Behind three-point barrage and three-guard magic, St. Joe’s gets its statement win over Villanova

Billy Lange didn’t need the history lesson. He was on the other bench the last time it happened.

Feb. 2, 2004.

It was undefeated and third-ranked St. Joseph’s and its three-guard lineup against Villanova’s three-guard lineup. Lange was a 32-year-old assistant on Jay Wright’s Villanova staff. Behind 23 points from Jameer Nelson and 21 from Delonte West, the Hawks stayed undefeated.

Nearly 20 years later, after stints at Navy, back to Villanova, a run with the 76ers, and now as the head coach at St. Joe’s, Lange, behind the power of three guards, earned the first St. Joe’s victory at Villanova’s Pavilion in 10 tries since Wednesday night. The Hawks’ 78-65 win snapped an 11-game losing streak to No. 18 Villanova. Funnily enough, Lange was on that 2011 Villanova staff, too.

Lange, the head man on Hawk Hill since 2019, doesn’t rank wins and wouldn’t admit it, but this one would clearly rank at the top of his wins at St. Joe’s.

“It’s about our guys. It’s about our university,” he said afterward. “I know what this game means to the city of Philadelphia. This will probably help a lot of St. Joe’s people enjoy their Mack and Manco’s a bit more down at the boardwalk.”

» READ MORE: Villanova and St. Joe’s weren’t defined by one loss. They won’t be defined by Wednesday’s result, either.

What it does for St. Joe’s between now and next summer, though, is clear. The Hawks advanced to Saturday’s Big 5 Classic title game at the Wells Fargo Center, where they will play Temple. The loss two weeks ago to Texas A&M-Commerce might haunt them some time down the road when and if their name comes up in the at-large conversation of the NCAA Tournament, but for now, it renders that result useless and so far gone from relevance.

Having taken No. 12 Kentucky to overtime and nearly winning last week at Rupp Arena, stacking this win a week later should put the rest of the Atlantic 10 on notice. Because when three guards click the way Erik Reynolds II, Lynn Greer III, and Xzayvier Brown do on the same night, a lot of wins are on the horizon in that conference. (Heck, in any conference.)

Reynolds poured in a game-high 24 on 8-for-13 shooting, which included five makes on eight attempts from three-point range. Brown, a freshman who wasn’t alive the last time St. Joe’s won inside the Pavilion, was unfazed by his first road Big 5 atmosphere. He scored 16 points on 6-for-9 shooting, including 4 of 5 from deep. Greer went 7-for-10 for 15 points while adding seven assists.

St. Joe’s, now 5-2 on the year, needed all of that and more from that trio. The Hawks played without starting big man Christ Essandoko, whose toe injury that kept him out of the team’s opener flared back up. They also were missing reserve guard Christian Winborne, who missed the game for personal reasons.

Those absences forced Lange to make a choice. His bench wasn’t as deep as it has been to start the season. It also made his team smaller.

What do small teams do, especially when they’re down bodies? They play a little more zone. The Hawks used a 3-2 zone to disrupt Villanova for much of the night. The Wildcats couldn’t shoot St. Joe’s out of it. They made 10 of their 37 three-point attempts. They found little success cracking it inside, either.

“So much of what determines being effective or smart is the result,” Lange said. “If they made a couple of those shots, humbly, it might not have been the smartest move.”

It’s a results-oriented business. But going zone, Lange said, was out of desperation.

“We just really didn’t have a choice, truth be told,” he said. “You make a decision where you want to use most of your energy. I felt like if we didn’t have most of it for offense we had no chance to win this game.”

Watching the game, it was hard to argue with the logic. There was Reynolds, time and time again, creating space and knocking down a deep shot. There was Brown, in one corner and then the other, drilling a crowd-silencing three pointer. There was Greer, picking off one of 17 Villanova turnovers, and then another, and then racing down for a transition score.

Villanova showed a bit of fight midway through the second half. The Wildcats cut a 14-point Hawks lead to seven. St. Joe’s only turned the ball over four times in the first half, but had six in the first 10 minutes of the second half.

“We talked about slowing down and not letting the crowd, the noise, all that stuff get to us,” Reynolds said.

Brown, 18, hardened like Greer by many Philly Catholic League battles at Roman Catholic, hit one of the biggest shots after that run. Just feet from a Villanova student section that chanted “airball” at him from an earlier miss, Brown made a corner three to bump the lead back to 10.

“I was so proud of him,” Reynolds said. “There’s barely any words I have for him. He came out, didn’t let the environment affect him and that’s what we needed.”

Added Brown: “Everything is new to me. Every day is new to me. This was kind of surreal. I can’t believe it.”

After a Villanova basket cut the deficit back to eight, Reynolds hit a shot from the same corner. The Hawks weren’t going to buckle this time.

It was that kind of night. St. Joe’s made 14 of its 27 three-point attempts. They came from everywhere, every angle.

“The teams that I coach, forever, are always going to walk this fine line of, ‘That is an awful shot selection. I can’t believe the coach lets him do it.’ To, ‘Man, these guys play beautiful basketball,’ ” Lange said. “They know that they’re able to walk that line. ... They’re great players, and sometimes we just got to get out of their way. We did a good job of doing that tonight.”

In 2004, his predecessor at St. Joe’s had that luxury, too.