Copyright The Philadelphia Inquirer
LAS VEGAS — There are things that can’t happen in the waning moments if you want to do what Villanova almost did Monday night at T-Mobile Arena. They are the things that can make a hard-fought 71-66 loss feel less like a moral victory and more like a missed opportunity. A 14-point second-half deficit to eighth-ranked BYU in what was effectively a road environment had been erased. BYU, led by top recruit AJ Dybansta, held a two-point lead with Villanova possessing the ball out of a media timeout with 3 minutes, 31 seconds to play. The Wildcats had gone cold, and maybe the extended timeout would be fruitful. Instead, Tafara Gapare traveled, and Dybansta extended the lead to four at the other end. Then Villanova freshman guard Chris Jeffrey drove to the basket and missed a shot near the rim. After a Villanova stop, Bryce Lindsay, who almost single-handedly won Villanova the game, missed the front-end of a one-and-one from the free-throw line. BYU’s Robert Wright III, a former Neumann-Goretti guard, grabbed the rebound and scored at the other end. In a blink, a two-point deficit was six, and after another empty possession and Dybantsa basket, it was eight inside of two minutes to play. Game over. Villanova fought hard in Kevin Willard’s first game as head coach, but ran out of gas in the end. Here’s what we learned from the opener. Final stretch indicative of an issue Lindsay — the James Madison transfer guard who made five three-pointers and led Villanova with 22 points — connected on a triple with 6½ minutes left and gave Villanova its largest lead of the night, 59-57. The Wildcats didn’t make another basket from the floor with the result of the game still hanging in the balance. BYU scored the next 10 points. “We did some really good things in the second half defensively,” Willard said. “Obviously, offensively, it happened [in an exhibition] at Virginia, and it happened again tonight … we’re taking some bad shots, early shots, that are causing bad defense." The glaring issue was that it wasn’t clear where the offense was going to come from. For much of the night, Villanova did what it wanted to do defensively. But offense was hard to come by. Villanova started 1-for-10 from three-point range and recovered mildly to the tune of a 10-for-35 (28.6%) shooting performance from beyond the arc. Take away Lindsay’s 5-for-9 effort and the numbers are even bleaker. More than the shooting, it was the creating down the stretch that did in Villanova. Freshman Acaden Lewis was on the bench for the final 15 minutes (more on that in a bit). Senior Devin Askew played injured and looked incapable of providing an offensive spark when Villanova needed it (more on that ahead, too). Besides Jeffrey getting downhill and Lindsay either launching from deep in isolation sets or playing a little two-man game, the offense seemed to lack coherence in crucial moments. » READ MORE: Villanova hired Kevin Willard to change course. ‘Rebuilding this program’ starts Monday. Rotating rotations Ten Villanova players saw the floor in the first half. Willard has said he imagines the Wildcats might play 10 or 11 guys, and when Temple transfer Zion Stanford eventually returns from his left ankle sprain, it seems like 11 players could play. This was all going to look new. It’s an almost entirely new roster. But multiple Wildcats have been injured during the preseason, and Willard pointed to the injuries as the main reason the rotations weren’t clicking offensively for long stretches Monday night. “For me, one of my biggest issues I’m having is just trying to get together, piece together lineups right now because we just haven’t practiced,” he said. Askew missed multiple weeks with a knee injury and only recently returned to practice. Gapare missed time, as did Lindsay. But Askew was cleared prior to Monday’s game and played on a minutes restriction. He didn’t score in 13 minutes, but Willard said he had the 23-year-old on the court in crunch time because of his experience. Askew was minus-18 in 13 minutes. “You could tell he just hasn’t played in a month and a half so that was probably stupid of me,” Willard said. “Just trying to find lineups that complement each other and that’s been a challenge right now.” One lineup that did work was when Willard took senior big man Duke Brennan, a Grand Canyon transfer, off the court. Brennan had a solid debut with Villanova — eight points to go with 15 rebounds — but Willard decided to go smaller near the midpoint of the second half. Matthew Hodge and Gapare played in the frontcourt with Jeffrey, Lindsay, and Tyler Perkins in the backcourt. “That’s probably going to be our lineup a lot,” Willard said. “We just haven’t been able to practice it, so we don’t have much offensively that we can do with it. “What I like about it is you got five guys out there that can make an offensive play. So as tough and as good as Duke is, and Duke was phenomenal, sometimes going small makes them go small.” It worked Monday. But in a perfect world, Jeffrey probably would have been replaced by Lewis. One freshman shined, another was benched Lewis, a consensus top 35 recruit, went to the bench with 14 minutes, 55 seconds remaining in the second half. He didn’t play again. Lewis started played 22 minutes. He scored five points on 1-for-6 shooting (1-for-4 from three-point range) and had three assists, two rebounds, and one turnover. He was just minus-four, but Willard seemed displeased with his overall play. Jeffrey, meanwhile, was plus-10 and scored 11 points in 16 minutes. He didn’t play until there were four minutes left in the first half, but he played in many of the key minutes. There will be some growing pains with a young backcourt, and Askew, when healthy, is supposed to be able to stabilize things. There was some good Monday, but also some bad. Big picture The Wildcats nearly spoiled Dybansta’s debut. They were competitive on the glass and were able to slow down a high-powered BYU attack. But an inefficient offense that shot poorly (35.8% overall) and did not take advantage of enough opportunities ruined Villanova’s chances of scoring a marquee win. The schedule gets easier from here. Up next is a Saturday contest vs. Queens University of Charlotte. After that it’s Sacred Heart, Duquesne, La Salle, Old Dominion, and Temple. Willard and the Wildcats have ample time to get healthy and get their issues figured out in the coming weeks while playing games they’ll be favored to win. A positive start despite the result? “Yeah, that was a road game,” Willard said. “To kind of have your first game with 13 new guys and for them to show the fight to find a way to get some stops, yeah, definitely.”
