Napier carries UConn past Villanova

BUFFALO, N.Y. — A fter sitting out most of the first half with foul trouble, guard Shabazz Napier made up for lost time as he scored 21 of his game-high 25 points in the second half on Saturday night to carry the seventh-seeded Connecticut Huskies over the No. 2 seed Villanova Wildcats 77-65 in an NCAA Tournament East Regional third-round game at the First Niagara Center.

Napier, who had four points at halftime, capped a 16-4 run in the second half with back-to-back 3-pointers that gave the Huskies a 51-40 lead. After the Wildcats pulled within 51-45, Napier sank another 3-pointer to give UConn a nine-point cushion.

“Great players make great shots,” Villanova guard Ryan Arcidiacono said of Napier. “That’s what he was doing.”

Napier left the game with about four minutes remaining when he suffered a deep bruise on his left shin after colliding with Villanova guard Darrun Hilliard. But he returned with 3:24 left and scored on an acrobatic layup to boost the Huskies’ lead to 60-51.

Napier, a holdover from UConn’s 2011 national championship team, has 49 points, 13 rebounds, nine assists and five steals and is 11 of 12 from the foul line in the Huskies’ first two games of the tournament.

“He’s just tough-minded,” UConn coach Kevin Ollie said. “A lot of things he went through in life made him that way. He does whatever we need to win.”

By defeating former Big East Conference rival Villanova, UConn (28-8) advanced to the Sweet 16 for the 17th time and the first since 2011, when it won the national championship.

The Huskies will meet the winner of Sunday’s game between No. 3 seed Iowa State and No. 6 North Carolina in the Sweet 16 on Friday at Madison Square Garden in New York City.

UConn sank 19 of its 22 free throws in the final six minutes to fight off Villanova’s comeback attempt. The Huskies made 22 of 28 foul shots in the game and 40 of 48 in two tournament games this weekend.

Villanova (29-5) overcame a 4-for-23 shooting effort from 3-point range in its 75-53 second-round win over Wisconsin-Milwaukee on Thursday in Buffalo. But while the Wildcats shot better from beyond the arc against UConn (11 of 31), they could not recover from an 11 1/2-minute stretch in the first half where they scored just one point.

The Huskies went on a 16-1 spurt during that stretch with Napier on the bench to take a 25-20 lead. The Wildcats failed to make a field goal in 15 consecutive possessions.

“That was probably the second most important part of the game, (Napier) not being on the floor and them making up the difference,” Villanova coach Jay Wright said. “That was disappointing, and in a game like that you have to take advantage of that and we didn’t.”

Guard Lasan Kromah scored 12 points for the Huskies and forward DeAndre Daniels and guard Ryan Boatright added 11 apiece. Arcidiancono led Villanova with 18 points.

Villanova started the second half the way they ended the first — with a 3-pointer from Arcidiacono. That shot gave the Wildcats a 27-25 lead, but the Huskies went on an 8-0 run with Daniels and Napier draining 3-pointers.

The Wildcats answered with a 9-2 spurt that ended with back-to-back 3-pointers by guard James Bell. But the Huskies moved ahead 42-36 with a 7-0 run.

UConn led 25-24 at the half after overcoming a 10-point deficit — the same deficit the Huskies faced against St. Joseph’s in Thursday’s second-round overtime victory. Hilliard’s 3-pointer with 11:33 left in the first half capped a 10-4 run that gave the Wildcats a 19-9 lead.

But that was the last basket the Wildcats would score until late in the half. Sparked by guard Terrence Samuel and Kromah, the Huskies went on that 16-1 tear that gave them a 25-20 advantage. Samuel and Kromah combined for nine of UConn’s points in that run.

“It was a good moment,” Napier said. “We didn’t skip a beat and that shows the maturity of this team. I get recognized for a lot of things, but there’s no ‘I’ in team and that showed that today.”

Boatright said, “I just told the guys we had to come together and take care of the ball and play