The New York-Villanova Eric Dixon is the country’s top score and Big East’s Top 3-point shooter.
Despite Dixon’s individual success, the sixth-seeded Wildcats are barely on the NCAA tournament bubble on the way into Wednesday night’s Big East tournament opener against 11-seeded Seton Hall.
If they can beat Seton Hall, a matchup with Uconn awaits Wildcats (18-13), which enters its third conference tournament under coach Kyle Neptune. Villanova enters on Wednesday with a net assessment of 53, one behind 19-12 Indiana and three behind 17-14 Cincinnati.
Villanova has victories over St. John’s, Marquette and Uconn along with two losses with a combined nine points against Creighton. Wildcat’s trends in the right direction with three straight wins before blowing a nine-point lead in the last 3:43 of a loss of 75-73 at Georgetown in March 4 regular season finale.
Dixon scored 24 points against Hoyas and Jordan Longino added 17 but Wildcats allowed the winning arrangement with five seconds left.
“We look forward and look at anyone our next matchup is,” Longino said. “Hopefully we will crumble this and throw it away after we watch movies and regroup.”
Seton Hall (7-24) took a five-point home loss to Villanova two weeks ago and ended the regular season of the second 20-loss season in school history on a six-match losing line. Of Pirates 18 conference losses, 11 were with two -digit numbers and they were held at 60 points or fewer 16 times.
“Obviously they got a misconduct with Dixon,” said coach Shaheen Holloway about the fifth year Villanova senior who got 57 points against the Pirates in two matches. “He is causing problems for everyone. There is a reason he is the number 1 point in Division I.”
The Pirates finished their tried regular season with a loss of 81-50 on Uconn on Saturday when they shot 35.3 percent. It was the 17th time they shot below 40 percent this season.
Seton Hall is led by Isaiah Coleman’s 15.3 points. No. 2 Score Chaunch Jenkins missed the last 13 games after suffering a knee injury on January 18 against St. John’s. Coleman got 10 points Saturday and got at least 20 in 10 matches, including 22 in the first meeting with Villanova on December 17.
Dixon is on average 23.6 points per match.
-Larry Fleisher, Field Level Media
