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INDIANAPOLIS, Ind. - In its final possession of a tense Saturday night duel at a sold-out Hinkle Fieldhouse, Villanova used a simple-two man game to get the result it wanted.

With Butler and Villanova tied at 65 and time in regulation winding down, junior Ryan Arcidiacono had the basketball near the top of the key. A pump fake drew a second defender to him and the junior used that opening to feed a wide-open Darrun Hilliard to his right. Hilliard promptly dropped home a 3-pointer with 1.5 seconds left to put Villanova back into the lead.

When Butler's 3-point bid to tie on its last possession was off the mark, the No. 6 Wildcats had earned a gutty 68-65 BIG EAST road win over the No. 18 Bulldogs.

Hilliard's final basket capped a career-best night for the senior from Bethlehem, Pa. He notched a career high 31 points and tied a Villanova single game record set by Allan Ray by draining eight 3-pointers. For good measure, he collected a team-high eight rebounds as the Wildcats improved to 23-2 overall, 10-2 BIG EAST.

Senior JayVaughn Pinkston added 12 points and four rebounds for the Wildcats.

"It was a great college basketball game to be a part of," stated Villanova head coach Jay Wright. "This is one of the great places to play college basketball. The way Butler plays the game is tough and classy. The fans are great. It's just an awesome basketball experience.

"You just have so much respect for your opponent when they take you to the limit and test you. You see what you've got. I'm really proud of our guys. In the toughest game of the year on the road, our two seniors were the ones to lead us."

Wright credited Butler's intelligence for making life tough at the offensive end for Villanova.

"Butler is very well-coached and they have great defensive schemes," Wright noted. "What you do well, they're going to take away. What we do well is share the ball. They forced us to get into isolation situations and see if we could make plays. And, even when we did in certain spots, they covered that."

"At the end, we just went to Darrun and J.P. (Pinkston)."

Of the final sequence, Hilliard pointed to the Wildcats' daily practice regimen as having prepared him for the moment on this night.

"Coach really tries to put us into the toughest situations in practice," Hilliard explained. "Arch had the confidence and made a great pass to me."

Hilliard was asked if he felt the shot would drop when it left his hand.

"They always feel like that," he stated with a smile. "Arch found me. It happened earlier in the year up at Seton Hall. Arch found me with a great pass up there and I just missed the shot."

The game was a tale of two very different halves. The first period was dominated by defense while the second 20 minutes were defined by sharp shooting and crisp offense.

In a matchup of the two teams atop the BIG EAST standings entering action today, the first 20 minutes were an ode to the conference's grit. Points were hard to come by at both ends of the floor as two of the league's top defensive units demonstrated their acumen in that area.

Only 21 total points were on the board as the game reached the midway point of the first half - Villanova held an 11-10 lead thanks in part to a pair of 3-pointers from Hilliard and another from sophomore forward Kris Jenkins.

The floor opened a bit in the final five minutes of the period for both teams and the Wildcats got another big triple, this one from freshman Phil Booth, to build a 27-22 lead at intermission.

That mini-scoring burst was a hint of what was to come in the entertaining second half.

A Butler surge came at the start of the second half. The Bulldogs went on an 13-4 run over the first 4:14 of the period, much to the delight of the partisan throng. Dunham did much of that damage, scoring 10 points in that stretch, and Butler held a 36-31 lead before another Hilliard triple sliced the gap to 36-34 with 15:31 left in the second half.

The contest went back and forth as the Wildcats connected on 12-of-20 second half field goal attempts, including 7-of-11 from beyond the 3-point arc. Butler's offense picked up steam too as Dunham and Barlow combined to score 38 points - 19 each.

In the end, though, it came down to a simple two-man game which got the Wildcats a memorable 3-pointer.

"Darrun," said Wright, "played very well. We leaned on our two seniors and they did a n outstanding job."

The Wildcats returned to Philadelphia after the game Saturday evening and begin preparations for a Monday night duel with Seton Hall, which handed VU its first loss of 2014-15 on Jan. 3 (66-61) at the Prudential Center in Newark. That game is slated for 7 p.m. (Fox Sports 1).

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