The ball movement and the stifling half-court defense. The 3-point shooting and the potent transition game. The seniors taking charge and the youngsters providing valuable production.
After all the questions through the first seven weeks of the season, the losses to Penn, Furman and Michigan, the Jahvon Quinerly situation and veterans Eric Paschall and Phil Booth adjusting to their new roles, Villanova looked like Villanova on Saturday afternoon at the Garden.
A 19-0 second-half run turned a narrow contest into a rout, leading to the Wildcats’ most impressive win of the season, an 81-58 shellacking of Danny Hurley and UConn. After losing their top four scorers to the NBA, Villanova had been shaky, already with four defeats. Quinerly, the five-star freshman point guard from New Jersey, had hardly played. Booth and Paschall had struggled in their expanded roles.
But a week after playing top-ranked Kansas tough, Villanova (9-4) took a major step forward. With starting point guard Collin Gillespie sitting out with a concussion, Quinerly got a real chance to make an impact, and was up to the challenge, scoring a career-high 10 points and adding four assists in a season-most 25 minutes. Booth carried Nova early, scoring 10 first-half points en route to an 18-point, seven-rebound, seven-assist effort, and Paschall broke out in the second stanza, with 16 of his 21 points, to go along with six rebounds and five assists.
Most impressively, Villanova had 20 assists on 27 made field goals, and clamped down on UConn, limiting them to 33 percent shooting over the final 20 minutes, and forced 17 turnovers, as the Wildcats avoided their first three-game losing streak since 2013, gained some much-needed momentum with the league season nearing.