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Villanova primed for deep NCAA Tournament run

03/16/2015, 12:45pm EDT

By Jeff Neiburg

Jeff Neiburg (@Jeff_Neiburg)
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The Rev. Rob Hagan, Villanova’s team chaplain, got a turn to climb up the ladder at Madison Square Garden and snip off a piece of the net after the Wildcats won their first Big East championship since 1995.

There were team managers, graduate assistants and, of course, the players themselves all getting turns to take the scissors to the twine.

JayVaughn Pinkston was the last person to go up. He finished off the snipping and swung the net around in the air as the Villanova faithful remained in the Garden cheering.

“It’s just a great honor to do it with these great group of guys,” Pinkston said. “It’s an honor to be a part of this program.”

“He’s sacrificed so much for this team,” Villanova coach Jay Wright said. “He exemplifies what our guys are all about.”

So where did Wright fit into the procession of Wildcats cutting off a piece of history? Before the chaplain? In between the underclassmen and seniors Darrun Hilliard and Pinkston?

How about none of the above? The 14th year Villanova coach didn’t take a turn.

“I got mine,” Wright said. “Being in this game, being on that floor, that’s the thrill for me. I just wanted everybody to experience it that could, I got to do it in ‘09.”

Did he not decide to cut a piece for himself because he’s waiting to emulate what that 2009 Final Four team did?

“I would like to say I was tactical enough to do that, but I was not thinking that,” he said. “I was really thinking that I wanted to get everyone up there that I could get up there.”

Maybe Wright was being honest, but he senses that this team is prepared to make deep run in the NCAA Tournament. The Selection Committee must think so, too, awarding the Wildcats the second overall No. 1 seed as the top dog in the East Region.

Villanova (32-2), which has already set a program wins record, opens up with Patriot League champion Lafayette and coach Fran O’Hanlon, a former Villanova great, in the “second” round on Thursday.

“I have a great feeling about this team,” Wright said. “We’ve been through this. It’s just going to be the next step in our learning process.”

“The next step.” “The next game.” “One at a time.” “We’re trying to keep getting better.”

If you were to put together a soundtrack of the 2014-15 Villanova Wildcats’ most common answers in press conferences, those phrases would be the greatest hits.

“I know it’s boring, but, it is our next game,” Hilliard said following Friday’s semifinal win over Providence. “It’s our biggest game because it’s our next game.”

So that makes Lafayette Villanova’s biggest game of the year, and rightfully so. The Wildcats haven’t made it out of the first weekend since that 2009 team.

Last year it was eventual champion, Connecticut, which knocked off Villanova in the “third” round.

“March is crazy, we know that,” junior point guard Ryan Arcidiacono said. “We know what happened last year to us, so we’re going to take it one game at a time.”

He has a point, and it’s good to keep things in perspective. But, if we’re really keeping things in perspective, what does the 2010 team that lost as a No. 2 seed to No. 10 St. Mary’s have anything to do with this team?

Or, what does last year’s team have to with this team?

Historical numbers in college sports aren’t that useful. That 2010 team, obviously, had none of these current players. Last year’s team was almost the same as this year’s team, with seniors James Bell and Tony Chennault still in the mix.

But, this team, one year later, is so much different than last year’s team. Sophomore guard Josh Hart, the Big East Tournament’s MVP and regular season’s Sixth Man of the Year, is one year older and one year better. Same goes for sophomore forward Kris Jenkins.

You could say the same for almost everyone on the roster.

These Wildcats are better because they’re more polished, they play more like a family and play together better than almost anyone in the country.

How many teams have a point guard, Arcidiacono, diving head-first for a loose ball in the waning moments of a near-20-point win in a conference tournament final?

How many teams have six guys averaging more than nine points, but none more than 14?

How many teams can win 15 straight, 12 of which by double digits, and still tell you that the next game is their biggest game, day in and day out, without ever mentioning the likelihood of making a title run?

The answer to each of those is “not many,” and the last question, maybe “none.”

“That laser-focus comes from a lot of guys, not just knowing what we do, but understanding and believing in everything that we do because they’ve been here and they’ve had success,” Wright said. “You’ve got a young guy like [freshman] Phil Booth, he believes in what we do because he doesn’t know anything else. JayVaughn and Darrun, they know when we do what we do, we win. They know when we don’t, we lose. They’ve been on both sides of it and they really understand it and believe in it.”

Wright has them believing, despite most of the country not believing Villanova has enough star power to win it all. Wright has said the Wildcats aren’t sexy.

But, no one needs to be sexy this time of year. You just need to outscore your opponent six more times.

And if Villanova can do that, maybe Wright will be the one cutting the last piece of twine off the rims in Indianapolis.