UCLA Defeats Nova in Instant Classic

When Villanova Hall of Fame coach Jay Wright discovered point guard Colin Gillespie and forward Jermaine Samuels were coming back for a super senior season last spring, he felt he owed it to them to put together a challenging non-league schedule, much like top-ranked Gonzaga does on a regular basis.

Wright arranged for the pre-season fourth-ranked Cats to play second-ranked UCLA on the Coast, Tennessee and then either North Carolina or Purdue in the Hall of Fame Classic at the Hall of Fame Classic in Connecticut, Syracuse in the Jimmy V Classic at the Garden and defending NCAA champ Baylor at Waco in addition to three Big 5 games.

No Villanova team has ever played that kind of gauntlet.

But the Cats should be steeled to win another Big East regular season title if they survive the type of insanity they witnessed at Pauley Pavilion Friday night.

UCLA — which got 25 points from 6-7 pre-season All American wing Johnny Juzang and 21 and 13 rebounds from 6-7 Jaime Jaquez Jr., who both tested the NBA draft waters last spring after an unlikely First Four to Final Final run– looked like it had all the pieces to become a national championship contender. But the Bruins had to scramble from a 10 point second half deficit to defeat the feisty Wildcats, 86-77, in overtime before a wild, celebrity laced sellout crowd of 13,000, most of stood during the stretch run.

“We love these games,” Juzang, a one-time Kentucky transfer, said. “This is where we have the most fun. It’s a blast.”

This was an instant classic.

Too bad more East Coast fans didn’t get to watch it live. But ESPN opted to start the game at 11:30. The game ended at 1:50 a.m. the next morning

UCLA should be used to frantic finishes by now. The Bruins won two overtime games and had a two-point victory over Michigan in the Elite Eight during last spring’s March madness run.

“They gutted it out and we didn’t,” Villanova coach Jay Wright said.

Guard Jules Bernard banked in a floater to tie the score at 67 with 30 seconds to play. Then Jaylen Clark, who was on the floor when the Bruins went to a defensive oriented lineup, provided stifling defense on Villanova’s Justin Moore, who drove for a potential game winner with 6.5 seconds but couldn’t finish.

In overtime, the Bruins held Villanova (1-1) without a field goal for more than four minutes. The Wildcats were led by Samuels, who scored 20 points, and Gillespie, who finished with 18 and showed no aftereffects of knee surgery that forced him out of the 2021 tournament.

“We were relentless, but their efforts were relentless too,” Bruins’ coach Mick Cronin said. “Nobody should have lost this game.”

UCLA, which got to the line just seven times in regulation, made all 12 of their free throws in overtime when they outscored Nova, 19-10.

“They just made a lot of plays at the end,” Samuels said. “Those are the plays you got to make and they made them.”

Wright used a six-player rotation against the Bruins, relying heavily on improved red shirt sophomore center Eric Dixon and 6-6 junior forward Brandon Slater to play big minutes. The Cats do not have a true rim protector the way they did during their title runs in 2016 and 2018 and will have to hope they can eventually expand their rotation freshmen guard Jordan Longino and 6-9, 245-pound center Nnanna Njoko.

But the chemistry is there even if the ceiling is not as high as UCLA once starting center Cody Riley, who missed the game with an MCl sprain. As it is, Villanova was more than competitive against the Bruins, who are a hard to guard team who should provide a stiff test for Gonzaga when the two teams play a rematch of the NCAA semi-final game Nov. 23 in Vegas.

UCLA fans have circled the date and were last heard chanting, “We want Gonzaga” when this game ended.

“We heard them,” Juzang said.