The end of the Villanova road is coming for Caleb Daniels and Brandon Slater, but it’s not here yet

We’ve reached the point of the college basketball season where every game could be the last in a Villanova Wildcats uniform for Caleb Daniels and Brandon Slater. Villanova’s two fifth-year players are taking graduate classes and utilizing their extra fifth year of eligibility.

Theoretically, it could be the last Villanova game for any player on the roster, the nature of both the transfer portal and players leaving the college ranks early. Daniels and Slater, though, are the only forced departures.

They came to the program via different routes: Slater now the last remaining player from a 2018 recruiting class that was highlighted by Jahvon Quinerly and Cole Swider and also included Saddiq Bey; Daniels a transfer from Tulane who has, in a short time, come to embody everything a Villanova basketball player becomes when they’re around the program long enough.

You could forgive either for being sentimental at this time of year, but if you know anything about Villanova basketball players, you know they’re not — at least not yet.

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“It’s coming down to the wire and obviously for a second it comes in your mind and you want to reflect on it but you can’t,” Slater said. “It’s not fair to the rest of the players. It’s not fair to Cam [Whitmore], Mark [Armstrong], Brendan [Hausen], who have been here for one year, to think about that just yet. It definitely comes in my mind, but when that happens, I just got to remind myself: ‘Hey, look. I’m still here. I’m still playing. I still have opportunities. I still got time.’”

Asked the same question just a few minutes later, Daniels delivered a similar answer. He thinks about coming to the end of his playing career at Villanova every once in a while, but then he remembers his teammates. There are still games to play; they just don’t know how many. The Wildcats, needing to win the Big East tournament to avoid missing the NCAA Tournament for the first time since 2012, open their conference tournament Wednesday night as the sixth seed vs. 11th-seeded Georgetown.

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Daniels and Slater, close friends, didn’t rehearse their answers, but they didn’t need to. They are Villanova basketball players, and all the sayings and phrases and mantras have been repeated into their brains for years.

“We all think the same,” Daniels said, “but, honestly, that’s real. [Our young teammates] deserve that. They come in and play hard, since Day 1, willing to struggle. And you can see their growth and their maturity. As older guys, the biggest thing is that we can give them the game. We can give them how we did things and how they need to do it for the next group of guys that come in.”

That last sentence is on the Villanova basketball postcards, or in the welcome packet every freshman player gets when they get to Ithan Ave: “We play for those that came before us.”

Daniels and Slater each credit guys like Collin Gillespie, Jermaine Samuels, Dhamir Cosby-Roundtree, and others for showing them the path. And if all they learned leading up to this year proved to be useful, perhaps none of the players that came before them have dealt with a season quite like this one.

It started in the weeks after a Final Four loss to Kansas. Jay Wright retired, Kyle Neptune was hired. Daniels and Slater were responsible for holding the team together during summer workouts. Then once the season started, each of them were forced into unexpected roles with Justin Moore still working his way back from Achilles surgery and Whitmore, the star freshman, was out with a thumb injury. Daniels, who won this year’s Big East sportsmanship award, needed to be a lead guard and to score in bunches; Slater was in an unfamiliar position where Villanova needed his offense. They needed to be better leaders, too.

“Those guys have been incredibly resilient,” Neptune said. “Obviously, we’ve had a lot transpire with our team this year, definitely some downs in the year, and to their credit I don’t think they ever blinked. They just came in every day and gave their best and if they weren’t doing that, I don’t think our team could have sustained some of the things we went through this year. They deserve a lot of credit.

“They’re going to be remembered as great Villanova basketball players and we want to make sure they have a good sendoff.”

How they get sent off remains to be seen. As it stands, Daniels is going through one of his worst offensive stretches in a Villanova uniform. He’s averaging 14.6 points but hasn’t hit that number in his last six games. And Slater, who averages 9.2 points, hasn’t scored more than eight points in his last seven. If Villanova is to make any noise at this week’s Big East tournament, the Wildcats will need those trends to change.

Neither of them is asking for sympathy.

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“This is completely different than the Brandon Slater that first got here, wide-eyed and ready for anything in the world,” Slater said. “You go through so many things that test you, mentally test you. When you get to succeed in a lot of those things or fail in a lot of those things, it kind of builds you. I’m proud of the person I became and the person I’m becoming.”

Count Daniels as proud, too. Slater was one of the first friends Daniels made when he joined the program. One of their best traits together, Daniels said, is the way they hold each other accountable. That shows up in one-on-one matchups in practice and even at home when they’re playing the NBA 2K video game.

They remind each other to play for their teammates and their coaches, and the guys who came before them. All of this, they say, is bigger than they are. Or just small enough. Like the size of a basketball court. Spend enough time around anyone in the program and you’ll never forget the dimensions.

It’s 94 feet by 50 feet. And Daniels learned quickly while sitting out his transfer season that he was about to play in some much bigger atmospheres than he did while at Tulane. So he — like many others in the program — learned to constantly yell out the boundaries of the things that are in their control.

“I’m going to carry that into my actual life,” Daniels joked [we think]. “People may look at me like, ‘What are you talking about? It’s not a basketball court, this is an office.’

“Hey, man, I’ll say that the rest of my life.”