City of Basketball Love

Josh Verlin (@jmverlin)
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BROOKLYN -- In the course of their four-year Villanova careers, Ryan Arcidiacono and Daniel Ochefu have set the standard in a number of ways for a program with a lot of history.

They’ve led the Wildcats to 111 wins since arriving on campus, the most by any four-year class in the program’s 95-year history. During that span, they’ve won three Big East regular-season championships, one Big East tournament and made four consecutive NCAA Tournaments.

Their individual accomplishments are almost as impressive. Arcidiacono, a 6-foot-3 point guard out of Neshaminy, has become the first player in Villanova history to score 1500 points and dish out 500 assists, numbers he both passed at last weekend’s Big East Tournament. Ochefu, a 6-11 center out of the Westtown School, is 54 points from 1000 and his 886 rebounds place him eighth on the school’s all-time list.

When it comes to putting their names up there with some of the great classes in Villanova history, however, there’s still one thing missing from that resume: a trip into the second weekend of March Madness.

“Within the Villanova family, their legacy is going to be the winningest class in Villanova history, and I think Daniel Ochefu will go down as one of the great big men in Villanova history,” head coach Jay Wright said. “I think Ryan Arcidiacono will also go down as one of the great guards in Villanova history.

“Now, nationally, we realize their legacy is going to be based on what they do in the NCAA Tournament,” he continued. “It's just what college basketball is. We obviously care much more about our legacy within our program, but we understand the national legacy is important, and I think that's how it's going to play out.”

No Villanova team has made it past the Round of 32 since Scottie Reynolds and Co. made it to the Final Four in 2009, a run that’s still recent enough to occur during the current presidency but far enough away that most of ‘Nova’s current roster were still in middle school when it happened.

Arcidiacono and Ochefu are 2-3 in the NCAAs in their careers--losing as a No. 8 seed to No. 9 North Carolina in the Round of 64 in 2013, to No. 7 UConn in the Round of 32 in 2014 (as a No. 2 seed) and in the same spot last year, when the top-seeded Wildcats were taken out by No. 8 N.C. State.

And if Villanova--again a No. 2 seed--suffers the same fate this season, whether that’s against No. 15 UNC-Ashville in the first round or No. 7 Iowa/No. 10 Temple in the second, that’s going to be one of the major bullet points of their career.

“We know that this run could maybe add (our legacy), but we just know we have to take it one game at a time,” Arcidiacono said. “We want to be able to have our teammates and the past players who have played at Villanova really look at us and appreciate what we have done for the program and what our whole senior class has done.”

It’s easy to remember that the year before Arcidiacono and Ochefu arrived on campus, Villanova suffered through its worst season of the last 18 years. Things had been trending downhill for a few seasons--30 wins during that Final Four season, 25 in 2009-10 and 21 the year after that--but the bottom really fell out during that 2011-12 season, when a senior-less, rudder-less group went 13-19 and then saw two of its top three players (Maalik Wayns and Dominic Cheek) declare a year early for the NBA Draft.

Despite that, the level of success the program’s had since that year hasn’t come as a surprise to either senior.

"Coming to Villanova, I’m just expecting to go to the tournament every year,” Ochefu said. “We’re kind of spoiled here, we’ve had a great program with such great history, as soon as I came in, the thought of not making the tournament was foreign to me.”

Arcidiacono and Ochefu’s freshman season wasn’t always pretty, with losses to Columbia and La Salle during a 4-4 start, the Wildcats rallied with seven straight wins heading into Big East play, where they won 10 games in the last year of the 16-team mega-conference and proved worthy of an at-large selection.

“Our freshman year was a struggle,” Arcidiacono said. “Every day in practice it was a grind, it wasn’t pretty at all, but I think that’s what made us good in these last couple of years, is that we went through the struggles.”

It helps that each year since, Wright and the Wildcats have had seniors to lead the team.

First was Mouphtaou Yarou in 2012-13, showing Arcidiacono and Ochefu the way to act as Villanova players. Then it was James Bell and Tony Chennault to help them take the next step, and last year Darrun Hilliard and JayVaughn Pinkston stepped up as expected.

Arcidiacono and Ochefu are both blazing a path and following those who came before them.

“This time period now--winning a lot of games, 30-win seasons, those are the types of things that Villanova basketball is accustomed to,” Ochefu said. “Focusing on the little things, staying on the younger guys like how the older guys stayed on me when I was younger are the things that will keep this tradition going.”

Now the pair, along with walk-ons Kevin Rafferty, Patrick Farrell and Henry Lowe, will hope to leave their legacy imprinted on those who follow--including juniors Josh Hart and Kris Jenkins, who only need to win 21 games next year to set that new class winning record.

And no matter what their national legacy is, the seniors know they’ve gotten the program back up to its standard.

“That’s the way we like it,” Arcidiacono said. “Hopefully we turn the page after this season and every class from here on out is going to have a successful class and play the right way, that’s what Villanova basketball is.”