After loss to UConn, Villanova’s path to the NCAA Tournament has just one route

There was a silver lining inside Villanova’s 71-59 loss to No. 14 UConn in the regular-season finale Saturday night at the Wells Fargo Center, depending on your perspective.

A win, which would’ve been Villanova’s seventh in eight games, would’ve improved the Wildcats’ at-large resume, thin as it may have been. It would have left Villanova fans holding on to the hope that just getting to next Saturday’s Big East tournament final and losing would be enough to get the Wildcats off the outer edges of the NCAA Tournament bubble and into the field of 68.

Now, at least, the road map is clear: Villanova (16-15, 10-10 Big East) must win four games in four days and be the last team standing at Madison Square Garden in New York next week to avoid missing out on the NCAA Tournament for the first time since 2012.

The Wildcats may have had to do that anyway, no matter the result of Saturday’s game. But a poor shooting performance caused by a suffocating UConn defense made sure of it.

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Justin Moore led Villanova with 17 points. Cam Whitmore added 14 points and five rebounds. Eric Dixon was held below 10 points for just the fourth time all season, scoring just seven.

Jordan Hawkins led UConn (24-7, 13-7) with 24 points. Alex Karaban added 16 points on 6-of-8 shooting and six rebounds. Andre Jackson had 10 points, seven rebounds and five assists. Adama Sanogo tallied nine points and nine rebounds.

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Villanova started strong offensively. The Wildcats made seven of their first 13 shots and were finding ways to score despite UConn’s tough defense.

A Mark Armstrong layup gave Villanova a 19-17 lead with nine minutes remaining in the first half. That was Villanova’s lone-made basket during a stretch of six-plus minutes. UConn seized control of the half with the help of a 10-1 run.

Villanova’s sloppiness in the half culminated in the waning moments. Whitmore grabbed a rebound off a Sanogo miss with 30 seconds to play and the shot clock unplugged. Villanova could’ve had the last possession of the half. At worst, the Wildcats would be down six at halftime. At best, that deficit could’ve been halved.

Instead, Whitmore rushed the ball upcourt and turned it over. UConn got the final shot of the half: a Karaban baseline jumper that beat the first-half buzzer and sent UConn into the break with a 32-24 lead.

The poor shooting didn’t get much better after halftime. UConn deserves some credit for how tight it played Villanova defensively, but even Villanova’s open shots were rarely falling. The Wildcats made just two of their first nine shots in the second half while UConn, led by Hawkins, executed much more efficiently on offense.

Once UConn built a 14-point lead early in the second half, Villanova rarely got the deficit to single digits.

The Wildcats showed a little bit of life with 7 1/2 minutes to go. Whitmore made a tough layup while being fouled but missed a free throw that would’ve cut the deficit to eight. A 6-2 Huskies spurt pushed the lead back to 13.

Villanova made just seven of its 28 three-point attempts on the night. The Wildcats shot 36.4% from the floor overall.

“I thought they got into us,” Villanova coach Kyle Neptune said. “They make you miss. There’s a reason why their defensive numbers are where they are.”

Hawkins, meanwhile, did nearly all of his damage in the second half, scoring 19 of his 24.

Villanova begins its quest for a sixth Big East conference tournament championship in eight tries Wednesday night. The sixth-seeded Wildcats, not used to playing on the tournament’s first day, will play 11th-seeded Georgetown (8 p.m.).

While Villanova entered Saturday locked into the No. 6 seed after Tuesday’s win at Seton Hall, the rest of the unsettled tournament seeds started to take shape Saturday afternoon. Providence played itself out of the third seed after a 24-point home defeat to seventh-seeded Seton Hall.

With a win over DePaul Saturday night, Creighton would move up to the third seed, meaning a Wednesday night win for Villanova over Georgetown would set up a quarterfinal game with a Bluejays team the Wildcats just pummeled at home a week ago.

As some of Saturday’s results showed — maybe not the one in South Philadelphia — the conference tournament is wide open.

Despite his team stopping Villanova’s offense in its tracks, UConn coach Dan Hurley said the Wildcats “have as good a chance as anyone in the league to win the tournament.”

“Our mindset all year has been game by game,” Neptune said. “We’ve got to go out and prepare for one team and then prepare for another team and then hopefully prepare for another team.”

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