Two struggling Big East squads will battle Wednesday in Chicago as Villanova looks to its formidable one-two punch of Eric Dixon and Wooga Poplar when it faces DePaul.
Dixon is the NCAA’s leading scorer through Monday at 24.2 points per game. Miami transfer Poplar is fresh off a 24-point performance in a 62-60 home loss to Creighton.
The Wildcats (12-10, 5-6 Big East) bring a three-game losing streak to DePaul. Villanova has dropped five of its last six games, which followed an 8-1 run.
The struggles have come despite the solid play of Dixon, a graduate student who passed 2,000 career points in the last game and is on pace to eclipse Kerry Kittles (2,243 in 1992-96) as Villanova’s all-time leading scorer.
The Wildcats are in a four-way tie for fifth place in the Big East with Georgetown, Xavier and Providence, and they are looking to stake a shot at the conference’s potential fifth berth in the NCAA Tournament. A second one-possession loss in three games, however, set back Villanova’s season.
“It’s a Big East game, going against high-level players and a high-level program and, unfortunately, we ended up on the other side of where we wanted to end up,” Villanova coach Kyle Neptune said of the Creighton loss. “We’ll be ready for the next one.”
DePaul (11-12, 2-10) can certainly relate, having lost eight of its last 10 games.
The Blue Demons did pick up a 74-57 win over Seton Hall on Sunday. The victory was keyed by four players scoring in double figures, including Missouri State transfer N.J. Benson’s third double-double of the season with 17 points and 11 rebounds.
“Consistency in our next thing with pushing with him,” DePaul coach Chris Holtmann said of Benson. “Can he be consistent from practice to practice and game to game? From the start of the season, he’s probably grown as much as a player as maybe anybody in the country.”
–Field Level Media
