I know what you’re thinking –
“Kyle won’t write about the Villanova loss since he’s a biased Villanova guy.”
That’s partially true. He’s doing business stuff for the site, so he himself is not going to write about it. He asked me to whip something up in his stead.
Penn looked good last night. Really good. Credit where it’s due; they’re a well-coached squad that knows how to space the floor and play disruptive defense and do the small things well. It’s not to say that Jay Wright is chopped liver compared to Steve Donahue, because Jay obviously just won two national championships, but I think we all knew that Villanova was gonna fall off a little bit after losing a bunch of guys to the NBA. Going down to Furman early in the season showed us that they were probably ripe for a Big 5 picking.
The Quakers didn’t win every category across the board last night. They actually took three fewer shots than Nova but were better from the three point line, hitting 7 of 16 tries for a 43.8% number. Villanova put up some deep bricks to the tune of a 9-26 night (34.6%), and that was probably the key difference, the three point shooting, along with Penn grabbing 13 offensive rebounds to offset a -3 turnover margin. Nova’s bench went 0-5 from three and contributed just 11 of their 75 points, while the Quakers got 25 combined points from Michael Wang and Jake Silpe on 7-14 shooting. Nova only mustered six assists as Penn forced them to play off the bounce, and when it came down to the final minutes, they team hit their free throws to finish the job.
