PHILADELPHIA -- Villanova junior forward Kris Jenkins is selfish.

That's by design.

"He don't pass," Wildcats head coach Jay Wright said with a laugh. "Bottom line. He doesn't -- but we don't want him to."

Not when the 6-foot-6, 240-pound wing forward is shooting the way he's been of late.

Jenkins continued his strong play over the last several weeks with a career-high 31 points, propelling No. 3 Villanova to an 83-62 win over DePaul on Tuesday evening.

His career outing comes after a four-game span where he averaged 19.0 points per game.

His eight 3-pointers tied the high-water mark for any Big East player this year as he became the first Villanova player to go for 30 points this season.

"It's not really a difference, it's just staying aggressive," he said. "My teammates do an unbelievable job of making the right play. Recently, the right play has just been to catch and shoot."

Fellow junior wing Josh Hart chipped in 18 points for Villanova on 6 of 11 from the floor.

With the win, Villanova (26-4, 15-2 Big East) locks up its third consecutive Big East regular-season title. Only a noon game Saturday against Georgetown remains before the Wildcats start their Big East Tournament championship defense.

"That's one of the goals that we set out at the beginning of the year and we achieved that goal," Hart said. "(But) we have more games left to play. We have to get a lot better, definitely a lot better defensively."

That last part wasn't quite so apparent on Tuesday night in front of 6,500 fans.

Villanova took advantage of 17 DePaul turnovers, turning them into a 25-10 advantage in points off giveaways to make up for a 34-29 deficit on the glass.

"A lot of it was their gap defense and their hands being in good position, a lot of it was just our ineptitude of making point-to-point passes," DePaul head coach Dave Leitao said. "They had a lot to do with it, they're a very good defensive team, and we've got a lot to do with it as well."

Freshman Eli Cain led the Blue Demons (9-20, 3-14) with 14 points. Senior forward Myck Henry added 13 and senior guard Aaron Simpson 11 for DePaul, which lost for the sixth time in seven games.

Cain, a 6-foot-6 wing from Willingboro (N.J.), has been a rare bright spot of late for the Blue Demonds, hitting double figures in eight of his last 10 games.

"He's just playing basketball, not worried about things, and he's a freshman so he's going to continue to grow and get better in areas that happen when he doesn't have the ball in his hands," Leitao said. "He's become our most consistent player because his mindset has been tremendous and he's just trying to do the right things to help our team be successful."

Jenkins nearly matched his previous career high of 23 during a first half that saw Villanova pull away to a 51-33 lead.

The Wildcats led by eight early on, but the Blue Demons closed the gap to a single point just past the five-minute mark. That's when Jenkins took over, hitting four 3-pointers in a personal 14-0 run over a 2:31 span that made it 25-10 with 10:36 left in the first half.

DePaul rallied, hitting eight of nine shots during one stretch to pull within eight at the 2:45 mark, but triples from Jenkins and Booth helped Villanova close out the half on an 11-1 run.

"When you have a team that's as balanced and unselfish as they play, you're going to get open shots and if you can make them, it looks like a very pretty game," Leito said. "I thought our aggression defensively wasn't there and our rotations, if you're a step slow against them in any rotation, then they're going to get open shots and they've got multiple people that can knock them down."

Jenkins finished the first half with 20 points and needed only 89 seconds of the second to set the new mark, hitting triples on Villanova's first and second possessions of the half to help the Wildcats open a 25-point advantage.