NEW YORK -- After battling all the way back from a 14-point deficit, Villanova had exactly the situation it wanted.
A two-point lead. The ball in Josh Hart’s hands. A timeout remaining. And 35 seconds on the clock.
A second consecutive Big East Tournament championship was right there within the Wildcats' reach.
Hart, Villanova’s best player and a first-team all-conference guard, held the ball. And held it. And held it.
He looked right, looked left, got tied up and held it too long. Just like that Seton Hall got the ball.
Ten seconds later, unstoppable Isaiah Whitehead drove the lane, got fouled by Kris Jenkins, made a basket, made a foul shot, gave the Pirates the lead and that was it.
Seton Hall 69, Villanova 67 (see Instant Replay).
Villanova's one-year run atop the conference was over, and for the first time in 23 years, the Pirates became Big East Tournament champs.
And Hart couldn’t stop blaming himself.
“I had the ball with 20 seconds with a timeout with a two-point lead and I turned the ball over,” he said. “I put that one on me. My team put the ball in my hands, and I didn’t come through.”
The reality is that Villanova never would have been 29-4 or ranked No. 3 in the country or No. 1 seed in the Big East Tournament without Hart.
And Villanova never would have clawed back from 14 points down Saturday without Hart.
This is part of what makes him such a great player.
He doesn’t shy away in the biggest moments on the biggest stage.
And when he doesn’t get the job done, he blames only himself.
Hart had 17 points and five rebounds Saturday, but he couldn’t stop running that one crucial moment over in his mind.
Asked how hard it would be to put the loss behind him, he was honest.
“Definitely going to be tough,” he said. “This is a game where I ask myself, ‘What if I didn’t turn the ball over? What if I called a timeout?’
“Clock was winding down, they had to foul soon. That will haunt me for a while, but I’ll just try to focus on tomorrow, find out who we have and try to put this behind us the best we can.”
Tomorrow is Selection Sunday for the NCAA Tournament, and Villanova will be a No. 1 or 2 seed.
But that was no consolation Saturday at the Garden, where Seton Hall and Villanova locked up in a ferocious battle between two of the country’s hottest teams in a raucous, sold-out, historic arena.
“Two great teams going at it,” said Jenkins, who led Villanova with 23 points. “They did enough to beat us today, but there’s no failure in how we played. We gave it our all and they made one extra shot than us.”
Seton Hall roared out to a 37-23 lead, shooting 63 percent in the game’s opening 16½ minutes.
“They were just playing great, and I guess we came out lackadaisical, and they jumped on us early,” Jenkins said. “But we fought back and we gave ourselves a chance.”
With Jenkins burying three after three, Villanova battled back in the second half, using a 17-4 run to tie the game at 50.
Jenkins finally gave Villanova the lead at 67-64 with 52 seconds with a straight-on three — his fifth bomb of the game.
But with the game on the line, Whitehead was unstoppable.
"This whole year coach (Kevin Willard) has been raving about just making winning plays and making winning plays," Whitehead said.
"I really just attacked the basket. I felt I had an opportunity to score the ball. I mean, I saw Kris Jenkins coming over, and I knew that he wouldn't be able to get in position fast enough for me to draw a charge. I just tried to lay it in on him."
Jenkins missed a right-corner three, Hart’s follow shot was blocked in traffic and that was it.
Was he fouled?
“It was a coin flip,” Hart said. “You know, it was, what, five seconds left, and the ball bouncing all over the place. If I was on the other team I’d want the ref to swallow the whistle, I wouldn’t want him to call it.
“It was a coin flip. If they call it, they call it. If they don’t, they don’t. There were plays we could have made that we didn’t make.”
Whitehead finished with 26 points, averaged 25.3 points in Seton Hall's three wins and was named tournament MVP.
Jenkins and Hart were the only Wildcats to make more than three baskets. They combined for 40 of Villanova’s 67 points.
“It was just one of those days, things weren’t going for us, but at the end we still had a chance to win it if we got a stop,” Ryan Arcidiacono said. “Whitehead is a great player, he made an and-1, we missed the shots at the end, and we’ll learn from it.”
The biggest lesson the Wildcats can take from Saturday night?
“That we have to defend and rebound from the start of the game,” Arcidiacono said. “We can’t give teams confidence.
“That’s what we always try to do, We always try to get off strong on defense and then we know our offense will start flowing.”
Villanova fell to 29-5, and Seton Hall improved to 25-8. The Pirates are 12-2 since a 13-6 start.
Hart, one of only 10 guards in the country averaging 15 points and 7 rebounds per game, had 47 points, 14 rebounds and six assists in Villanova’s three Big East Tournament games.
In seven career games in the conference tourney, he’s averaging 16.9 points, 5.0 rebounds and 1.7 assists.
Hart has nothing to apologize for, but just like in the NCAA Tournament loss to North Carolina State last year, when foul trouble limited him to just five points in 21 minutes, he blamed himself.
“The beauty of him is that he takes all the responsibility on himself,” Wright said. “He still takes responsibility for getting two fouls in the N.C. State game in the first half and we’ve talked about him a number of times.
“It’s just something he really takes to heart. He’s a great guy to have on the team, a great teammate, never blames anybody else. Ever. But because he does that, he’s very emotional and it’s just something you just feel for him because he puts it all on his shoulders.
“But when he’s on your team, you love having that guy. He’s never afraid to take a shot, never afraid to make a play. So you’ve got to just feel for him.”