Collin Gillespie fuels final Villanova surge to win Big East Tournament
Villanova's Collin Gillespie celebrates after cutting down the net after Big East Tournament final against Creighton on Saturday at Madison Square Garden. Credit: AP/Frank Franklin II
As it was in the beginning, so it is at the end. This Big East season has belonged entirely to Villanova’s Collin Gillespie.
Named the Big East Player of the Year for a second straight season early in the week, the point guard wrote one more chapter into his incredible season by taking the Wildcats to another Big East Tournament title on Saturday night.
He scored eight of his 17 points, including a pair of huge three-point shots, in the final three minutes as Villanova erased a one-point deficit and pulled out a 54-48 victory over Creighton before a sellout crowd of 19,812 at Madison Square Garden.
The first of Gillespie’s three-pointers ignited a game-closing 10-3 run and got Villanova a 47-45 lead, the game’s final lead change. He hit another trey on the next Wildcats possession to extend the margin to five with 2:08 to play.
"He’s as mentally tough as anybody we’ve had," Villanova coach Jay Wright said of the tournament MVP. "I look at it as no fear of failure. He has no fear that if he misses those shots and we lose, it’s not going to affect how he thinks of himself. So he’s just playing with absolutely no fear because he knows he’s put the work in . . . It’s a unique mindset."
The other basket in the burst also was huge for the Wildcats, a driving layup by Justin Moore that made it 52-48 with 15 seconds to play.
For a third night in a row — after a one-point quarterfinal win over St. John’s and a three-point semifinal win over UConn — Villanova looked cool in high pressure.
"We trust in each other and have confidence in each other to make plays," Gillespie said. "Like Coach said, I was tired on the one last possession. We gave it to Justin, and we were going to let Justin make a play . . . And we’ve been in close games."
Villanova (26-7) is the Big East champion for the sixth time overall and for the fifth time in the last seven contested tournaments (the 2020 event was canceled because of the pandemic). The Wildcats move on to a ninth straight NCAA Tournament, a run that includes the 2016 and 2018 national championships.
Villanova goes into it having won five straight and 10 of its last 11, and it very likely has made a case for a No. 2 seed when the 68-team field is announced on Sunday night.
Villanova was a No. 2 seed when it won the 2016 national crown.
Creighton (22-11) has been to four of the eight conference title games since it joined the Big East for the 2013-14 season and has yet to win one.
Gillespie also had seven rebounds and five assists and Moore had 16 points for Villanova. Ryan Kalkbrenner had 19 points for Creighton.
The game was mostly a defensive battle, and at times it seemed as if neither team could buy a basket. Villanova shot 33.3% for the game. Creighton shot 32.8% and was 3-for-29 on three-pointers.
Arthur Kaluma and Kalkbrenner, Bluejays freshmen who were so impactful in the conference tournament, led Creighton through an 18-6 run to get the lead back. Kalkbrenner had a pair of baskets on drives and then got a big offensive rebound and kicked it out to Trey Alexander for a three-pointer from the top of the arc to tie the score at 36 with 8:08 to play. Soon, off Alex O’Connell’s steal, Alexander found Kalkbrenner for an alley-oop dunk and a 43-39 lead with 5:28 left.
Wright and Gillespie took their turns at cutting the net down with "New York, New York" playing. Gillespie made the last cut and waved the net over his head to the crowd.
"There’s nothing like this," Wright said. "Playing the game is awesome, but doing it in here, with these fans and at this storied arena, it’s just off the charts."
Roger Rubin returned to Newsday in 2018 to write about high schools, colleges and baseball following 20 years at the Daily News. A Baseball Hall of Fame voter since 2011, he has covered 13 MLB postseasons and 14 NCAA Final Fours.
