NEW YORK, N.Y.– Villanova has always had a strong basketball tradition nationally, earning 35 NCAA tournament bids, advancing to the Final Four on four different occasions and winning a storied national championship in 1985.
As the program has grown to the next level, expectations have risen. It can be, as Cats’ coach Jay Wright discovered, both a blessing and a curse.
No one expects the Wildcats to be Kentucky, Kansas or Duke, but there is a feeling on the Philadelphia Main Line they should make a dent in the tournament on a regular basis and still be playing during the second week of March Madness.
In some ways, the Cats have reached an elite status on the national landscape. Villanova this year is the unanimous choice to win the Big East regular season championship by the coaches, who were impressed by the talent and experience on the roster returning from a 33-3 team that won a second straight Big East regular season title, captured the tournament at the Garden and was ranked as high as No. 2 in the AP poll.
This Nova team, which is ranked ninth in the pre-season Coaches’ poll, has two returning senior starters– point guard Ryan Arcidiacono, last year’s Big East co-Player of the Year; and 6-11 shot blocking center Daniel Ochefu, the team’s leading rebounder; along with 6-6 wing Josh Hart and blue chip freshman guard Jaylen Brunson.
Arcidiacono was selected first team pre-season All Big East and Ochefu was named to the second team. Hart was the MVP of the 2015 Big East tournament. Brunson who was the MVP in Team USA’s gold medal team in the U19 World Championships in Crete and was selected pre-season Rookie of the Year. All told, Villanova has eight players who could impact a conference game.
Will they be as good as last year? It’s hard to say. Georgetown, Butler, Xavier and Providence can all play. The league believes it has several teams that can be factors in March and isn’t shy about saying as much.
“We’re fully committed to nothing short of a national title in men’s basketball,” Big East commissioner Val Ackerman claimed.
Ever since Wright arrived on the Main Line in 2001, his best teams have always been flush with productive seniors. Unlike Kentucky coach John Calipari, who popularized his highly successful one and done concept during and Duke Hall of Fame coach Mike Krzyzewski, which started three one and dones– Jahlil Okafor, Justice Winslow and Tyus Jones– during its 2015 national championship run, Wright has built a perennial Ten Top program by recruiting coachable Top 100 recruited players who develop by staying in school for four years and earn their degrees.
He has only had one underclassman leave early in 15 years. Sophomore guard Kyle Lowry, the most competitive player Wright has ever coached, declared for the NBA draft at the finish of his sophomore year after ‘Nova’s 28-5 Elite Eight team in 2006, was a first round pick and is and is now an NBA All Star guard with the Toronto Raptors.
Wright has had his moments– coaching two first team All Americas– senior guards Randy Foye (2006) and Scottie Reynolds (2010). Villanova advanced to the Final Four in 2009. But the Cats have not advanced to the second weekend of the tournament since that magical season.
The Cats’ recent success in the re-designed basketball-only Big East is a direct reflection of Wright’s philosophy of making seniors the heart of his teams. The Wildcats were 29-5 co-regular season champions in 2014 when their leading scorer was senior forward James Bell. Villanova soared into the stratosphere again last year with a guard-oriented team that had three senior starters — guard Darrun Hilliard, forward Jayvaughn Pinkston and Dylan Ennis. This year, Wright brought two more seniors– Ochefu and Arcidiacono, a pair of four-year starters– with him to Big East media day at the Garden.
“I think that’s a product of coach Wright, his staff and the university,” Arcidiacono said. “There is not very many players who would be willing to stay three or four years knowing they’re not going to be first-round draft picks. That’s not really the Villanova type of player. The Villanova player stays three, four years and develops relationships with the guys on the team and just becomes a great team player and leaves a great legacy.
“If you look at all the teams, there’s always been great junior and senior leaders who have been willing to help the younger guys. Even if the younger guys do all the scoring and get all the accolades, it’s the older guys who have to set the tone.”
This has been Wright’s grand experiment and it is reminiscent of the way the late Joe Paterno put his teams together with true student-athletes in his early years as Penn State’s Hall of Fame football coach.
Wright has found the magical formula to keep Villanova in the public eye during the regular season. But he is discovering that great programs tend to be judged by what they accomplish in any given March, much like Kansas was in 1998 when they had the best team in the country but their 25-2 season was defined by a loss to Arizona in the regional semi-finals or Duke’s first round losses to VCU, Lehigh and Mercer.
Villanova, like Wisconsin, is old school although that may change in the future. Wright has recruited two future NBA players in the last two years, signing Brunson, a McDonald’s All American from Stevenson High in Lincolnshire, Ill. last year and getting a commitment from 6-9 power forward Omari Spellman, a Top 20 prospect this year from St. Thomas More in Connecticut., who both could be gone sooner than later to the NBA.
Times are changing. But for now, Villanova is still working with the same successful model.
For all its success and a No. 1 seeding in the East Region last season, Villanova made an early exit from the tournament, losing to NC State, 71-68 in another third round game in Pittsburgh. Other than Hilliard– the four guards in their small ball offense shot blanks.
“We could have had our bad game in the middle of the season against DePaul,” Archidiacono said. “Instead, we had it in March.”
“There’s a sickness when you’re going home, a finality to it,” Wright admitted.
He finally watched the State tape two months later on a plane trip to California.
“It wasn’t as bad as I thought,” Wright said before thinking on it some more.
“But it was bad,” he said.
In the end, it is what it is.
“You can’t fix it,” Wright said. “You just move on.”
He will always have his version of Camelot, with special players like Arcidiacono who see the glass as half full. Arcidiacono would rather think about the 33 wins than the three losses. “Some people may use the losses as motivation, like we have to get back at this team, win this game,” he said. “If that happens great. If not, we have to know we’re going to play Villanova basketball. We’ll look back at the wins.
“It would be a great thing for our senior legacy if Villanova were to go deep into March. If not, I’m not going to say my career was a disappointment or anything like that. We have a lot of goals this season — some of them have to do with March. But if you only think about March, you’ll never enjoy the moment.”
