NEW YORK _ On a night when Villanova struggled to score half as many points as it tallied in its first game of the Big East tournament, the second-ranked Wildcats at least had one constant _ Josh Hart was in their lineup doing a little bit of everything.
With Seton Hall forcing them into a grind-it-out type of game, the Cats rode Hart, who scored 12 of his team's last 16 points, including the deciding three-point play with 9.6 seconds remaining, and escaped with a 55-53 victory over the Pirates in the Big East tournament semifinals at Madison Square Garden.
The top-seeded Wildcats (30-3) will play in Saturday's championship game.
The Wildcats followed a 108-point performance against St. John's in Thursday's quarterfinal, a game in which they shot 63 percent, with a night of poor shooting in the first half, when they made just 1 of their first 11 attempts, trailed by as many as 11 and scored only 20 points.
But Hart, the Big East player of the year who scored a game-high 19 points, lifted his team. The Cats didn't lead in the game until Hart stole the ball at midcourt and went in for a dunk to put his team in front, 41-40, with 9 minutes, 18 seconds to play.
That marked the first two of nine straight points by Hart, who also gave Villanova leads of 45-44 on two free throws, and 48-46 on a 3-pointer with just under 4 minutes remaining.
Jalen Brunson then took over, hitting a short baseline jumper and a 16-footer from the wing to give 'Nova a 52-50 lead. But Khadeen Carrington answered the second basket with a three-point play off his own offensive rebound, and the Pirates led 53-52 with 1:43 to play.
Hart then missed the front end of a 1-and-1, and turned the ball over on his team's next possession, but the Cats stopped Seton Hall twice at the defensive end. Hart then put the Wildcats up to stay by converting a second-chance layup off of Kris Jenkins' 3-point miss, and hitting the free throw after a Pirates timeout, to give 'Nova a two-point lead.
On their last possession, the Pirates fed the ball inside to 6-foot-10 Angel Delgado, who backed in on Jenkins and saw his shot from in-close go off the rim. Hart got his hand on the rebound and batted it toward mid-court, and the Wildcats prevailed.
Brunson added 13 points for the Wildcats. Desi Rodriguez led the Pirates (20-12) with 14.
The Wildcats had lost to Seton Hall, 69-67, in last year's Big East championship game. Villanova got back this year with two victories over the Pirates, one by 30 points, the other by 22.
The Wildcats trailed, 27-20, at the half. They started 1 of 11 from the field and finished the first half shooting 26.9 percent in establishing a season low for points in the opening 20 minutes, one day after notching a season high for points in the same period with 52. They were 3 of 13 from 3-point range and turned the ball over seven times.
Donte DiVincenzo led Villanova with seven points and Hart and Brunson added five. Jenkins missed all five of his shots and scored one point but had a team-high five rebounds.
The Wildcats shot better in the early stages of the second half, making nine of their first 14 attempts, and finally took their first lead of the game at the end of a 6-0 run when Hart stole the ball at midcourt and went in for a dunk that put his team up 41-40 with 9:18 remaining.
Up to that point, the closest the Cats came to the lead was with 8:17 left in the first half when Mikal Bridges cut the hoop and took Hart's pass for a dunk to make it 14-14. Villanova trailed by as many as 11 in the first half.
The Wildcats went the first 3:36 of the game before scoring their first points, a three-point play by Brunson, and another 3:18 before getting their second field goal in going down 13-5 early. But a 9-1 run fueled by back-to-back 3-pointers from DiVincenzo rallied them into their first tie of the game, 14-14, on a dunk by Mikal Bridges with 8:17 left.
However, Villanova went cold for the next four minutes and the Pirates scored 11 straight points, including back-to-back baskets by Rodriguez and Mules Powell's third 3-pointer of the half that gave Seton Hall a 25-14 lead with 4:33 remaining.
The Cats scored only twice more after that-a free throw by Jenkins and Hart's 3-point basket-to trim the deficit to 27-20 at the half.
