(Editor’s Note: A shorter version of this ran in Tuesday’s Daily Times print section.)
No lead in a Big East game is safe. Villanova was reminded of that the hard way on Monday.
Micah Peavy’s leaner in the lane with 1.7 seconds left brought Georgetown all the way back from a 13-point second-half deficit to stun Villanova, 64-63, at the Pavilion.
The Wildcats (12-8, 5-4 Big East) led 63-55 on Jordan Longino’s jumper with 4:52 to play. They wouldn’t score again. And it was almost enough, Nova holding Georgetown (13-6, 4-4) without a field goal from Jordan Burks’ dunk with 5:20 to play until a Malik Mack layup nearly four minutes later.
Mack converted an and-1 to get within 63-60 with 1:24 to play. He then found Peavy for a layup with 48 seconds left. Eric Dixon missed a jumper, and after three fouls to give and a deflection out of bounds for an inbounds play with five seconds left, Peavy got the ball at the left elbow, took a few hard dribbles to the low block and floated one up and in.
A Dixon jumper at the horn rimmed out, dealing the Wildcats the latest blow to their hopes of building toward an NCAA at-large bid.
“A lot of credit goes to Georgetown,” coach Kyle Neptune said. “I thought our guys battled. Georgetown just stuck in there the entire game and really locked up defensively the last few minutes, and we didn’t have enough in the end.”
Close games have been the norm for Villanova: Of their nine Big East games, six have been decided by single-digits, and a seventh (against St. John’s) was a one-point game with 2:35 left before the Red Storm pulled away. After winning eight of nine, including a 4-1 start to Big East play capped by the Jan. 8 win over UConn, Villanova has lost three of four. It heads to No. 10 Marquette on Friday.
Peavy led Georgetown with 24 points on 9-for-16 shooting, including 6-for-9 from 3-point range. Jayden Epps supplied 15 points and four assists off the bench. Archbishop Ryan grad Thomas Sorber paired 15 points with 11 rebounds and four assists.
It’s Neptune’s first loss to Georgetown in six games against them. The Hoyas had been the only Big East team not to beat Neptune.
Extenuating circumstances led to an unusually unbalanced night on the offensive end for Villanova. Dixon led all scorers with 29 points. He was 10-for-23 from the field and hit on 5 of 10 3-point looks. He passed Randy Foye (1,966 points) for ninth on the school’s all-time points list with 1,973. Next on the list sits John Pinone with 2,024 points, Allan Ray with 2,025 and Howard Porter with 2,026. He could pass them and Doug West (2,037) in one swoop.
Dixon is 270 points shy of Kerry Kittles’ program record of 2,243 with 11 regular-season games to play; that’s an average of 24.5 points per game for Dixon, who is averaging 24.9 this season.
Longino was the only other Wildcat to make more than one field goal, scoring 18 points. The rest combined for six made baskets and 16 total points. Jhamir Brickus had seven assists. Enoch Boakye paired four points with 12 rebounds.
That was largely because Wooga Poplar was ejected after eight minutes for throwing a punch, the Philadelphia native getting in a tiff near the benches with fellow Philadelphian Thomas Sorber, who remained in the game.
“Just a couple of players getting into a little scuffle,” Sorber, a freshman from Archbishop Ryan, said. “I was just trying to back my teammate up. He probably took it the wrong way.”
The Wildcats had been more balanced in recent weeks, behind the ongoing brilliance of Dixon. Longino is averaging 13.6 ppg over the last nine games. He’d averaged 8.8 ppg in the first 11. Poplar had averaged 17.8 ppg over the last nine games (excluding a 3-point effort in a rout of Seton Hall). Villanova is 6-3 in his last nine double-figures games.
Brickus has adapted to a completely different role with the Wildcats – his scoring average is down from 13.9 last year with La Salle to 11.3 this year, and his field goal attempts per game have fallen from 11 to 8.4. With it, the Coatesville grad’s assists have risen from 4.8 to 5.5 per game. The Wildcats are 7-4 this year where he’s scored in double figures, though they lost his only 20-point outing (against St. Joe’s).
Without Poplar, there wasn’t as much room for error offensively. Villanova shot 40 percent from the field and 40 percent from 3, but 16 turnovers did Villanova no favors.
“I thought we were in a good spot regardless,” Neptune said of the mindset after Poplar’s exit. “We’ve got a lot of confidence in those other guys.”
Source: Berkshire mont
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