Villanova coach Jay Wright hasn’t shied away from discussing alternate realities with his No. 2 Wildcats.
After being the darlings of Philadelphia following their NCAA championship in March, the Wildcats have followed up this season with an impressive encore. A 75-62 victory Monday at DePaul was their sixth in a row, and Saturday the selection committee revealed them as the top overall seed in its early peek at the top 16 teams.
So Wright reminds his players about how fragile all this success is. He did it again before Monday night’s game at Allstate Arena.
"We talk about it all the time," Wright said. "We came into Xavier (on Saturday) fired up and thinking we would have Darryl (Reynolds), and all of a sudden we didn’t have Darryl (because of a rib injury). We said, ‘Hey, these are the things that can happen during the season.’
"We use every situation. Coming into this game, we showed them we really should have lost the (previous meeting) at home. We just said, ‘This is how close we are to losing to this team.’"
The Wildcats stayed on course, a path they hope leads to consecutive national titles for the first time since Florida repeated in 2006 and ’07.
They were without Reynolds for a second straight game against DePaul and played again with a short rotation of seven players. After playing at Xavier just two days earlier, Villanova (25-2, 12-2 Big East) appeared to be running on fumes and grinded to the finish despite shooting 9 of 25 (36 percent) in the second half and getting outscored 44-36.
Despite some significant changes on the roster, the Wildcats have the essential parts that led them to last season’s title with a last-second victory against North Carolina.
One of those parts is Jalen Brunson, the sophomore from Stevenson who has taken over at point guard from the departed Ryan Arcidiacono. Brunson finished with a game-high 18 points Monday plus four assists and three steals.
"The praise that rightfully so was heaped upon Arcidiacono has been matched by Jalen Brunson’s play," DePaul coach Dave Leitao said. "I told him after the game, that’s how a point guard is (supposed to play).
"I don’t know that they’ve lost a step. … I think they’re right where they need to be, with the asterisk of how quickly they can get healthy."
Villanova led 39-18 at halftime and by 27 early in the second half, keeping DePaul from scoring for nearly the first five minutes of the half. The Wildcats and Blue Demons are at polar ends of the Big East.
The Wildcats are nearly breezing through the conference in first place. Meanwhile, DePaul (8-18, 1-12) is at the bottom of the standings, hoping to pick up a second conference victory in one of its five remaining games.
Villanova held Billy Garrett to 1-of-9 shooting, in part, Leitao said, because of Garrett’s hesitancy with the ball.
DePaul is in the middle of a "murderous" stretch, Leitao said, playing its third straight ranked opponent amid a nine-game losing streak.
Despite the convincing win, Villanova senior guard Josh Hart, a national player of the year candidate, said the Wildcats were leaving Chicago with another lesson.
"We have to play 40 minutes," said Hart, who finished with 16 points. "We have to get to work tomorrow and be the best team we can be at the end of the year."
sryan@chicagotribune.com
Twitter @sryantribune
(Shannon Ryan)
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