NEW YORK – Villanova and Syracuse stirred up memories Tuesday night of the old days of the Big East at Madison Square Garden when they would seem to always meet in the conference tournament, with the house split almost evenly between fans of the Wildcats and the Orange.
After the two teams battled for much of the game, fans of the sixth-ranked Wildcats became more and more vocal as their team started connecting from 3-point range and continued to batter their opponents on the boards en route to a 67-53 victory over the Orange in the nightcap of a Jimmy V Classic doubleheader.
The Wildcats (7-2) outrebounded the Orange, 57-36, and pulled down 27 offensive rebounds, leading to a 25-7 advantage in second-chance points.
Villanova shot the ball poorly in the first half, taking a few more 3-point shots than Jay Wright would probably have liked, shooting 5-for-28 from deep but only trailing by 29-26 thanks to a 28-19 rebounding edge.
But in the second half, they worked the ball inside-out against the zone with success. Eight of their 16 field goals were from deep. They hit four 3s in a game-changing 12-2 run, with Jermaine Samuels’ 3-ball giving them a 55-47 lead with just under 8 minutes to play.
Then a 6-0 run with three two-point baskets, including a ferocious dunk by Samuels, increased the margin to 10, 61-51, with 4:16 to play, and the Cats coasted home.
Justin Moore led the Cats with 18 points and Collin Gillespie added 14. Samuels chipped in with 13 and Caleb Daniels 11. Jimmy Boeheim led Syracuse with 21 but his brother, Buddy, the team’s leading scorer with a 19.1-point average, managed just six points on 3-for-15 shooting.
The missed-shot zone
Wright had spoken Monday of how difficult Syracuse’s 1-3-1 zone defense was in its previous game against Florida State when the Orange hounded the Seminoles into a 4-for-30 performance from three in a 63-60 victory.
The Wildcats were either unable or unwilling to try to get the ball inside and then pass it out on the perimeter for easier threes. Instead, they were firing from behind the arc from all sorts of distances without success.
After making three of their first four from distance, the Cats went 2-for-24 in the final 17 minutes of the first half. At one point, they missed 13 straight attempts from distance. They shot just nine times from inside the arc, sinking four.
The second half saw Villanova try to work the ball inside more, with four of the Wildcats' first five baskets of the period coming from inside the arc. And even though the Wildcats didn’t have another two-point basket for more than 10 minutes, they wound up with plenty of open looks from three.
Daniels knocked down a pair, Gillespie added two, and Samuels drilled one after starting 1-of-8 from the arc.
It’s not just the offense
Ask any Villanova player about bad shooting nights and he’ll come right back and tell you that the name of the game for the Wildcats is defense and rebounding, and the Cats finished the first half with a 28-19 edge on the boards, a mark that included 13 offensive boards. Villanova entered the game averaging 10.1 rebounds of their own missed shots.
The Orange sank their first four shots from the field but finished the half 7-of-24. The Boeheim brothers tried an assortment of drives and spin moves trying to get into the paint against the Villanova defenders with varying degrees of success.
Jimmy Boeheim led all scorers with 11 points at the half, shooting 5-for-8, but Buddy managed only four points on 2-of-7 shooting, missing both of his 3-point tries.
For the game, the Wildcats held the Orange to 35.7% shooting, 32.1% in the second half.
Swider versus his old team
Cole Swider, who played his first three seasons for Villanova, wore a Syracuse uniform on this night, drawing boos from some in the Villanova audience. Swider finished with 5 points, 12 rebounds, and 3 blocked shots.
