Villanova Wildcats: With Booth back, Wright has some decisions to make

With Phil Booth back on the court, Jay Wright will have a tough decision to make in the Villanova Wildcats’ starting five moving forward.

With March a week away and the NCAA Tournament looming on the horizon, the Villanova Wildcats will finally have Phil Booth back on the court.

In his first game back since suffering a broken hand in the Wildcats’ 89-69 win over Providence on January 23rd, the junior guard made his triumphant return in the team’s 93-62 victory over DePaul, blowing up for 14 points in 16 minutes on only six shots, and he did so coming off the bench.

After starting the first 20 games of the season for Jay Wright‘s squad, Booth’s injury opened the door for sophomore scorer Donte DiVincenzo to enter the starting five, and quickly establish himself as one of Nova’s fastest rising stars.

While Booth did play well for Nova this season, averaging 11.6 points per game while knocking down 43 percent of his three-point shots, the redshirt junior was quickly outpaced by DiVincenzo, who’s averaged almost 18 points per game over the last month as a starter, and he’s going so from all over the court.

At 6-foot-5, 205 pounds, DiVincenzo is a matchup nightmare on the wings, completing over 50 percent of his field goals and 40 percent of his three-point attempts, while averaging over four rebounds, three assists and a steal per game. Though he doesn’t have as much experience in Wright’s scheme as Booth, it’s clear that DiVincenzo is one of the team’s best players, and could be on the way to the NBA after a storied career on the Mainline

Over Wright’s tenure at Villanova, the two-time Naismith College Coach of the Year has operated the team as a meritocracy, with his best players seeing the court, but typically gives the nod to an upperclassman when two players are close. And while it’s clear that Booth will be on a pitch count going forward as eases back into the game, it’ll be incredibly interesting to see who gets the start when the Wildcats enter the NCAA Tournament.

On one hand, Booth played very well as a starter in for the first half of the season and has four years of seasoning in Wrights system. But DiVincenzo has just been playing too well to revert to his former role as a sixth man coming off of the bench. DiVincenzo has established himself as arguably the Wildcats’ second-best scorer and may force Wright to go with the hot hand and use Booth as a sixth man going forward, a role he excelled in in 2015-2016.

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Regardless of who Wright decides to use as his fifth starter moving forward, adding a player like Booth only makes Villanova a better team with March Madness imminent, which is a pretty good problem to have.

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