Wave of Villanova 3s sinks Kansas.
SAN ANTONIO — One by one, Villanova keeps winning games and getting closer to another national title.
Three by three, the Wildcats kept knocking down shots, making sure Kansas wouldn’t get in their way.
Villanova made a Final Four-record 18 3-pointers Saturday night and also became the most prolific 3-point shooting team in college hoops history, playing long ball to snuff out the Jayhawks early in a 95-79 victory.
Junior wingman Eric Paschall led the barrage, going 4 for 5 from 3, 10 for 11 overall, and finishing with a career-high 24 points.
But the hoop was as wide as the Alamodome for pretty much everyone in a Wildcats jersey. Seven ’Nova players made 3s. Villanova shot 50 percent from behind the arc in the first half to put things out of reach — and 45 percent for the game.
“That happens sometimes when you’re a good-shooting team and when you start that way,” Villanova coach Jay Wright said. “It’s hard for Kansas, it’s hard to come back. That doesn’t happen often. We’re lucky it happened tonight.”
Next up is Michigan, which will try to guard the perimeter Monday night when Villanova (35-5) goes for its second title in three seasons. Good luck with that. Nobody has had much success this season, and in what turned out to be an unexpectedly lopsided matchup between top seeds, Kansas (31-8) certainly didn’t Saturday night. Player of the Year Jalen Brunson made three 3s and finished with 18 points. Omari Spellman made three, as well, in a 15-point, 13-rebound monster game.
About 1 minute into the second half, Paschall drained a 3 for Villanova’s 14th of the game, breaking a Final Four record first set by UNLV in 1987.
Much earlier, at about the 13-minute mark of the first half, Collin Gillespie spotted up and swished for ‘Nova’s sixth 3 of the game, which gave it the NCAA record for 3s in a season, with 442. VMI set that record in 2007. Very few remember that team, though, because even though the importance of the long shot has grown as the decades have passed, it’s never been thought of as a guaranteed way to win consistently.
Wright’s team is laying waste to that theory and, at times, making other teams look bad while doing it.
On Saturday, the typical Villanova possession involved working the ball down low on the wing, then a skip pass across the bottom of the paint, followed by one, two or three passes around the arc until somebody got open. It usually worked. Most of the 18 makes barely skimmed the net.