For many, Feb. 16. was just another Friday, but for the college basketball world, it meant 23 more days until teams across America come together in homes, restaurants and gymnasiums, awaiting their fate. They will tilt on the edge of their seats to see if the NCAA grants them a ticket to the most exciting sporting event of the year.
March Madness is right around the corner, and the clock is officially ticking for players and coaches on every level. Some teams are prepared: They have experience, talent and many other factors that go into making an NCAA Tournament Champion. One of those teams gearing up for a bracket-busting campaign is Jay Wright and the Villanova Wildcats.
Nova Nation has had a lot to cheer about in the last few months, as the Wildcats have completed one of the most impressive regular season runs in program history.
Villanova did not suffer a loss until the last legs of December; they held a 22-1 record until falling once again on Feb. 7. This marked the best start to a Villanova basketball season in program history. Nova sat comfortably on top of the AP Poll for most of the year, holding that No. 1 rank before recently falling to St. John’s.
Despite holding a current 23-3 record, Villanova is now ranked No. 3 in the national poll, and No. 2 in the Big East, behind a surprisingly impressive Xavier team that remains undefeated at home. Xavier and Villanova are just two of the many footnotes to yet another exciting and inexplicable college basketball season. Preseason top five ranked teams now find themselves outside of the poll. Teams that ranked in the top 10 early in the year, such as Kansas and West Virginia, can now be located in the middle of the pack with more hungry and competitive squads that are all fighting for a decent seeding in the tournament.
The college hoops world has turned upside down. Luckily, for Coach Wright, his team has not been seriously affected and are still the cream of the crop. Yes, a couple of recent losses to St. John’s–who was winless in the Big East conference prior to the match-up and a struggling Providence squad–doesn’t look great. However, it’s a long season, and any coach will tell you that. Nova is ranked No. 1 in three-point percentage and efficiency. As impressive as that may be, it also raises a few red flags. Shooting that well from the arc means that, on some nights, those jumpers will not fall. Sometimes, the ball might rim out instead of lacing the net. Teams cool down, and that’s only natural when the season starts at the beginning of November and doesn’t conclude until the end of March.
Despite falling under the dangerous mantra of living and dying by the three, Nova has many more facets to their game. They have a potential lottery pick in Malvern native Mikal Bridges, who has improved his game to an NBA-caliber level. They have Jalen Brunson, arguably the best point guard in the country and contender for Wooden National Player of the Year. They score, rebound and play tremendous defense. While the eyes of basketball fans have been drawn to this year’s batch of flashy freshmen such as Trae Young, or the so-called unstoppable roster of Duke, the Wildcats have flown under the radar like they do every year—and Wright wouldn’t want it any other way. “All the attention, it’s really scary, because it’s intoxicating,” he said in a GQ interview last March.
Wright was able to exorcise his demons from losing early in the tourney by bringing a championship to the Main Line in 2015, giving fans one of the best finishes in sports. It is now time to build on that success and not fall back into the mediocrity that so many other Final Four teams have been victim to. It is time for Wright to etch his name in with other college basketball royalty. He has the roster and the talent. The test will be tough, as the field is much more deep and talented than it has ever been. Nova—who would have been voted in as a No. 3 seed in prior tournaments—might face an No. 8 seed this year. Nevertheless, if there is any team that will grab headlines and shock the world yet again, it is this Wildcat team. We will see soon enough if Wright has prepared his men for what’s to come in four weeks. The road to another national championship starts now.
Connor Sodak is a fourth-year student majoring in communications and minoring in journalism. ✉ CS824220@wcupa.edu.