Denise Dillon explains exactly why whining is prohibited in her Villanova program

The sign used to be on Denise Dillon’s Drexel door, a gift from Dragons players, giving her words right back to her. The sign made the move to her Villanova office, mounted in Dillon’s line of sight.

ABSOLUTELY NO WHINING.

Who’d be whining now? Life is good as Villanova’s head women’s basketball coach prepares her fourth-seeded Wildcats to host No. 13-seed Cleveland State on Saturday in the first round of the NCAA Tournament. March Madness around Philadelphia centers right on Maddy Siegrist and company.

The words on the wall are for the tougher days.

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“I have a no-complaining policy with our players,” Dillon said, sitting in her office last week. “I think it’s something important in life. Complaining just wears you out.”

Yes, players are allowed to speak their minds, Dillon said, including if they have differences of opinion. If you have a complaint, she said, just come in and find a solution for it, don’t let it eat away.

There’s a photograph to the left of her desk, closer to her in every respect. No whining? Dillon only has to glance at the photo, from her own Senior Day as a Villanova player. Denise holding flowers, laughing. Joe Dillon wearing a Villanova women’s basketball sweatshirt, looking over at his fourth-oldest child, his eyes sparkling.

“I never heard the man complain about anything,” Dillon said.

Do her players know how this all shaped her?

“Probably not,” Dillon said. “They know: just don’t complain.”

She thinks of the years of taking her father every Monday for treatment at Lankenau Hospital. Him walking in initially, and then eventually entering via a wheelchair. Familiar faces saying, “Hey, Mr. Dillon, how are you doing?”

Those sparkling eyes.

“Fine, thanks … how are you doing?”

Denise was thinking, and sometimes saying to her father, “No, you’re not. You’re not fine.”

Multiple myeloma was the diagnosis. The cancer spread.

“He was in ICU for stretches,” Dillon said. “He was sick for seven years. He moved in with me. He didn’t want to. He didn’t want to be a burden. He certainly was not. He was an absolute pleasure.”

Joe Dillon lived with Denise for maybe six years. “It made it easier — I moved out to Downingtown, that’s where my sister is,” Denise said.

She’s the fourth of five children — “five in six years.” They’ll all be in for this game, nothing unusual about that. “We’re super close, all my siblings,” Dillon said.

Their collective attitudes, she said, are inherited. She knows what she got from her father.

“He worked multiple jobs — he was a mail carrier, then he catered, he did night work with that, put all of us through [grade school] and high school,” Dillon said.

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The whole thing goes deeper, and back further. Peg Dillon was home in Broomall during Denise’s high school years, but fading away. “My mom had early-onset Alzheimer’s — I was very young, close to high school.”

By the end of high school, mom didn’t know her children.

“Tough,” Dillon said, stating the obvious in a word. “She wasn’t treated for anything. We basically, I think, figured it out. Like, yeah, you figure it out.”

Within that came the sacrifices.

“You don’t think about it at the time,” Dillon said. “It was more the commitment my dad had made, taking care of my mom at home. And everybody just put their lives on hold. My older sister probably the most. She put college on hold. She was waiting. She basically drove my sister and [me] to high school, she worked different shifts.”

Denise Dillon was a basketball star at Cardinal O’Hara, identified as a college prospect at her young age. An early scholarship offer, she said, was from St. Joseph’s, “I think after freshman year. My dad grew up in Overbrook, so he was all fired up about St. Joe’s.”

Maybe the Hawks, coached by Jim Foster, had the early edge.

“Then Foster leaves, goes to Vanderbilt,” she said.

He brought up maybe continuing the recruiting … no way she’s going down there, Dillon told him.

“Going far wasn’t going to work,” Dillon said. “It wasn’t even attractive.”

Her final four schools were St. Joseph’s, Villanova, Rutgers, and Penn State.

“I liked Theresa Grentz a lot,” Dillon said of the O’Hara and Immaculata legend then coaching Rutgers. “But I didn’t care for the university.”

She thinks of her recruiting visit to Penn State, coached by another former Immaculata star, Rene Portland.

“They flew me up there — that took, what, 18 minutes to fly there?” Dillon said.

So in her mind, this was close. This could work.

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“Then my dad had come up for the visit, he drove me back,” Dillon said. “I was like, ‘Dad, this is far!’ So that was off the table, knowing you’d never have a car, all that.”

So it was Villanova or St. Joseph’s, until St. Joe’s knocked itself off the list.

“Crazy how the path works,” Dillon said. “Foster leaves, goes to Vanderbilt, then Steph Gaitley comes to St. Joe’s from Richmond. She was recruiting me at Richmond. Then she tells me we don’t have scholarships because a couple of players are coming up from Richmond – Amy Mallon being one of them. That’s the greatest piece of it.”

Maybe Dillon would have decided to play for Harry Perretta at Villanova anyway, but the decision was made for her. All this starts to twist around Dillon’s basketball life. Gaitley, a Villanova grad herself, is one of Dillon’s mentors to this day, second to Perretta himself. They talk all the time, Dillon said.

Then Mallon showed up at Villanova as an assistant coach for Denise’s senior season. When Mallon returned to St Joe’s the following year to help Gaitley, the departure opened up a spot that Perretta offered to his graduating captain. Dillon got her coaching start right away at her alma mater because Mallon had left.

Local hoop fans know the rest of the story, how Dillon took over as Drexel’s head coach in 2004, and hired Amy Mallon as her top assistant. When Dillon got the Villanova job in 2020 after Perretta retired, Mallon replaced her at Drexel.

Staying close, even as a younger coach, always made sense to Dillon. Jobs opened around the country … nah. Some even told her, we know you’re waiting for Villanova. It wasn’t that so much, she said. Some were rebuilding jobs. Why leave Drexel where there was still a little more work to be done to start rebuilding at a place that wasn’t as good as Drexel?

Of course, there were other factors.

“My dad never missed a game at Drexel or here at Villanova,” Dillon said. “Not just for me as a player, he was here after that. After I finished, he would still come to every game, sit in the same spot across from the bench. Never say a word.”

Even when she coached at Drexel, Joe Dillon kept going to Villanova games. Peg Dillon had died in 2000, when Denise was a Perretta assistant.

“He had some good years, then he got sick,” Denise said.

There’s another sign on her office wall: HAPPINESS IS NOT A DESTINATION, IT’S A WAY OF LIFE. She’d found that one herself, brought it over from Drexel.

“That’s like my mantra,” Dillon said. “I think I’m just genuinely happy and appreciative.”

Her father didn’t see her become Villanova’s head coach, she said, but he knew where she would likely wind up. Her family isn’t just in the stands cheering during the good times. They’re the reason, Villanova’s coach said, “I could get through anything in the world.”