Lucy Olsen has Villanova in line for a trophy. The Wildcats have the resources to keep her on the Main Line.

St. Joseph’s had done nearly everything in its power to stop Villanova’s Lucy Olsen in their Women’s Basketball Invitation Tournament quarterfinal last Thursday at the Finneran Pavilion.

This year, executing that plan is a herculean task. Olsen is the nation’s third-leading scorer, at 23.3 points per game. But she was scoreless at halftime, and the constant face-guarding and double teams St. Joe’s threw her way were working.

The Hawks were physical with Olsen. At one point late in the third quarter, she aimed her frustration at Julia Nyström’s hands-on defense toward a referee in search of a little relief in the form of a foul call. Then she took matters into her own hands. She got the ball near the top of the key and dribbled twice to her right, creating just enough space, before pulling up for an elbow jumper to bump Villanova’s lead to eight.

“They wore her down,” Villanova coach Denise Dillon said afterward.

Wore her down until they couldn’t wear her down anymore.

The Hawks made the game tight in the fourth quarter, but Olsen made all the winning plays down the stretch. She hit a baseline, pull-up jump shot to extend a three-point lead to five, then finished a drive through contact (plus a free throw).

Brynn McCurry then missed a three-point shot, but Olsen elevated and got a hand on the loose ball, knocking it into the hands of Villanova’s Zanai Jones. The ball swung to McCurry before finding its way to Olsen, who cleared her teammates out and delivered a knockout blow of a jumper.

It was a personal 7-0 put-away run that sent Villanova to Indianapolis for the Final Four of the inaugural WBIT, the NCAA-run competition that has seemingly replaced the Women’s NIT in order of importance. Olsen tallied 16 points, all in the second half.

Villanova (22-12) will play for the WBIT title at Wednesday (7 p.m. ESPN2) against Illinois (18-15) after the Wildcats knocked off Penn State in Monday’s semifinal behind 21 points in a full 40 minutes from Olsen.

No, this isn’t the March Madness tournament Villanova wanted to be in, not after the Maddy Siegrist-led Wildcats reached the Sweet 16 last season, but a trophy is a trophy, and it’s because of Olsen, Spring-Ford High School’s all-time leading scorer, that Villanova is still in the national spotlight.

» READ MORE: Villanova is a win away from capturing the first WBIT championship. But first, Illinois.

Olsen is a junior, with another year of eligibility, and her ascent into the spotlight has opened the door for exploration. Is the best path forward finishing her college career on the Main Line instead of seeing what else could be out there? Is there something better?

It’s a hypothetical worth exploring, of course, because we are in 2024 and these are the times. Olsen, in a lot of ways, is a perfect case study in these new times, and a perfect player for Villanova to flex its NIL collective to keep around.

As of Tuesday afternoon, nearly 1,000 names were in the Division I women’s basketball transfer portal and more than 1,400 on the men’s side.

Olsen, a first-team all-Big East selection who was named the conference’s most improved player, has worked her way into being involved in the national-brand conversation, but where does she stack up?

While Villanova was playing in front of a light crowd in a midafternoon game of a consolation tournament Monday, the basketball-watching world was gearing up to see Caitlin Clark and Iowa take on Angel Reese and LSU, and then after that was JuJu Watkins and Southern Cal against Paige Bueckers and UConn.

There will be some eyes on Wednesday night’s WBIT final on ESPN2, but not nearly as many as this weekend’s Final Four with stars and storylines galore.

» READ MORE: Sizing up a crucial Villanova offseason for Kyle Neptune after another missed NCAA Tournament

All of that can be enticing, and there are dollar signs attached to all of it now. How much?

It should come as no surprise that there is much more money to be distributed in the men’s game compared to the women’s (not very wisely in some cases on the men’s side, one could argue simply by looking at the locker room down the hall from Olsen’s).

But the women’s game has a few outliers. Clark is in a stratosphere alone, and there are players like Reese, Bueckers, and Watkins, all of whom have massive social media followings. While NIL collectives in the women’s game provide a sum that correlates to on-court play, marketing dollars come in droves from social media opportunities.

Reese has more than 3 million Instagram followers. Bueckers has more than a million. Watkins has nearly 600,000. Olsen? More than 6,000. Maddy Siegrist? More than 20,000. The Villanova Way is not the Cavinder Twins Way. At least not yet.

What does Olsen’s market look like? It should be something in the tens of thousands, not hundreds of thousands. Villanova’s NIL collective, Friends of Nova, is well-positioned to meet those demands, and surely Olsen earned herself a raise. Simply put: Villanova won’t get outbid for her basketball-playing services. And in Siegrist, Olsen got an up-close look at the possible path from the Finneran Pavilion to the WNBA.

A sequence in Monday’s semifinal showed all the possibilities in store for the Wildcats of 2024-25.

On one end, Olsen hit a baseline jumper to extend Villanova’s lead to 12 early in the fourth quarter. At the other, fellow junior Christina Dalce swatted aside a shot for one of her three blocks in the game. With that inside-outside combo next season, and with the talented youth already on campus and on the way, it’s easy to look into the future and see Villanova playing in a different tournament.

All of this ignores other things, too, like earning a Villanova degree, being a part of its alumni association, and finishing what Olsen started — she was Dillon’s first recruit when the coach moved from Drexel to Villanova.

» READ MORE: How Villanova’s Christina Dalce prepared — mentally and physically — for an expanded role this season

Plus, Olsen during this stretch run looks like a college kid having a lot of fun playing basketball.

Asked about her frustrations during Thursday’s tough win against St. Joe’s, and the physical nature of it all, Olsen deflected the attention away from herself.

“I’m just happy that my team was able to pick us up,” she said. “That’s why it’s a team sport. I don’t need to do everything, because we have such a great team.”

They’re great because she’s great, but the answer said a lot about where her priorities could be come this time next week. First, Illinois will do everything it can to stop Lucy Olsen.