After breezing through the first half, the Georgetown Hoyas weren't expecting to sweat it out against Villanova in the final few minutes.

"I'm glad our guys held on," Georgetown coach John Thompson III said. "It was coming too easily. We just had to refocus."

Roy Hibbert scored eight of his 14 points in No. 9 Georgetown's opening 24-point lead, and the Hoyas held on for a 62-57 victory yesterday against ninth-seeded Villanova in the quarterfinals of the Big East Conference tournament at Madison Square Garden.

A rested Georgetown (24-6), the tournament's top seed, came out shooting, and a weary-looking Villanova couldn't find the basket early. The Wildcats (22-10) made a game of it in the closing minutes, but the huge first-half deficit was too much to overcome.

"I don't think we did anything wrong at the start of the game or throughout the game, really," Villanova forward Curtis Sumpter said. "We just had a couple of bad possessions and Georgetown just took advantage of them."

DaJuan Summers got things started with a 3-pointer 2:22 in and the Hoyas kept going from there. Georgetown was up, 14-0, before Sumpter finally got Villanova on the scoreboard with a jumper 7:20 into the game.

The Hoyas followed with a 12-0 run to go up, 26-2, at 9:28 on Jeff Green's layup and opened leads to as big as 25 points three times.

"I think we were just a little better at it, and they were a little off to start," Thompson said.

Green, the Big East player of the year, added 12 points and nine rebounds for the Hoyas, who shot 42.6 percent (23 of 54) and advanced to a semifinal game against Notre Dame. Georgetown has won 13 of its past 14.

Other game

Notre Dame 89, Syracuse 83: Russell Carter scored 24 points to help No. 20 Notre Dame beat Syracuse in another quarterfinal, ending the Orange's run for a third consecutive championship.

Syracuse (22-10) had won the past two Big East tournament championships and eight consecutive tournament games -- one short of Connecticut's record of nine set from 1998-2000.

Notre Dame (24-6), which finished fourth in the conference and received a first-round bye, won its sixth game in a row. The Irish won 23 games in the regular season, their most since 1985-86.