PHILADELPHIA – With breathing room on the scoreboard hard to come by at the Wells Fargo Center Saturday night, the UConn men’s basketball team found just enough in its season finale to come away with a 71-59 victory over Villanova.
Finishing with a 24-7 record after winning eight of its last nine games, UConn matched its best regular-season record since the 2013-14 national championship campaign.
Both teams battled, mano a mano, to open the game. With each squad posting nearly identical statistics, the score was locked at even for the first three TV timeouts.
Jordan Hawkins scored 19 points in the second half and finished with a team-leading 24 while redshirt freshman Alex Karaban added a critical 16 points, including a pair of triples on four attempts, six rebounds and four assists. Finding a zone on the offensive end in recent games, Andre Jackson reached double-digit scoring for the fourth time in the last five games. He finished with 10 points, seven rebounds and five assists.
Adama Sanogo provided nine points in the first half but went scoreless in a foul-plagued second. He grabbed a team-high nine rebounds.
When UConn ran, creating a five-point advantage after a 3-pointer and a pick-six capped off by a transition layup from Tristen Newton, Villanova responded. The Wildcats used an 8-0 scoring run to get up three before Hawkins hit his first 3-pointer of the game to tie it again.
Sanogo started a 9-1 run at the 8:37 mark of the first half with a layup that tied the game at 19. Hawkins, who got off to a cold, 1-for-5 shooting night, hustled for an offensive rebound and made the put-back to give the lead back to UConn. Then a pair of three-point plays under the basket from Sanogo and Nahiem Alleyne extended UConn’s lead to seven, the largest lead of the night for either team.
Karaban scored UConn’s final five points of the half, a 3-pointer and a long two that beat the halftime buzzer and gave the Huskies a 32-24 lead at the break.
Jackson opened the second half with a 3-pointer that was answered by Justin Moore, who was recovering from a torn Achilles and didn’t play when the teams met at the XL Center. Hawkins and Karaban went on a 7-0 run together with Hawkins’ second 3-pointer of the game giving the Huskies a 42-28 advantage, then Moore hit from deep again. This time it was Jackson who responded with his second deep ball of the night.
It was Jackson’s first game with multiple made 3-pointers since he went 4 for 12 in the New Year’s Eve loss to Xavier, and the UConn bench made sure to show him love with a series of emphatic embraces at the next timeout.
The UConn lead extended to as many as 15 points before the Wildcats started clawing back.
Cam Whitmore, Villanova’s Big East Freshman of the Year candidate, made a fast-break layup and earned a foul (though he wound up missing the free throw) to get the Wildcats within nine and spark the loudest crowd reaction of the night. Karaban, UConn’s own top rookie candidate, had something to say, quieting the crowd with a pair of layups that brought UConn’s lead back to 13 points.
Hawkins hit the proverbial dagger from 3-point range, his third of the night, giving the Huskies a 61-47 lead with 3:34 left on the clock.
UConn could earn either a No. 3 seed or a No. 4 seed in the Big East tournament depending on the result of the Creighton-DePaul game late on Saturday.
The last time UConn earned a victory at the Wells Fargo Center was when Shabazz Napier hit a game-winner with 0.6 seconds left in overtime on Feb. 20, 2012. It is UConn’s first season sweep of the Wildcats since the 2001-02 campaign.
