Villanova’s Kyle Neptune and Eric Dixon embody the pressure and promise of modern college hoops

NEW YORK — On one side of the Madison Square Garden court, transformed Wednesday into a dominoes-like arrangement of tables for Big East media day, were Dan Hurley and the Connecticut Huskies: defending conference champions, defending conference-tournament champions, two-time defending national champions. On the opposite side of the floor were coach Ed Cooley and some of his players on the Georgetown Hoyas, representing a once-great program that hasn’t won more than nine games in a season since 2021. Between them were Kyle Neptune, Eric Dixon, and the Villanova Wildcats, in the middle.

The symbolism was perfect. The Big East‘s preseason coaches’ poll had the Wildcats, coming off two disappointingly blah seasons, in seventh out of the conference’s 11 teams. Dixon, who turns 24 in January, is back for his sixth year at ‘Nova. He has redshirted, been granted an extra year of eligibility because of the COVID-19 pandemic, and is now a grad student. He loves the place, to be sure, and he likely again will be Villanova’s best and most important player this season. But it’s also true that, given his choice, he would not have been sitting behind one of those tables Wednesday at the Garden. He had tested the waters of traditional professional basketball last summer, and the lifeguards made it clear that, even at his age, Dixon needed another year of swimming lessons.

Nobody who is invested in Villanova men’s basketball, either emotionally or financially, minds that Dixon is back, of course. Neptune is a different case: 35 victories, 33 losses, and no NCAA Tournament berths over his first two seasons, lots of restless boosters and alumni. “Honestly,” he said, “pressure is something I really don’t think about.” But it’s there, and everyone knows it’s there, and it has intensified because of the very same conditions that allowed Dixon to be content to return for another season.

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Think of the continuum of college basketball and college sports in general in the name, image, likeness — and, really, the pay-to-play — era. On one end of the continuum are those programs who are large and/or wealthy enough to view their pursuit of athletes purely in transactional terms, and the recruits themselves view those partnerships from the same perspective: We will pay you a ton of money to play here. If you want to get your degree, great. But you’re here to hit threes or score touchdowns. … Cool. I’ll stay as long as that arrangement works for me. Once it doesn’t, I’m out.

On the other end are those programs for whom an enriching educational, social, or religious/spiritual experience has to be a major part of their sales pitch. Smaller Catholic institutions, for instance — especially those in, say, the Atlantic 10 and the Metro Atlantic Athletic Conference — have to tell recruits: Yes, we’ll get you some money. Yes, the money matters. But there are other things that matter more, and we can give them to you. It’s the best and maybe the only chance they have to catch up or keep up.

Villanova is among the Big East schools that fall, at varying spots, between those two poles. Georgetown — Jesuit in its identity, with one winning season in the last 10 years — might be considered closer to one pole. “This degree will surpass any dollar we can ever give you,” Cooley said Wednesday. “It’s one of the greatest universities in the world that you can take advantage of, and if you don’t do that, shame on us for not helping you.” At the moment, St. John’s, which decided to hire Rick Pitino in 2023, is probably closer to the other.

It’s no stretch to say that Villanova can offer the best of each of those approaches. Dixon is the embodiment of that reality. He and his father, Eric, left no doubt after last season that they were exploring other, more lucrative options for him. Still, it’s not as if returning to Villanova was a terrible fallback position.

“I don’t think we’re the highest-paid team in the country, but we’re definitely not the lowest,” Dixon said. “Villanova has a great culture, a great tradition, a great fan base. We’ve been good for a really long time. Our first Final Four was in 1939. So we didn’t just get good. It didn’t just happen. For us, it’s a little bit different. We’re a multi-year program. We always have been. We don’t have many one-and-dones. We’ve always been that way.

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“I take pride in people having pride in the program. The coolest part about being here is the professors and the deans of schools we have here. They weren’t paying me any money before, and they’re not paying me any money now. I just always took pride in the fact that when we walk around campus, we affect their mood, too. I can appreciate that, for better or worse. It’s not always great. It’s not always rosy. But I can appreciate it.”

Can his coach? Neptune, despite the questions around his future, said Wednesday that he does. “This is not something I look at as a burden,” he said. “This is something I get to do. I get to be the head coach of Villanova. That’s important to me, and it’s enjoyable. I don’t look at it as a chore.”

But the reality — that Villanova‘s supporters display such loyalty and largesse, that the men’s basketball program has recently been a national powerhouse, and that the university itself is so highly regarded — creates the expectations and pressure that Neptune is trying to keep at bay. A program with those advantages, with a player like Eric Dixon back for another year, should be more than a middling team in the Big East. If Villanova isn’t, its most influential people will be sure to give Kyle Neptune something to think about.