Villanova loses Collin Gillespie, but wins Big East regular season title with a 72-60 victory over Creighton

It was not the way Villanova wanted to celebrate Senior Night, and it put a damper on the Wildcats winning their seventh Big East regular-season championship in the last eight years, watching Collin Gillespie leave the bench on crutches after his team’s 72-60 victory over Creighton at Finneran Pavilion.

The team’s point guard and leader on and off the court, Gillespie suffered a left knee injury with 6 minutes, 38 seconds left in the first half when he got tangled with Creighton’s Damien Jefferson near the basket. Gillespie struggled to rise off the court but could barely put any weight on the leg, the pain etched in his face as he reached the bench.

“Our trainer said it looks pretty serious,” Villanova coach Jay Wright said. “He can’t say what it is, but (Gillespie) is going to have an MRI tomorrow morning. There was no chance of him returning for the second half.

“That’s all we know. We’re not going to speculate but I’ll be honest with you, (our trainer) is not saying he’s going to be fine. He’s saying it’s pretty serious.”

Wright admitted that when the players went into the locker room at halftime and saw Gillespie in pain, some heads were hanging.

“Definitely, I could see it right away,” he said. “They’re tough guys but they were down. Then they started pumping each other up.

“There’s probably not one player that’s had such an impact on a team in a year as Collin does here. He’s our spiritual leader. Work ethic, he’s our leader. Character-wise, he’s our leader, on the court he is. He’s tough to replace. We’re going to have to grow up real quick. Guys are going to have to step up and I think they will.”

Guys did Wednesday night. With Gillespie gone and Justin Moore on the bench with two personal fouls, 6-foot-9 center Jeremiah Robinson-Earl played the point the rest of the first half. Villanova boosted what was a 12-point lead at the time of Gillespie’s departure to 19, 42-23, at halftime.

“We were going to try it for a little bit to try to steal some minutes for Justin because he had two fouls,” Wright said, “but we actually increased our lead. Jeremiah did such a great job. We just stuck with it. I think that was the difference in the game, him playing the point. They obviously weren’t prepared for that.”

Robinson-Earl finished with 14 points, 14 rebounds and five assists. Moore led all scorers with 24 points. Gillespie, the team’s second-leading scorer, finished with five points and two assists in 13 minutes.

The Wildcats (16-4, 11-3 Big East) increased their margin to 22 on two occasions in the second half, the final time at 57-35 on Moore’s three-point basket with 14:17 left. But then they went ice cold, going more than 8 ½ minutes without a point covering 11 possessions.

The Bluejays (17-7, 13-6), who had a 6-minute drought in the first half, welcomed the chance to get back into the game and scored 17 unanswered points, pulling to within 57-52 on a reverse layup by Shereef Mitchell with 6:42 remaining.

Robinson-Earl ended the Villanova drought on a layup at the 5:43 mark but Creighton got it back down to five when Mitch Ballock stole a rebound from Brandon Slater and sank a layup with 3:27 to play to get the gap back to five.

But Slater, not considered a three-point shooter, knocked down a deep ball with just under three minutes to play and Moore followed with a conventional three-point play at the 2:07 mark. Cole Swider finished a 9-0 run with a three-point second-chance basket to give the Wildcats a 68-54 lead inside of a minute remaining.

Slater finished with 11 points, five rebounds and two steals.

The Wildcats, who shot 54.5% from the field in the first half, finished the game at 48.3%, hitting 9 of 26 three-point attempts after their dreadful 2-of-27 showing on Sunday at Butler.