SAN ANTONIO — The moment that made Villanova guard Donte DiVincenzo into an NCAA Tournament folk hero did not develop during any of the 18 points he scored in the first half of the 2018 championship game. It did not arrive when he split a second-half double-team near the top of the key with a reverse dribble that would have made James Harden weep. It came in a wink, just a few seconds after the Michigan Wolverines dared to suggest their chances of winning had not yet expired.
UM wing Charles Matthews converted a layup with 9:09 remaining to cut a deficit that once stood at 18 points to an even dozen. The game still felt very much like it belonged to the Wildcats, but the Michigan fans got to their feet and the Wolverines on the floor waved to encourage more noise. We’ve seen crazier NCAA comebacks, right?
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Well, sure, except none of them came against DiVincenzo. He advanced the ball, walked into his shooting range, got an annoying little rub screen from big man Omari Spellman that distracted Michigan point guard Zavier Simpson and popped in the 25-foot 3-pointer that declared: I’m the best player tonight, we are the best team, and if you want to get out of the parking lot early you now have that luxury.
Oh, and he punctuated that by winking at former Wildcats All-American Josh Hart, sitting beyond press row among the Villanova crowd.
And DiVincenzo winked again after another long trey 52 seconds later, just like the first, except that he’d already declared the game over by that point. Officially, it was in a little less than eight minutes, and the Wildcats had a 79-62 victory that delivered their second NCAA championship in three years.
“Honestly, I didn’t look at the score at all,” DiVincenzo told Sporting News. “I didn’t know how many points I had, I didn’t know any of that. I was just trying to make the right play. Omari was setting unbelievable screens for me, getting me open. And I was just feeling it.”
This will all seem a bit absurd, perhaps a fluke, to those who’d missed the joy of partaking earlier in the Wildcats’ season. A guy comes off the bench to score 31 points, the first player to hit that number in the championship game in nearly three decades? What is that?
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That is Villanova basketball. That is this team. This wasn’t even the first time in this NCAA Tournament that DiVincenzo bailed out his laboring teammates with an 18-point first half; he did it in the second round against Alabama when All-American Jalen Brunson and Spellman both picked up a couple early fouls and coach Jay Wright used them cautiously until the break.
“Honestly, this is nothing special,” Brunson said, then quickly caught himself after realizing his linguistic choices had just diminished a performance that made his good friend the Final Four’s Most Outstanding Player. “Excuse me. This is very special. This is nothing surprising for us. We’ve seen Donte do this multiple times this year.
“I’m just so thankful he was able to have one of these nights tonight. It shows how much depth we have as a team and just don’t care who gets the credit. If someone is hot, feed him.”
At the five-minute mark of the first half, Villanova was leading by a single point and Michigan’s terrific defense had isolated the Wildcats from one another, making them almost entirely into an isolation team. That was the UM gameplan, to occasionally trap off ball screens but to avoid the overhelping that often fueled Nova’s 3-point explosions. Then DiVincenzo scored seven consecutive points, including a layup, a 3-pointer and a dunk, and by halftime his team was ahead by nine.
“Anytime you get into a rhythm like that, where you can pull up from anywhere and just knock them down, it’s tough to stop,” said Michigan guard Muhammad-Ali Abdur-Rahkman. “You’re always on your heels defensively, because you never know what he’s going to do — either shoot, pull up and shoot the 3 or drive to the basket. It’s tough when you see shots go in like that for him.”
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A 6-5 redshirt sophomore from Wilmington, Del. — he was a spectator for the 2016 championship because of a broken foot — DiVincenzo was the team’s third-leading scorer this season and played the fourth-most minutes though he rarely started. He instead came off the bench behind redshirt junior Phil Booth. Only when Booth broke his hand in late January did DiVincenzo open games regularly.
He acknowledged it was difficult to not be in the lineup early in the season. “I had to grow up a lot this year,” he said, but ultimately, he trusted Wright to put him in the best situation to excel.
“We want our players to have a clear mind,” Wright said. “We want them to be able to go out there and play and not worry about that they’re coming off the bench or they’re not getting enough shots or they’re going to leave early for the NBA. We really feel like to be a good basketball player, you have to have a clear mind.
“Donte competed for a starting position this year. He worked really hard and he wanted to start. And he initially a little upset that he wasn’t starting. A little. Not bad, because he’s a great kid. But we spent a lot of time talking when him — not to appease him, but to make sure that his mind was clear.
“I actually heard my assistants on the bench, when he was starting to go off, I heard them saying: This is great for him. He deserves this. Because he really did.”
That freshman year was not easy, sitting for all but eight games because of the injury. He entered the rotation last season when Booth injured his knee and was lost for the year, and DiVincenzo rapidly built a reputation for spectacular athleticism and a developing knack for hitting 3-pointers.
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DiVincenzo told SN he winked at Hart because of a connection he felt from having been worked so many times in practice by a player who was a national champion in 2016, an All-American in 2017 and now is a rookie with the Los Angeles Lakers in 2018.
“A lot of failure in practice — Josh every single day last year just beat me up physically,” DiVincenzo said. “Having to guard Jalen, having to guard Eric and Omari, just taught me so much in my ability to now defend so many different positions. All credit to them, just beating me up every day in practice.”
Although he was the star of the game, he remained on the court until the end because Wright was so busy clearing the court of Villanova veterans. That gave DiVincenzo the opportunity to heave the ball toward the stadium ceiling as he was mobbed by teammates.
He smiled broadly as they enveloped him, but after a platform was constructed on the floor for the trophy presentation, he began to cry while waiting for that moment.
“I blame Jalen, honestly. I was fine at the end of the game, and then he came up to me and he was crying. He was bawling his eyes out,” DiVincenzo told SN. “Me and him are brothers. We roomed together our freshman year, and we said to each other after that, we said: We need to get back. We need to get back there and we need to share this together. And we took advantage of it.”
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Brunson recalled the first time he met the player some call — with a wink, perhaps — “the Michael Jordan of Delaware.” They were in an airport after an AAU tournament, after DiVincenzo had committed to join the Wildcats.
“Donte came up to me and said, ‘What’s up? What’s up? Come to Nova,’” Brunson said. “And I looked at him and said, ‘Oh, yeah — hell, no.’ I knew he was a great player and I thought there was no reason for me to go there. Looking at it now, it was stupid of me to say. From that point on, I met a best friend. I met a guy who I’ll know for a very long time, and our relationship is going to be so special because of what we’ve done together.”
If DiVincenzo brags on his MOP award during that future, Brunson can bring out his player of the year trophies: SN, Associated Press, Naismith, Oscar Robertson.
“No,” Brunson said. “I’ll just say I played in two national title games instead of one.”
DiVincenzo’s one, though, was better than most.