Wildcats’ championship was total team effort Wildcats
It would be easy to attribute Villanova’s run to a second national championship in three years to having the consensus national player of the year (Jalen Brunson), the top small forward in the country (Mikal Bridges), one of the best sixth men in the land (Donte DiVincenzo), the rookie of the year in the Big East (Omari Spellman) and the most prolific offense in program history (86.6 points per game). Yet that would be an over-simplification. There is no doubt this was the most talented team Jay Wright has had in his 17 years on the Main Line and arguably the most physically gifted in program history.
Brunson is the first Villanova player to win the Wooden Award as the top player in college basketball. He’s also the first Wildcat to earn the Bob Cousy Award as the best point guard in the nation. Bridges is the second straight player from Villanova to win the Julius Erving award as the top small forward. Josh Hart received the honor last year. DiVincenzo set the record for the most points by a non-starter in the championship game (31).
It wasn’t that easy, even though Villanova was ranked No. 1 in the Associated Press poll for a total of eight weeks and 31 of the school-record 36 wins came by double digits, including the last 10. There were hurdles the Wildcats had to overcome to become just the fourth team since the UCLA dynasty ended in 1975 to win two national championships in the span of three seasons.
First, Villanova had to bet better on the defensive end. The key there was the development of Spellman, specifically on the pick-and-roll. For all of its offensive firepower, Jay Wright and his staff knew they could not count on outscoring teams on a nightly basis. And Spellman’s development as a rim protector as well as a player who could defend on switches out on the perimeter was tantamount to that improvement.
And Spellman was willing to put in the work.
“That’s something I didn’t do a lot in high school,” Spellman said of defending
the pick-and-roll. “I had to learn it and the coaches were willing to spend the time to teach those concepts to me.”
“Omari was so open to coaching,” assistant coach Ashley Howard said. “He wanted to learn. He wanted to get better and he did.”
The other key to Villanova’s defensive improvement was the return of junior guard Phil Booth after missing seven games with a broken right hand. Booth is one of Villanova’s best on-ball defenders and it wasn’t a coincidence that the Wildcats became a better defensive team when Booth returned to the lineup against Xavier on Feb. 17.
The Wildcats won 13 of their last 14 games after Booth came back.
“He was an infusion that kind of finished it off for us,” Wright said of Booth. “He was the intelligent one out there defensively that kept everybody together.”
Injuries also played a part in Villanova’s success. In addition to Booth, freshman guard Collin Gillespie missed eight games with a broken left hand. Freshman forward Jermaine Samuels sat out seven games with the same injury and forward Eric Paschall missed two games with a concussion. The Wildcats did not have their full lineup from the time they played Temple on Dec. 10 until Booth returned against Xavier on Feb. 17, a span of 16 games. Three of Villanova’s four losses came in that stretch.
“The injuries allowed us to play Collin Gillespie and Dhamir Cosby-Roundtree during the season, which gave those guys just enough confidence to be effective during this time of year,” Howard said. “It gave Eric Paschall and Donte DiVincenzo to thrive during the regular season. Everybody had to step up. Everybody had a the opportunity to play a few more minutes and experience failure. The guys who were sitting out had an opportunity to see that. They realized what the coaches were talking about.
“And so, when we got the whole team back right before the Big East tournament, we had the opportunity to hammer away on our defensive principles. I think all of those things, the injuries, the losses during the regular season helped us to get to this point where we were playing our best basketball at the end of the season.”
The numbers bear that out. The Wildcats were allowing 76.3 points per game heading into the Big East tournament, and teams were shooting 44.7 percent overall and 33.8 percent from 3-point range. Those figures dropped to 70.2, 42.8 and 31.7 in the final statistics.
The defensive improvement was evident in the championship game. Michigan had a 21-14 lead with 10:59 left in the first half. The Wolverines scored seven points the rest of the half and just two points in the first two minutes of the second half.
“We’ve been trying to make ourselves the best defensive team all year,” Brunson said. “And we just kept chipping away, chipping away, knowing it wasn’t going to be perfect, wasn’t going to be easy. But we have to keep grinding.”
The Wildcats ground teams down with the most efficient offense in Division I. Villanova led the country in scoring for the first time since 1950 and became the first team to lead the country in that category and win the national championship since North Carolina in 2005.
Villanova did it with an NBA-style offense that spread the floor and bombarded teams from the 3-point line.
“This is Golden State Warriors here,” Michigan coach John Beilein said. “This is Draymond Green-type of thing where your guys can shoot it, they can pass it, they can do everything.”
Of Villanova’s top eight players, seven could shoot the 3-pointer. Bridges, Brunson, Booth, Spellman and DiVincenzo all made at least 55 triples to help the Wildcats set the NCAA record for 3-pointers in a season (464). The Wildcats shot 40 percent from deep and had at least 10 3-pointers in 26 games and set the Final Four record for triples in a game (18) and the mark for 3-pointers in an NCAA tournament (76).
“(They have) shooters at every position, passers at every position and defenders,” Beilein said. “We were trying to find out, who was the weak guy we can pick on? There’s a couple of guys that aren’t as strong as others, but it’s a tremendous basketball team. That team right there could win a lot of Final Fours not just the 2018 one.”
Villanova did, winning in 2016 and again this season to join Duke, North Carolina and Kentucky as the only teams to win two titles in the last 43 years. Along the way, the Wildcats set the NCAA record for most wins in a four-year span (136) and extended their streak without consecutive losses to five seasons.
“I still can’t put it into words,” Brunson said. “This is so special. To be able to do this, with this group of guys means the world to me and something that I’ll never forget.”