Q&A: Jay Wright on his role with Villanova basketball, his legacy ... and where are all the suits?

Jay Wright may have retired from coaching basketball at Villanova, but he hasn’t gone far.

He still attends practices, now run by his successor, Kyle Neptune, and still shows up at plenty of games, including late November, when Villanova renamed the road between Finneran Pavilion, where the team plays, and the Davis Center, where it practices, Wright Way.

What’s the Hall of Fame coach’s role with the basketball program, less than two years after he retired?

The Inquirer sat down with Wright before Villanova’s 85-80 loss to Marquette last week to talk about Wright’s life after coaching. This is the second installment of a two-part Q&A with Wright. Part one can be found here.

(Editor’s note: The conversation has been edited for clarity and brevity.)

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A: Yeah.

A: It was definitely emotional. Villanova University and the community means so much to us. Patty is an alum, her brothers went here, her whole family is a part of it. The community means so much to us and at that time to be thinking about having your name on one of the roads on campus was just surreal. We were very grateful that [Villanova president] Father Peter [Donohue] and [Villanova athletic director Mark Jackson] think that much of us to do that.

If I sounded like I was cracking, it was way worse than that inside. I was holding it all back. It was an emotional day and we still take great pride in that. I wish my father would have been there. It’s my father’s name. He had just passed away in September. He loved that stuff. I didn’t care as much about the recognition. I felt like I got so much coaching here that I didn’t need any. He would have loved it.

A: The good thing is there are still not typical days. I do enough, which is good. I get up later in the morning. No 6:30 a.m. practice. I get up later, have breakfast, which I would never do until after practice was over. I go online and read about college basketball to keep up with what I have to do, get a workout in, come over and maybe watch a Villanova practice, have dinner with Patty or go out to dinner with friends, and then watch games at night. It’s a simple, normal day.

A: Yeah.

A: Just kind of being a mentor for Kyle, and kind of a partner with Mark Jackson. Mark and I talk about big-picture things. And then an assistant to Father Peter. If there’s an event he thinks would be good for me to do for the university, I’ll do it. The law school is doing a symposium on NIL in New York during Big East week. I’m going to do that with [Big East commissioner] Val Ackerman and Randy Foye, so Father Peter thinks that’s good to do.

It’s kind of well-rounded. An assistant to Father, a partner with Mark, and a mentor to Kyle.

A: We have a very close relationship. I still think we have a good balance of me not being around too much and him calling me when he’s got a question about something or he feels like bouncing something off somebody. We do a good job with that. It’s not every game, but it’s a lot of games. Sometimes it’s during the week on a non-X-and-O issue.

I think we really do a good job of keeping that balance where I’m not there all the time and I’m not telling him what I think he should do.

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A: I always say to Mark and I say to Kyle, I’m not going to be around all the time purposely. But I’m here if you need me. I’ll pop in once a week for practice. But they’ll call me if there’s something they want to talk about and discuss. I may be here once a week, but we may talk two, three times per week.

We all know that’s the important balance. Same thing with games. It kind of works out well. Home games during the week, I’m here. If it’s a weekend game and I’m doing CBS, it’s kind of good I’m not here. But one weekend, when they played UConn, I was in the studio. So I did studio during the day, came down here, saw the game at night, went back and did studio Sunday.

A: I did. Roy Williams and I have talked about it and do talk about it. I talked to Bob Stoops. I talked to the assistant athletic director at Texas, who was the AD at Nebraska when Tom Osborne left. I picked specific people like that just to see how it works, what they do.

A: Different things. It’s different at every school. Every guy handles it differently. Some good things, some things not to do. That’s why I say it’s a constant challenge to make sure … sometimes you might be needed a little bit more, other times it’s good for you not to be around. I think as long as we’re all cognizant of that, that it’s not my program and I’m not overseeing it, but I’m here when they need me.

A: I swear to you, the identity of having been the coach of Villanova basketball is truly enough for me. It was the greatest honor. For the people of this school to entrust you with their program, for you to be able to be in charge of the kind of kids that come to this school, that play at this school, be around the alumni that are so passionate, it was the greatest honor. If people say, “He was a good keeper of the flame. He kept it respectable. He respected being a part of it,” that’s enough. I used to always love when people said, “He’s the coach at Villanova.” That meant so much to me. That’s really all I care about.

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A: Now I need them with studio. I need them. What’s crazy is when you do games with CBS, you have to wear that CBS blazer so you can’t wear any of those suits. I do some functions for Villanova, I’m on the advisory council at UBS, the global bank, so I use them for that, and then studio. They’re big in the studio because you can only wear a suit once a year.

A: Not when you’re on TV.

A: It’s a my rule. So you need an inventory.