Jack Rice scored 4 goals, while C.J. Small and Thomas Croonquist produces career-highs to lead the Wildcats to a 15-7 home victory over Georgetown on Wednesday night. It was the 50th career victory for head coach Mike Corrado and the first win over Georgetown since April 12, 1992, almost 20 years ago. Villanova improved to 2-0 in Big East conference games this season and has won five of their last six contests in the league dating back to last season.
"You always want to get off to a quick start," Corrado said of the game. "After coming off of a loss, getting off to a great start is a big confidence booster. We've had good starts this year and I was happy that we didn't let them back in the game to get a run going.
"Today might have been our best game from a standpoint of we got off to a good start, we came out in the third quarter and got out to 4-0 lead at the start of the third."
Croonquist went 16-of-19 to dominate the face-off X. He won 84% of his draws, and went 9-for-9 at midfield in the first 30 minutes.
Small tallied a career-best six points via three goals and three assists for a Villanova offense that started strong and finished even stronger. Kevin Cuningham added two goals and two assists as well. Rice has consistently been the 'Cats' best goalscorer, netting his second hat trick of the season, scoring four, including the first three goals of the game.
Georgetown scored back-to-back goals in the middle of the second quarter, that cut the Villanova lead to 5-3, but that was as close as they would get. Nova responded with 5 more scores by the middle of the third. Nova had a 6-3 lead at halftime, but the 'Cats turned the dial to 11 in the third quarter, scoring 5 an holding the Hoya offense to just one goal to take an 11-4 lead after three.
The Hoyas were 0-for-6 on extra-man opportunities during the game.
Villanova picked up a season-high 41 ground balls in the game, their first posting more than 30 ground balls in a game this season. Croonquist had a career-tying eight while Max Hart and Mark Jackson each had four and three, respectively, both new career-highs.
Next up for the Wildcats is a 1:00 p.m. game at Rutgers' Yurcak Field on Saturday, April 7th.