wildcats went with a true eight-man rotation for the first time since November. Wright decided to bring Reynolds off the bench, and his senior cocaptain had seven rebounds and two assists in 27 minutes without taking a shot.
"I think it paid off for us in the end," he said, "I think we've seen other games where we might have looked better earlier in the game but at the end we started to fade a little bit. I liked the way we finished. I thought we finished strong."
That they did. The Wildcats made 11 of their last 14 shots, outscored the Hoyas 29-10 in the closing 8:26, and went into the post-season on a bunch of positive notes.