WATCH: Villanova stars, Jay Wright get emotional during final minutes of season
The Villanova Wildcats saw their quest for a 2022 national championship come to a screeching halt on Saturday night, as they ran into a red-hot shooting Kansas Jayhawk team that simply couldn’t miss for much of the contest. Villanova lost 81-65 and while they battled back for a good portion of the second half, Kansas continued to bury shot after shot in ensuring the Wildcats had no chance of completing a comeback.
One of the best parts of March Madness is the emotions players and their coaches show in both victory and defeat. On Saturday night, even though the Wildcats made it all the way to the Final Four, it was still a tough pill to swallow as they saw their 2021-2022 college basketball season come to an end.
Check out the video of Villanova head coach Jay Wright consoling his players once they came off the floor in the final minute of the game.
It was yet again, another impressive tournament run for Wright and his storied program. Villanova finished the season with a 30-8 overall record. While the season didn’t finish quite the way they wanted, the Final Four finish is yet another impressive milestone for Wright and the Wildcats to add to their highly decorated resumes. They had three scorers finish in double digits on Saturday night, Collin Gillespie (17 points), Brandon Slater (16 points), and Caleb Daniels (13 points).
Villanova had some hot shooting from deep, but it was impossible to match the Kansas Jayhawks
Villanova cut the lead to as little as six points at one point in the second half, but they would never get closer than that. The Wildcats had some hot shooting of their own in the second half, connecting on 8-of-16 (50 percent) shots from beyond the arc. For the game, they drilled 13-of-31 attempts from three (41.9 percent) but it wasn’t enough because Kansas was simply blistering hot from deep. The Jayhawks connected on 13-of-24 shots (54.2 percent) from beyond the arc in the game. They hit the big shots when they needed them the most down the stretch, drilling 6-of-10 from deep in the second half. Kansas’ first team All-American Ochai Agbaji finally played like it tonight for the Jayhawks, pouring in 21 points on a marvelous 6-of-7 from beyond the arc. He simply couldn’t miss for much of the game.
The Kansas Jayhawks will face the winner of the Duke and UNC matchup for the National Championship.