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BUFFALO, N.Y. -- Kris Jenkins just couldn't miss this time last year.
This year, he just can't hit.
Down the stretch last year, Jenkins was a machine. He connected on 48 percent of his threes for Villanova the last 15 games last year, including, of course, the historic buzzer-beating game-winner against North Carolina that gave the Wildcats the NCAA championship.
This year down the stretch, Jenkins has struggled badly. He missed all six of his threes in Villanova's win over Mount St. Mary's on Thursday night (see game story), and in the Wildcats' last 15 games he's shooting just 27 percent from behind the arc, including 2 for 17 in his last three games.
Is Jenkins in a slump?
"Nah, what is a slump?" Jenkins said Friday in the Villanova locker room at KeyBank Center. "I don't know. I don't know what a slump is. … Shots fall sometimes and sometimes they don't."
And lately, they just haven't fallen for Jenkins.
He missed his first 10 shots against Mount St. Mary's and has now shot over 50 percent from the field just twice in 'Nova's last 15 games.
"I just tell him to keep shooting," Josh Hart said. "That's the biggest thing I do. With him … he's a shooter, that's what he is. You're not going to tell him, 'Don't shoot, you're in a slump.'
"That's like you telling Brett Favre after he threw a couple interceptions, 'Don't throw the ball.' He's a great shooter so we've got all the confidence in him.
"Every time we see him one-two step into a shot, we think it's going to be good. When you're a great shooter, you have a short-term memory. He probably didn't even realize he was 0 for 10. He probably thought he was 0 for 1 or 0 for 2."
Top-ranked and top-seeded Villanova, 32-3, faces No. 8 seed Wisconsin, 26-9, at 2:40 p.m. Saturday for a berth in the Sweet 16.
Safe to say the Wildcats need a more effective, more productive Jenkins than what they've gotten lately.
• Up through the Marquette game on Jan. 24, Jenkins was shooting 43 percent from three on 60 for 140 and ranked 83rd out of 581 players in NCAA Division I with at least 100 attempts.
• In 15 games since then, he's shooting 27 percent on 26 for 97, which ranks 386th out of 401 players in Division I with at least 60 attempts during that span.
Those figures come from the Sports-Reference database.
"I'm not worried at all because he does this a lot," Jay Wright said. "It's never his shot. It's his shot selection. He's like a gunslinger quarterback, you've just got to let him go. Because he thinks he's going to make every shot and I love that. I love it. I don't want to stop it.
"We've been through this all year. He's had games like this all year. He played like this in the Seton Hall game (1 for 8 in the Big East semis). There's no question when he doesn't score, we struggle.
"But we're just trying to teach him just to mix it up. If he's not making his threes, just drive the ball and we post him up a little bit, and in the second half [Thursday] I thought he did a better job. He drove the ball, we posted him up, got to the foul line.
"He can do everything, it's just that he loves to shoot threes. He's a gunslinger. He really is."
Jenkins has hit just five of his last 28 from three going back to the first half of the St. John's game.
In the Big East and NCAA Tournament last year, Jenkins shot 27 for 59 from three, a combined 46 percent.
Something is going on with Jenkins.
"I don't get caught up in that," Jenkins said. "I just focus on the things that help us win, and defense and rebounding and playing off my teammates and everything else falls into place after that.
"We just have a next-day, next-game mentality. We don't dwell on the past. We watch film, we get better and then we move forward."
Wright did allow that Jenkins needs to use better shot selection at times and rein in the contested threes and the threes from far beyond the arc.
"He's missing badly because he's 40 feet away from the basket and there's a guy in his face," Wright said. "But I'm OK with that. I really am. I'm not kidding you. Because we do shooting drills. [On Wednesday] we came here and we did shooting drills and he didn't miss a shot.
"Sometimes when guys are struggling you can see them on shooting drills and they're struggling and they're slamming the ball down. He makes every shot. In practice yesterday, he made every shot.
"We've been through this with him for four years, and I'm OK with him and he knows it."
Wright said Jenkins reminds him at times of Scottie Reynolds, who was a great player and great scorer and starred on the 2009 Final Four team. But was also prone to some prolonged shooting slumps.
"He has a unique mindset," Wright said of Jenkins. "He thinks he can go for 35 every night and he thinks he's going to make every three and no matter how many he misses he thinks the next one is going in.
"He took one with a minute left [Thursday] that was from like 40 feet and contested and that's what I say to him: 'Kris, you're a great shooter when you take good shots.' But we've talked about this so many times, I want him to have that mentality. I'll live with this.
"Because there's always the fear from everybody else too that he can make the next one and that helps us offensively because Josh Hart and Jalen Brunson get to the rim because they're not leaving Kris. If they ever saw that he was losing confidence, he wasn't catching and shooting, then they could start backing off him. That would be worse for us than him going 0 for 7."
Despite the numbers, despite the stats, despite the dwindling production, Wright says the last thing he worries about is Jenkins' confidence.
"Never," he said. "Not him. There's certain guys you do. But never him. That's why we love him."