Transfer Jhamir Brickus could play a big role for a Villanova squad that Kyle Neptune thinks is improved

Villanova, Kyle Neptune has said over the last two seasons, does not run a lot of plays.

The Wildcats, even dating back to the Jay Wright days, have plenty of concepts, and the player with the ball in his hands has a number of options out of said concepts. Because of that, success on offense has relied heavily on having ballhandling guards making correct decisions more often than not.

If you watched Villanova play offense during Neptune’s first two seasons, you know that’s an area in which the Wildcats have struggled mightily, and it’s one of the key places to point when diagnosing what went wrong as last year’s team missed the NCAA Tournament for the second consecutive season.

Follow the blue-and-white brick road. Villanova went from Ryan Arcidiacono to Jalen Brunson to Collin Gillespie to, over the last two seasons, a combination of Caleb Daniels, Mark Armstrong, and Justin Moore running point. It was, as you might expect, a steep drop-off.

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Armstrong is a solid player, one who left school after two seasons and earned himself a contract with the Brooklyn Nets after not being drafted. But Armstrong wasn’t a prototypical Villanova point guard. He was often sped up, a non-shooting threat, and rarely played with the poise that Villanova demanded.

Daniels was most effective as an off-ball scorer during the 2022 Final Four run but was forced to have the ball in his hands more frequently the following season, Neptune’s first. And Moore’s lower-body injuries never allowed for him to dominate the way he was supposed to over the last two seasons.

Call some of it a failure of recruiting and transfer portal scouting, certainly. Maybe Villanova banked on Armstrong’s eventually finding his way in his latter two collegiate seasons. Maybe Neptune and his staff banked on Moore’s being healthier. The bottom line is the guard play hasn’t been nearly good enough to support Eric Dixon’s frontcourt dominance.

But Neptune is convinced the 2024-25 roster is better than the one he again coached to an early National Invitation Tournament exit in March. And it’s mostly because of the new-look backcourt led by La Salle transfer and Coatesville native Jhamir Brickus, with Philly native and Miami transfer Wooga Poplar playing a big part, too.

“The pieces that we got this year fit what we’d like to do offensively, defensively, and the culture,” Neptune said.

It’s worth getting out of the way first the immediate reaction to Brickus’ commitment in late April: Will his success in the A-10 as an undersize guard translate to the Big East? Neptune thinks so.

Villanova was enamored with the way Brickus handled the ball and the way he shot from three-point range — he connected on a career-best 40% of his 4.5 three-point attempts per game in 2023-24. The Wildcats expect his ability to create space and find open players to translate at a high level right away.

But the advanced numbers tell a bit of a different, perhaps confusing story. According to data from Synergy, Villanova had a higher points-per-possession number (0.876) with Armstrong as the primary ballhandler in pick-and-roll situations compared with La Salle with Brickus in the same spot (0.789). Brickus also had a higher turnover rate (22.6%) as the primary handler compared with Armstrong (17.7%).

Maybe there’s some noise in the data, with Brickus not being surrounded by elite talent and forced to play hero ball at times. There’s a lot to like when watching the crafty playmaker on the court. He was much more effective than Armstrong in spot-up situations — 1.125 PPP vs. 0.768, according to Synergy — and has shown the ability to create in post-up situations, a Villanova staple.

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Villanova will certainly have options for Brickus to use. Poplar, after deciding to not stay in the draft process, is in a prove-it year and shot 38.5% from three-point range last season. Dixon is an all-conference player who will likely see a lot of time at power forward and can score 20-plus on any given night.

New center Enoch Boakye (Fresno State, Arizona State) is a different kind of center who can rim-run and catch lobs, an element Brickus didn’t have at his disposal from his center last season and one Villanova hasn’t had in a decade.

There’s other backcourt help, too, from Jordan Longino, Tyler Perkins, and incoming freshman Aleksandar Gavalyugov. Villanova likely won’t need Brickus to play hero ball the way La Salle needed him to at times over the last few seasons. But the Wildcats will need him to be the catalyst, and most fans are going to need to see it to believe it.

Villanova was an elite defensive team in 2023-24 — the Wildcats ranked 13th in KenPom’s adjusted defensive efficiency metric — but wasn’t nearly good enough on offense (87th KenPom).

Neptune acknowledged that when asked what lessons he learned from last season’s transfer portal class compared with this one.

“You go back and you say, ‘What did you do well?’” Neptune said. “We defended at a pretty high level. Where can you improve? Offensively I think is the area we can improve. And we’re taking steps to try to improve ourselves.”

He thinks Brickus is a big part of that. So, too, is new assistant coach Jamie Young. “He’s the right match for our program,” Neptune said.

There are equal reasons for optimism and skepticism right now, still four months from the start of the season. Perhaps that’s exactly what Neptune has earned to this point.

Villanova still has an open scholarship after getting a commitment last month from Gavalyugov, a native of Bulgaria.

That scholarship is expected to remain open for now. The Wildcats are comfortable with their roster as it stands, but want the flexibility to put it to use should a player of interest become available before the end of summer.

Starters: Brickus, Longino, Poplar, Dixon, Boakye

Bench: Perkins, Gavalyugov, Nnanna Njoku, Matthew Hodge, Josiah Moseley, Malcolm Thomas, Jordann Dumont