PHILADELPHIA _ Three weeks after Donte DiVincenzo established the highest scoring game of his career against St. John's, he bettered that performance Saturday night against the Red Storm.
The redshirt freshman scored 20 points, second on the team to Josh Hart's 26, to lift the fourth-ranked Wildcats to a 92-79 Big East victory over St. John's at the Wells Fargo Center.
The Wildcats (22-2, 9-2 Big East) were in control of the game for much of the first 37 minutes, leading by as many as 26 points in the first half. After the Red Storm (11-14, 5-7) cut the deficit to nine in the opening five minutes of the second half, Villanova spurted again and rebuilt its margin to as high as 23 points with 2 minutes, 55 seconds to play.
But the Cats, who committed a season-high 23 turnovers, again struggled to finish the game. With the help of three turnovers, St. John's scored 15 consecutive points, including two free throws after a technical foul call against coach Jay Wright with 1:16 to play.
That made it 87-79, but two free throws by Mikal Bridges and a conventional three-point play by Kris Jenkins accounted for the final margin.
In addition to his 26 points, Hart also grabbed nine rebounds and handed out five assists. Jenkins added 15 points, Bridges 14, and Jalen Brunson 12 for the Wildcats.
Marcus LoVett led the Red Storm with 23.
DiVincenzo, who scored 15 of his points in the first half, previously had set a career high of 19 points on Jan. 14, when the Cats defeated St. John's, 70-57 at Madison Square Garden.
Villanova held the Red Storm scoreless for almost the first 7{ minutes in the game, with the visitors missing their first 12 attempts from the field. But St. John's shot 50 percent in the final 12{ minutes and connected on 5 of 8 in a 12-2 run that enabled them to cut a 26-point deficit to 18, 46-28, by halftime.
Villanova made 10 of its last 16 shots from the floor to get its first-half percentage to 48.3, but 11 turnovers soured the effort a bit. The Wildcats, who turned it over 20 times in their first meeting against the Johnnies, committed five in the final four minutes of the first half Saturday night.
Eric Paschall started in place of Jenkins and contributed three blocked shots and two steals in 16 minutes of action.
St. John's scored the first seven points of the second half _ five by Bashir Ahmed _ and got as close as nine twice, the second time at 51-42 on a 3-point basket by Federico Mussini with 15 minutes, 46 seconds to play. But Hart and Jenkins scored five points each in a 15-4 run that re-established a 20-point lead for the Wildcats with 11:12 to play.
Villanova got the lead as high as 24 in the second half, and was up 87-64 on Brunson's three-point play with 2:55 remaining. But the Red Storm made it interesting from that point to make the final score look more respectable for them.
