Jan. 20, 2007

By Daniel McQuade

Special to CSTV.com

PHILADELPHIA -- Villanova held Kevin Durant to 11 points in the first half. Although the expected NBA lottery pick led the game in scoring, Villanova's defense picked it up even more in the second half and kept him relatively in check.

Durant missed all six of his shots and hit just one free throw in the final 20 minutes of Villanova's 76-69 win. In the closing seconds, Durant--widely considered to be the number two freshman in the country after Ohio State's Greg Oden--had a layup blocked by Will Sheridan and airballed a 3-pointer.

The freshman phenom came off a 37-point, 12 rebound performance in a triple-overtime loss to Oklahoma State on Tuesday and frequently looked tired. He averaged 34 points in his last four games.

Today, Villanova held him to just 12 points and 8 rebounds using a rotating defense that on one possession had 6-foot-2 Scottie Reynolds on the 6-foot-9 freshman.

"Villanova played great team defense," Durant said. "It was a whole team effort. They had two guys in my face when I got the ball and they trapped well."

Villanova coach Jay Wright mainly rotated just three players on Durant, using 6-foot-7 Shane Clark, 6-foot-8 Dante Cunningham and the 6-foot-8 Sheridan. The result was a 4-for-15 performance from the field in his worst outing of the year while playing all 40 minutes.

Cunningham was familiar with Durant, too, as the two played AAU ball against each other in Maryland in high school.

Clark was on Durant most of the time, though, and the sophomore from Philadelphia kept Durant away from the basket. Villanova was physical with him throughout the game--Clark fouled out and Sheridan had four fouls--but Durant only went to the line four times, a result of taking mostly jumpers.

On the other end of the court, Villanova was the team doing most of the damage in the paint, outscoring the Longhorns inside, 26-20.

"It's easy enough to keep our length on him," Clark said. "We're long enough to contest him."

Clark and the rest of Villanova's defense held Durant in check despite missing Curtis Sumpter, who has a bruised shinbone. The redshirt senior warmed up but felt too stiff to play.

"We've been waiting on this," Wright said of Clark's defense. "All of Philadelphia has been waiting for this. He did a great job of keeping Durant out of the paint."

Wright explained his decision to mix up the players guarding him--as well as the decision to use the slower Sheridan--as a way of dealing with Durant's surprisingly quick first step. He said his players wouldn't be able to match up with his speed but could use their size against him.

"You have to have length on him, because he moves so well with the ball," Wright said. "We have a lot of length. Sometimes it hurts us against smaller teams, but today it was an advantage."

Villanova kept Durant off the glass, too. The Wildcats out-rebounded Texas, 45-36, and had more second chance points. Durant came in averaging 11.1 rebounds a game.

Villanova had problems with perimeter defense earlier in the season, losing three of four and giving up a ton of open outside shots. West Virginia hit 15 threes and Notre Dame hit 14 versus the Wildcats while Syracuse shot 52 percent from 3-point range.

`Nova pushed Durant outside, and he shot 1-for-8 from behind the arc. Texas did, however, have D.J. Augustin, another freshman McDonald's All-American, shoot 5-of-6 and A.J. Abrams hit 5-of-11. The Longhorns hit 11 threes in total, but it took them 33 shots to do it.

Texas coach Rick Barnes said he didn't want to give his team excuses, but the Longhorns, especially Durant, did look tired. Not only was Durant pushed around a bit and unable to get the ball for stretches in the second half--he only took six shots, two coming after the game was already put away--but he only got to the line four times.

Durant said he was content with letting Augustin and Abrams shoot, since they were having such a successful game from the outside. With them, the Longhorns went on a 14-2 run to cut the deficit to two with two minutes to play, but Villanova forced Durant into bad shots, a hairy 10-footer and a long three, pulling away by going inside themselves and hitting 27-of-34 from the line.

"He was allowing himself to get pushed out of the lane," Barnes said. "He settled for easy shots. He's going to be guarded. We needed to drive to the basket and get him the ball and for some reason we didn't do that.

"Villanova has some length that they can back up and still defend. We just stood around, which we hadn't done in a while."