Villanova throttled by red-hot shooting Creighton with 21 3s

Jay Wright looked toward the sky and watched another Creighton three-pointer splash through the net. All the Villanova head coach could do at that point was shake his head. The Bluejays were too hot and the Wildcats were too far down.

Newly-minted No. 4 Villanova allowed Creighton to hit a program and Big East-record 21 threes in an ugly 96-68 loss at the Wells Fargo Center Monday night. Ethan Wragge was locked in from long range, scoring a career-high 27 points on 9 of 14 shooting -- all three-pointers -- to tie Kyle Korver’s Creighton single-game record for threes made.

“They were outstanding,” Wright said after his worst loss in 13 seasons at Villanova. “We’ve played a lot of good games and we’ve had some games where we haven’t been on top of it. We didn’t execute well defensively. They executed extremely well offensively.”

The Bluejays (16-3, 6-1 Big East) made their first seven shots and first nine threes to put the Wildcats (16-2, 5-1) in an early hole in which they could never climb out.

“When you let a team that’s a good shooting team get hot, you’re in trouble for the night,” Wright said.

“Getting behind a team like that, the way they move the ball and with their quickness, was really tough to overcome. You’ve got to give them a lot of credit. Wragge was incredible.”

He certainly was. Wragge shook off a 2-of-8 effort in Saturday’s loss to Providence by making two three-pointers in the game’s first two minutes to get himself going. He nailed a deep three at the 17:06 mark to give Creighton a 15-5 lead and force an upset Wright to call an early timeout.

That brief break didn’t cool down Wragge at all. The 6-foot-7, 225-pound forward made two more three-pointers immediately after that Wildcats timeout and added two more following a TV timeout to give the Bluejays a 27-8 advantage just six minutes into the game.

Wragge hit 8 of 10 threes in all during the first half for 24 points. His teammates also joined in on the barrage, making six of their own 12 attempts in the half.

“I think our first offensive play of the game I got a pretty good wide-open look and it felt really good coming off,” Wragge said. “My teammates do an unbelievable job of once I get one, they know that I’m hunting for two and three.

“It’s a hard feeling to describe once you get one going, but you just kind of let it fly and don’t think about it. You have to shoot it to make it, so you just got to let it go.”

“That was one of the more incredible things I’ve ever been a part of as a coach, the start of that game, the way Ethan shot the basketball, the way our guys shared the basketball,” Creighton head coach Greg McDermott said. “Probably equally important is the way we defended the first seven or eight minutes that allowed us to create some separation early.”

Indeed, Creighton’s early dominance wasn’t limited to the offensive side of the ball. The Bluejays held the Wildcats in check at the outset of Monday’s game, building a lead as large as 28 points in the first half.

Still, Villanova was able to chip away and went into halftime with a 13-point deficit.

Villanova came out of intermission intent on putting pressure on Creighton and capitalizing on its late first-half push. But the Wildcats simply didn’t have it on this night.

“I thought the first possession of the second half we got a great stop, didn’t rebound it,” Wright explained. “Then the second possession again we got a stop, didn’t rebound it. Right there I could just tell we just weren’t ourselves. You got to still try to fight through that, but when you’re down 13 and they’ve already established they’re shooting the ball like that, we had to get those two stops, get it to nine, get it to eight. Then all those threes there’s a little bit more pressure, game pressure, on those threes.”

While Villanova missed its chance to make a move, Creighton continued to pour it on. The Bluejays started feeding All-American Doug McDermott, who scored 17 of his 24 points after halftime to help their lead balloon to as much as 41.

“He hurts you. He hit five threes, but it’s all the passes he makes from inside, the attention he demands. I said it before the game, he’s a joy to watch,” Wright said. “You don’t like it when he’s doing it to you, but he’s a joy to watch.”

“We needed to get stops and they were making some great shots,” said Villanova guard James Bell, who led the team with 19 points.

Villanova allowed the Bluejays to shoot 56.9 percent from the floor for the game and 60.0 percent from long range. The 96 points they gave up and the 28-point differential were both program-worsts for the Wildcats at the Wells Fargo Center.

All lopsided numbers that Wright wants his players to take with them as they try to regroup for a road matchup against Marquette on Saturday afternoon.

“We’ll definitely learn from this. It’s still early in the season, so we’re going to learn from whatever happens,” the coach said. “We have to keep getting better. It’s really simple. You certainly don’t like to do it this way. You can win and learn. You can definitely do that. That was what we wanted to do, but we got a lot to learn from this game.”

- Matt Haughton, CSN Philly