VILLANOVA, Pa. — Butler certainly didn’t look like a team that hadn’t played a basketball game in three weeks, coming out into an empty Finneran Pavilion and taking it to Villanova for most of the snowy night.
The seventh-ranked Wildcats played with the lead for much of the game but had to work for the first 35 minutes. But they spurted away late behind Collin Gillespie and captured an 85-66 win over the Bulldogs, the 600th career victory for coach Jay Wright.
Gillespie scored 18 points and dished out five assists, while Jeremiah Robinson-Earl added 18 points, five rebounds, and four assists for Nova (6-1). Justin Moore contributed 13 points and Jermaine Samuels 12.
The Bulldogs (1-1) played their only game on Nov. 25, a win over Western Michigan. They had four games postponed after that because of COVID-19 issues in their program and found their next game on the Main Line.
The Wildcats led 41-34 at the half. They held Butler to one field goal in a 5-minute, 9-second stretch of the second half and took a 55-46 lead on Cole Swider’s 3-pointer with 11:29 left.
After Samuels scored Villanova’s next four points to keep the margin at nine, Chuck Harris drained a 3to cut the lead to 59-53. Robinson-Earl then played a key role in his team’s next two possessions, laying in a pass from Gillespie and setting up Caleb Daniels’ 3-pointer from the left corner that put the Wildcats in front, 64-53, with 8 minutes left.
The Bulldogs were still within 10 with 5 minutes remaining but Gillespie then scored his team’s next nine points to extend the margin to 14, 77-63, with 3 minutes to play.
The Butler effort took a hit when point guard Aaron Thompson suffered an apparent knee injury with 4:36 to play after bumping knees with teammate Myles Wilmoth. He finished with 14 points.
Jair Bolden carried the Bulldogs to a hot start, accounting for 13 of his team’s first 17 points in the first 5:05 of the game. He finished with 18 points.
In the first half, Thompson went to the bench at the 10:03 mark with his second personal foul. The game was tied at 24 shortly after he left, and then the Wildcats mounted a 15-4 run while holding Butler to 2-of-11 shooting.
Gillespie scored five points during the spurt and the Wildcats took their largest lead of the half, 39-28, on Eric Dixon’s free throw with 1:51 remaining. The Bulldogs cut into the deficit a little bit and Thompson’s driving layup just before the buzzer reduced the gap to 41-34 at the break.
