VILLANOVA, Pa. — Jay Wright smiles when he talks about it, but in the moment it’s probably not quite as funny.
His Villanova Wildcats have had large leads get erased in recent games, but Wright — for the moment — isn’t all that concerned.
“They get down, they blow leads. It doesn’t affect them,” Wright said. “They don’t panic. It might just be the personality of this team.”
That much was true Tuesday night.
The Wildcats watched a 17-point lead shrink to two before Player of the Year candidate Josh Hart put the game away late and helped Villanova stave off Georgetown, 75-64 (see Instant Replay).
It looked a lot like the Marquette game two weeks back, which ended in a defeat after Villanova once had a 17-point lead. And it looked much more like the Providence game last week in Rhode Island, where a 13-point second-half lead shrunk to two before the Wildcats pulled away late.
Villanova stopped scoring, stopped running its offense fluidly and stopped getting stops on the defensive end.
This time, when Georgetown used a 23-11 run to get within two, 60-58, with 3:51 to go, Wright’s team found a way thanks to Hart.
Hart had missed his first seven shots in the second half after scoring 17 first-half points. But with the Hoyas within four, Hart stung a trey from the top of the key to give Villanova a 66-59 lead with 1:20 to go, all but putting the game away, finally.
Wright was asked if having just a seven-man rotation, which may be tiring, was to blame for the recent lapses.
“We don’t have anyone in the top 10 in minutes in [league games],” Wright responded. “I just think it’s just mental concentration. I really do. It’s just maturity. As a basketball player and a basketball team, we’ve just got to become more focused.”
Wright, who won his 499th career game Tuesday, looked no further than Hart to make his point even more …
“That three he hit at the end, he’s coming off the baseline to the middle of the floor,” Wright said. “You have to have strong legs to catch that and drill that. He does. I think it’s just more concentration.”
Hart, whose 25 points Tuesday led all scorers, said the concentration starts with him and fellow seniors Kris Jenkins and Darryl Reynolds.
“We’ve had several games like that,” Hart said. “Kris, Darryl and myself have to demand it. We obviously have a little bit of a younger team. But the three of us have been here for four years. We’ve been in some big games and we’ve played Villanova basketball. We’ve played with great guys who played Villanova basketball. We've just got to demand it. That’s something that definitely is concerning but I think we can head in the right direction.”
Of course, this is mostly nitpicking for a team which won its fourth straight and ninth in its last 10 to improve to 23-2 on the year and 10-2 in the Big East.
But with six games to go on their schedule, the Wildcats aren’t going to be able to have the same lapses and still be successful as March nears.
The periods of mental lapses are fine against unranked teams in the Big East that you’re able to build leads of 15 or more against. In March, there are rarely opportunities to get leads like that, so mental lapses like Tuesday usually end in defeat.
So now the No. 2 Wildcats take their test on the road for three games, starting Saturday in Cincinnati against No. 24 Xavier.
“They don’t give me any reason [to worry],” Wright said. “They find their way to do it. I know they’ll go into Xavier ready to play. I know they’ll go in with confidence and great respect for Xavier. They do that every game. It’s just a matter of how we will handle periods during the game, putting 40 minutes together.
“It’s a fine line of not losing their confidence and us being able to use their confidence as an advantage. But not being too loose that you relax and give up leads. We’re right in between there. We don’t go on long stretches. We go on short ones. It cost us at Butler. It cost us at the end of the Marquette game. … We've just got to grow, got to continue to grow.”