Ever-Reliable Villanova Riding Hot Streak as Big East Tournament Approaches

Few teams are more reliable year in and year out than Villanova. The Wildcats, after all, have played in all 12 Big East tournaments since the league began sponsoring a postseason in 2012.

They’ll make it 13 in a row next week in Denver. But the path to the program’s first regular-season title since 2013 — and perhaps an outright finish atop the Big East for the first time — was irregular.

In mid-March, Villanova was 2-5 and staring at potentially its first losing season in a decade. Since then, the Wildcats have ripped off five consecutive victories, including their first four conference games.

“We’d go through a really bad stretch, a seven- or eight-minute stretch of the game where we couldn’t get a stop, we couldn’t win a faceoff, we missed scoring opportunities, we dropped passes, we made bad turnovers and we couldn’t get out of it,” coach Michael Corrado said.

Sure enough, there are stretches in each of the losses where things snowballed. Sometimes it came early (Colgate), sometimes it came later (Lehigh). Sometimes it ended up lopsided (Penn State), sometimes it didn’t (Penn).

But Villanova ironed out those stretches. The Wildcats won in overtime at Denver, gave up consecutive goals only once to Providence and pulled away from St. John’s in the final 10 minutes.

Perhaps the most impressive work came Saturday, when they trailed by two with three minutes to go against Marquette. It was nothing a three-goals-in-41-seconds stretch couldn’t solve, and Villanova escaped with a 14-13 victory.

Tyler Sandoval, a grad transfer from Princeton, won the last three faceoffs to spur the rally, and he’s been a vital presence for helping to develop Villanova’s younger FOGOs while winning 62.7 percent of his draws.

Matt Licata scored twice in the late spurt to finish with five goals, and he and Colin Michener provide Villanova a pair of 30-point scorers. However, the Wildcats’ improvement stems partially from other options emerging.

Gavin Michener was banged up early on but has established himself as the third attackman; he had three assists Saturday. Sophomore midfielder Nicholas Lucchesi has moved past a slow start and has scored in six consecutive games. Dan Martin, a key piece last year, returned from injury at the start of league play. And Luke Raymond, a steady outside presence, has scored in every game of the winning streak, including Saturday’s game-winner.

“We are spreading the wealth a little bit more, and I think it’s been helpful, not putting so much pressure on Colin and Matt,” Corrado said.

It’s put Villanova in a spot where it isn’t scrambling to make the Big East tournament as it heads into Friday’s regular-season finale at Georgetown (8-4, 3-1). With a victory, Corrado’s program will post its first undefeated Big East season.

Even without it, it will still have to be reckoned with in the chase for the league’s automatic berth.

“I’m really happy for our kids, especially our seniors,” Corrado said. “We’ve been so close. In 2022 when they were freshmen, we lost to Georgetown in the championship game in the Big East tournament. We lost to Denver in the semis in ’23, and we lost to Georgetown in the championship game last year. It’s been tough. For them to be 4-0 and a chance to get to 5-0 in our league is a testament to them.”

Duke’s development

One of this season’s more sphinx-like teams is Duke. The Blue Devils have had solid days and lousy ones, but it’s been difficult to peg exactly who they are.

Maybe Saturday’s 11-7 defeat of Syracuse changes things for Duke (10-4, 1-2 ACC), which closes the regular season Saturday at Virginia. Maybe it doesn’t.

But one thing seems certain: Coach John Danowski is still figuring out his team.

Chalk a fair bit of that up to having so many players in new spots; defenseman Charlie Johnson, a mainstay this year after playing in a total of five games the last two seasons, is a fine example. There’s been offensive flux between newcomers and injuries.

“You have to be incredibly patient,” Danowski said. “You’ve got to believe in what you’re teaching.”

And just how challenging is that, even (or especially) for someone in his fifth decade as a Division I head coach?

“It’s incredibly hard,” Danowski said. “We all want success yesterday. We all want to come right out of the box. Life doesn’t work that way. I wish — no, I don’t wish it did. The experience is incredibly unique not only for the players, but the coaches as well.”

Danowski has never been one for comparisons, but there are obvious reasons why this season might have presented different challenges. Duke loaded up on fifth-year options — homegrown players and graduate transfers — during the COVID era and routinely fielded ultra-experienced teams.

These Blue Devils aren’t new to college; attackman Liam Kershis was the lone freshman in Saturday’s starting lineup, while two sophomores also got the nod. But they are less tested.

In turn, Danowski said that so much of the focus in practice — individual discipline, team discipline, lacrosse IQ, fundamentals — can’t be taken for granted like it might have in other seasons. It has required him and his staff to deliver greater urgency on a daily basis to ensure the entire roster on the same page.

But even that’s a process of trial-and-error.

“I’ve been slower to recognize what this team really needed,” Danowski said. “When we started off 8-1, I thought what we were doing was correct. Listen, Denver whipped us and Notre Dame whipped us. We lost to Carolina by a goal and we lost to Princeton by a goal. You can also make the argument we beat Michigan and Richmond by a goal and we could have lost those games. I think I needed to take a good hard look at how I was doing things and how we were doing things as a group and needed to challenge our coaches to look at things a little differently and figure out how to reach our students quicker and more efficiently.”

The logical follow up: How, precisely, does that manifest itself?

“It's still evolving,” Danowski said. “I don’t know if I know the answer to that just yet. I am just extremely aware of it.”

And there’s one other thing Danowski is acutely aware of — the degree of enjoyment he said he’s derived from figuring the whole thing out.

That may seem strange for the coach of a program that usually has a postseason berth cemented long before late April. But this season has clearly appealed to Danowski in a deep way.

“This is the most fun I’ve had since I’ve been here,” he said. “I love this team. They give us everything they have every day. … It’s part of our evolution that we need to teach more. We need to break the game down more and teach more, and we have been and the guys have responded.”

NUMBERS OF NOTE

15 • Game losing streak against Denver snapped by Providence, which earned its first victory ever against the Pioneers on Saturday to clinch a spot in the Big East tournament. The Friars got four goals from Jack Horrigan to help secure a 10-6 victory on the road.

18 • Assists for Hobart as it doubled up St. Bonaventure 26-13, its most in any game since collecting 23 in a 29-2 defeat of Geneseo in 1986. David Peterkin had a team-high four assists for the Statesmen.

22 • Consecutive 10-win seasons (excluding the truncated 2020 year) for Maryland, the longest active streak in Division I, after its 11-8 defeat of Johns Hopkins on Friday. The second-longest streak was also extended over the weekend, as Duke secured its 18th consecutive 10-win season with an 11-7 defeat of Syracuse.

23 • Saves for Boston University’s Will Barnes in Saturday’s 12-7 defeat of Lehigh, the third-most stops in program history. Barnes’ day trails only Christian Carson-Banister (25 saves against Duke in 2014) and Joe McSorley (24 saves against Providence in 2019) in the Terriers’ record book.