HOUSTON — The fewest points Oklahoma scored in the last three seasons: 64. Villanova.

The fewest points Kansas scored this year: 59. Villanova. Iowa? The Hawkeyes managed 68 points against the Wildcats, their fifth-fewest this year. Remember UNC Asheville? The Bulldogs scored 56 points — 19 below their average and their second-fewest this year.

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Villanova’s late-season offensive exploits have been well-documented. They've shot 46 percent or better from three-point range in four of five NCAA Tournament games, and their overall 58 percent shooting percentage through five tourney games is the best by any tournament team in 18 years.

But ask anybody in the program and they will tell you the reason Villanova is playing for a national championship Monday night isn't offense. It's defense.

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Which was a real question mark a few months ago. “I think we were just so bad at the beginning of the season we couldn’t get any worse,” Josh Hart said. “We were young. We were just a young group of guys. We didn’t have the habits instilled in us that we have now. “Now everyone has basically a full year under their belts. This is our 40th game. There are no more freshmen. You have sophomores, juniors, seniors, and you have guys that have already basically graduated. They’ve already gone through four full years of college basketball. “That experience helped us get better. We have a lot of room for improvement. It takes time to play off of each other. Going through a whole year with this team really helped our defense out.” Villanova is up to 11th in Division I in scoring defense at 63.3 points per game, and right now the Wildcats are throttling people.

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They held Perry Ellis to a season-low four points. He was averaging 17.2.

They held Buddy Hield to nine, his second-fewest this year. He was averaging 25.4.

Even going back to the Big East semifinals, they held Providence teammates Kris Dunn and Ben Bentil — averaging a combined 38.3 points — to 12. This didn’t just happen. This wasn’t a good defensive team when the season began. “One of our weaknesses was our defense,” coach Jay Wright said. “This tournament isn’t about finding out the best team, it’s about finding out who’s playing the hottest at this time, and we’re the kind of team that’s getting better and better defensively as we play in the tournament. “We couldn’t have done this (shut down Oklahoma) a month ago. We weren’t this dialed in. We’re about to play our 40th game. When you get to play this many games, when you have your 40th time you’ve prepared for somebody, that you’ve made a gameplan, you’ve executed, you can get better and better.”

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Villanova has improved immeasurably on offense, going from one of the worst three-point shooting teams in the country to one of the best. But the improvements are even more pronounced on defense.

“I think we’ve come very far,” forward Darryl Reynolds said. “All year, we have been trying to get better through wins and losses. It is obviously a little easier to get better through the losses.

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“I think the game where it really clicked in our minds for us to be the great team we want to be, we had to lock down defensively, was the Seton Hall game in the Big East Tournament championship.

“It really exposed us defensively. Those guys can really score. They have a ton of guys who can score, so it really made us lock in that much more defensively and being smarter with the ball offensively.”

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Seton Hall beat Villanova, 69-67, at Madison Square Garden that day three weeks ago, but Villanova actually began turning things around at halftime. Seton Hall won despite scoring just 29 points in the second half. Through the end of the regular season, nine opponents scored over 70 points against Villanova and four reached 80. Xavier scored 90.

In the tourney, nobody has hit 70 against the Wildcats. Villanova has faced three top-10 teams in a row. Those three teams averaged 75, 82 and 81 points per game before facing the Wildcats. They scored 69, 59 and 51 points against 'Nova.

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Villanova faces a huge, talented, experienced North Carolina team at 9:18 p.m. Monday at NRG Stadium for the national championship (see Tale of the Tape). “I don’t know if I ever thought we were a title-caliber team,” Wright said. “I kept seeing us get better. I thought the last two years we were a title-caliber team because we were good defensively throughout the year. This team wasn’t.

“But this team was getting better and better and better and better and what we did see was that we were continuing to get better defensively. So we were saying, ‘Hey, we can make a run.’”

 

In addition to ranking 11th in points allowed per game, Villanova is 35th nationally in field goal defense, 15th in steals and even 17th in opponent’s foul shooting — probably a sign of how much the Wildcats are able to wear down their opponents as the game goes on.

Wright believes Villanova’s depth — they go eight deep every night — and youth (two seniors, three juniors, a sophmore and two freshman in the rotation) give the Wildcats a tremendous amount of energy on the defensive side. We’re seeing it every night. “It just shows you (what happens) when a team’s hot in this tournament and they’re feeling good and they’re not worn out,” he said.

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“We have a lot of young guys. When you have a lot of seniors? Sometimes when you get to this point of the year, they can be like, ‘Oh, I’ve been doing this for four years or sometimes five years.’ The scouting reports and film sessions can get a little old. There’s something to being young.”

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