Officially, Jonathan Wallace won last night’s game on two free throws with one-tenth of a second remaining. Unofficially, it was 39 minutes of heady defense by Georgetown’s senior guard that led the Hoyas to their first home victory against Villanova since Verizon Center opened in 1997.

Wallace is not generally known for his defense; at the end of close games this season, Georgetown Head Coach John Thompson III has tended to use Wallace on offense and Jeremiah Rivers on defense. But last night, in addition to breaking out of an offensive slump with three three-pointers, Wallace played air-tight perimeter defense, helping the Hoyas to hold Villanova to a measly four second-half field goals.

“I thought Jon Wallace – that was one of the best defensive efforts I’ve seen from him in four years,” Thompson said after the game. “Obviously he makes a couple of threes and makes the foul shots at the end, but at the defensive end, I thought he was absolutely terrific.”

After freshman guard Austin Freeman missed a three-point try with 31 seconds left in a 53-53 game, Villanova called a timeout and set up for its last play. Predictably, it began with standout sophomore guard Scottie Reynolds, who had already scored 24 points, dribbling away the clock on the right side of the court just beyond the three-point line and sophomore guard Jeremiah Rivers defending.

“He tried to refuse the screen, tried to come back, and the way we play, we try not to let him do that. When he drove baseline he ran out of places to go and the only option he had was to throw it out or throw a crazy shot up and try and make it go in and I just put my hand up and deflected it,” Rivers said.

The deflection landed in the hands of Wallace, who quickly tried to advance the ball up the sideline and get Georgetown in position for a final shot in regulation. When he heard the whistle sound, the free-throw line was the last place he thought he was headed.

“At first I thought I stepped out of bounds, so I was trying to make a play with time running down,” Wallace said. “But I did kind of nudge when I was turning the corner. The call is the call.”

Video replays of the play are maybe more inconclusive than those of Patrick Ewing Jr.’s swat against West Virginia. A good case can be made for a blocking foul against Villanova’s Corey Stokes, but with time about to expire, an equally strong case can likely be made for the referee putting his whistle in his pocket.

Added Roy Hibbert: “To tell you the truth, I thought it was an out-of-bounds on Jon, and I didn’t know what to do. I was getting ready to get back on defense. When I heard it was a foul – Jonathan Wallace is as cold as ice when it comes to shooting free throws.”

Cold as ice, of course, refers to the blood in Wallace’s veins, not his recent shooting at the line. Wallace, who was 2-of-3 from the line earlier in the game and 80 percent on the season, touched nothing but net on both tries.

Still, it was not those two shots that coaches and players wanted to discuss after the game. It was Wallace’s, as well as Rivers’s, aggressive defense that stood out.

“[Rivers is] tough man. He’s good, he’s tough,” Villanova Head Coach Jay Wright said. “I thought Wallace was good tonight too, I thought Wallace had four fouls for a while and was playing Reynolds there. They’re both very good defensive guards. Everyone talks about [the Hoyas’] offense – their defense is going to win them a lot of games.”

Wright’s offense revolves around lots of penetration and lots of screens. Nearly all of his players are capable of both driving to the basket and hitting open shots on the perimeter. It is the Wildcats’ heavy diet of screens that is designed to create these opportunities – opportunities which Thompson felt Wallace did a good job of thwarting in the second half.

“Jon did a great job in fighting over, pushing up, not getting stuck on screens,” Thompson said. “A lot of times kids can use the excuse, `Oh I got screened,’ and he did a good job of just being aggressive, fighting over screens.”

Even Thompson’s father could be heard lauding the senior guard’s play.

Wallace attributed his strong defensive effort to “energy and effort.”

“I just tried to be in their face as much as possible, force them to the big fellow and let him alter and contend shots,” he said. Wallace finished with four steals on the night, and as a team, Georgetown held Villanova 0-for-19 over a nearly 12-minute stretch early in the second half.

Offensively, Wallace was better than he had been of late. After missing his 10th straight three-pointer 1:34 into the game, Wallace converted on three of his next seven, including a big one with two minutes left to run the Hoyas’ lead to four. He did commit six turnovers – too many for a senior who has started 125 consecutive games – and still was not quite the rainmaker fans have come to love, missing a potential tie-breaking three with 1:22 left.

Indeed, after shooting just 40 percent as a team, well below their season average, the Hoyas, like Wallace, will look to the defensive end to jumpstart the offense.

“If you are a good team, there are going to be nights where you don’t make shots and you got to win with your defense,” Villanova’s Wright said. “We haven’t been able to do that all year, that’s what Georgetown has done all year.”

Last night, no one exemplified that better than Wallace.

“We’re allowing our defense to create plays and opportunities for us on offense,” he said. “That was what we hung our hats on.”

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