MORGANTOWN, W.Va. - When Villanova guard Scottie Reynolds made the decision to return for his senior season with the Wildcats rather than put his name in the ring at last year’s NBA Draft, perhaps he saw an opportunity to take care of some unfinished business.

Despite losing three starters from last year’s Final Four team, Reynolds knew the future of head coach Jay Wright’s team was bright. He saw an opportunity to lead his team as a senior, to get the BIG EAST title, to advance to the championship round of the NCAA tournament and to finally get a win at West Virginia along the way.

Monday night’s match-up between the No. 2 Wildcats (20-2, 9-1) and the No. 6 Mountaineers (19-3, 8-2) will be the fourth time Reynolds takes the court against WVU and the third time he does so in Morgantown.

In the three previous meetings, Villanova’s leading scorer averaged just 9.3 points on just under 32 percent shooting. Last season, he fouled out with only 12 points while watching helplessly as Da’Sean Butler destroyed his 13th-rated Wildcats with 43 points.

Butler is fresh off his season-high of 33 points at St. John’s and will likely need another solid performance if the Mountaineers are to take down a Villanova squad that is not accustomed to defeat, even if the taste is still fresh in their mouths.

In the first half of Saturday’s games, it looked as though Monday would be a meeting between two teams coming off conferences losses. In the end, however, West Virginia’s 57 second half points were enough to overcome St. John’s, while Villanova’s 59 could not stop Georgetown from handing the Wildcats their first BIG EAST defeat.

The nationally televised contest now shapes up as an opportunity for the Mountaineers to move into a tie for second place in the league, just a game back from the streaking Syracuse Orange.

Villanova has fallen from their perch atop the BIG EAST and will fall in the national ranks when the new polls are released early Monday. Whether they continue to fall, however, depends on what they do in Morgantown. The last time they got a victory in the WVU Coliseum was in 1999.

The Wildcats start just one player over 6-foot-5, though freshmen Mouphtaou (6-9) and Maurice Sutton (6-11) each have starting experience earlier in the season and now provide quality minutes off the bench.

Along with Reynolds, who averages, 18.7 points a game, junior guard Corey Fisher and forward Antonio Pena each average double figures on the season. Villanova gets far more minutes and production out of its bench than West Virginia has and

averages nearly 12 more points per outing than the Mountaineers.

Of course, West Virginia’s newest weapon off the bench is Deniz Kilicli, who has had two solid performances on the offensive end of the court, but has pulled down just one rebound in each of his two career games. As a result, Bob Huggins pulled him from the St. John’s game and he didn’t see the court at all in the second half despite putting up five points in seven minutes of action in the first period.

West Virginia’s reputation for falling behind early only to mount impressive comebacks in the final 20 minutes of the game will get them in serious trouble against a team like Villanova that has excelled in both halves this season.

This is no St. John’s, not even Ohio State; this is a team that before Saturday had won eleven straight, including nine in the league.

WVU is looking to extend its own streak to seven with a win that would go a long way toward their season goal to bring a BIG EAST banner to the Coliseum. The teams will meet again in the regular season finale, but for now it’s all about Monday’s match-up and extending Villanova’s losing streak to two.

The game tips off on ESPN at 7:00 p.m. from the Coliseum in snowy Morgantown.

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