NEW YORK — Ben Bentil leads the Big East in scoring and is 16th in NCAA Division I.
Kris Dunn is a second-team All-American, last year’s Big East Player of the Year and a lock to be a lottery pick.
Providence has two bona fide superstars.
And Villanova shut them both down Friday night.
Bentil made one of five shots.
Dunn made one of eight shots.
They combined for only four more points (12) than turnovers (eight).
Villanova beat Providence, 76-68, Friday night at Madison Square Garden to reach Saturday’s Big East Tournament championship game Saturday against Seton Hall.
And the Wildcats did it with a healthy dose of defensive wizardry on one of the top 1-2 punches in the country.
“They have two great players,” said Villanova senior Ryan Arcidiacono, who shared Big East Player of the Year honors with Dunn last year.
“Any time Dunn got the ball, we had to load to him to make sure he didn’t see space, and anytime Bentil got it, we know he shoots it so much that we were just going to attack him, and luckily we were able to defend him well when he tried to score and get him into foul trouble.”
Bentil’s three points are 19 below his season average of 21.7 points per game and his fewest since he was scoreless in 13 minutes against Butler last year as a freshman.
Dunn’s eight points are his third-fewest this year, although the two lowest scoring totals came in blowout wins where he didn’t play much.
Combined, they average 38 points per game. Friday, they scored 12.
Villanova coach Jay Wright said the game plan was to do everything possible to stop Bentil and Dunn and just hope that Providence’s other players didn’t do enough to beat the Wildcats.
“We took some chances today guarding those two,” Wright said. “That's why (Rodney) Bullock had 18 and (Kyron) Cartwright had 14. They were smart. They saw it.
“When you (allow) a wide-open dunk and nobody is guarding them, it looks pretty bad. We took some chances to just try to prevent those two from having monster games.
“I thought we did a great job on Dunn. We had all kinds of bodies on him. We had five different guys guarding him.
"Then I thought going at Bentil offensively was probably the best thing we did.”
Bentil, a 6-foot-9 sophomore, was coming off a 38-point game against DePaul Thursday and had a 42-point game against Marquette last month. He scored 31 at Villanova in January. He’s had five 30-point games this year, 10th-most in the country.
But Villanova neutralized him by attacking him on the offensive end, getting him in foul trouble and frustrating him. He fouled out halfway through the second half.
“We did everything,” Wright said. “We kept fresh bodies on him. We denied him everywhere. We left guys to double him. We did everything.
“I think our best defense was getting him into pick-and-rolls and driving the ball at him and getting some fouls. That was the best thing we did. Because it kept him off the floor for a while, and it eventually fouled him out.
“If he's going to be on the floor for a long time, he's going to score. He's one of the great scorers that I've seen in this conference.”
The 12 points Dunn and Bentil combined for is their fewest since they had 11 in February of last year against — who else … Villanova.
With the win, Villanova improved to 29-4 and reached the Big East Tournament championship game. The Wildcats will face Seton Hall at 5:30 p.m. Saturday.
“We weren’t going to let Kris Dunn and Bentil beat us,” Arcidiacono said. “We were going to have other guys beat us. That’s what we were giving up. Bullock killed us from three-point and (Kyron) Cartwright shot the ball well, too. … But overall, we executed our game plan the best we could.
“We could have done a better job on the other guys, but on Dunn and Bentil, it’s best job we’ve ever done. If the other guys beat us, we’ll take that. That was our game plan. Stop those two guys and try to play good defense on everybody else.”
Providence coach Ed Cooley didn’t make excuses for either of his star players:
On Bentil: “He just didn't have a good game today. The highs and lows of life, babe. You know? Yesterday, he looked like Superman. Today, kryptonite got him."
On Dunn: "They did a really good job on him, you know? Load him up to the ball. I thought he got open for a couple of really good jumpshots. I thought he was tired at the end, so I think he lacked a little bit of pop.”
This didn’t come out of nowhere.
Villanova is 21st in Division I in field goal defense (39.6 percent) and 16th in scoring defense (63 points per game). They've been doing it all year.
But this might have been the Wildcats’ biggest defensive performance this year. And what makes it more impressive is that Hart, Villanova’s best defender, missed much of the second half in foul trouble.
“That was huge,” Hart said of the defensive effort. “Just us paying attention to our game plan, paying attention to our scouting report.
“Obviously, they have two great players — one’s the (Big East) Player of the Year (Dunn) and the other is most improved (in the conference) and probably an All-American in Bentil. It was just all-around a good effort.”