Collin Gillespie learned his lessons well to become one of the toughest players and strongest leaders at Villanova

Collin Gillespie sat in the locker room at Villanova’s Davis Center, relaxing and pondering the road he has taken in basketball.

Here was someone who didn’t have a single offer from a Division I school entering his senior year at Archbishop Wood High School, who didn’t hesitate when the Wildcats came calling, who learned the ways of what is known as “Villanova basketball” mostly from Jalen Brunson, and who has spent the last two seasons as one of the toughest players and the strongest leaders of the 20-year Jay Wright era on the Main Line, and one of the nation’s best point guards.

“It’s been a wild ride, something that I probably would have never expected my junior year of high school,” Gillespie said Tuesday in a Zoom interview with The Inquirer. “Coming in as a freshman, it was great for me but also difficult at the same time because I had no concept of what college basketball really was, and I was able to learn from guys who were great players in the program and went on to be great players after.

“So I was able to really learn and kind of grow each year individually, from freshman year to sophomore year to junior year to now being a senior. I was able to get a lot better and kind of just grow into my body and become more mature and learn what it meant to be a Villanova basketball player and be a leader in this program. It’s been special.

“I was really grateful to get the opportunity, so I was going to do whatever it took to get on the floor. I was going to make sure each day that I was playing as hard as I possibly could for my teammates and coaches because they took a chance on me, so I was going to give everything that I had to the program ... and to my teammates and coaches. So that’s really what my main goal was, to give 110% to everything that I did.”

No one can argue about the 110% part during his four seasons. Sadly for Gillespie, his teammates and coaches, and the citizens of ‘Nova Nation, that career came to a premature halt — or interruption, if he decides to come back for a fifth season — when he suffered a torn medial collateral ligament in his left knee in Wednesday’s game against Creighton.

Speaking Saturday after watching Villanova’s 54-52 loss at Providence from the bench, Gillespie called the injury “just a freak thing.”

“I went up to contest a shot and I came down and I think [Damien] Jefferson kind of came down on my leg a little awkwardly and I felt something pop,” he said. “But I didn’t really know at the time because I never had experienced something like that before. I went back and got it checked and [team physical Michael Duncan] told me that I was done for the night.”

“When he told me that I couldn’t go back in the game, and the way that it was feeling, I kind of knew something was wrong because I was trying to play but I couldn’t really put any weight on it. Obviously I was upset right away. And you kind of just think about it — it’s a part of my journey now and something that I’m going to have go through and I think I’m ready for it.”

Gillespie said he will undergo surgery “in the coming days.”

No one felt worse about the accident, an apparent knee-to-knee hit, than Gillespie’s coach. Wright spent Thursday with Gillespie and his parents when the player underwent an MRI exam and eventually decided on surgery.

“I spent a lot of time with him, a lot of time with his mom and dad,” Wright said Friday. “He’s an amazing kid. His spirits are incredible considering what he’s facing. But he’s a really mentally tough kid. One of the concerns that I have is that he’s so mentally tough, you just want to monitor him and make sure he is OK, as good as he seems.”

Born and raised in Northeast Philadelphia, the son of a Philadelphia police officer, Gillespie decided to concentrate on basketball in his final two seasons at Wood and devoted himself to being the best player he could be, making himself into a Division I-ready player by the time he got to Villanova.

His education as a freshman came from Brunson, then a junior, who would become the consensus national player of the year as he helped lead the Wildcats to a national championship.

Gillespie, who roomed with Brunson on the road during his first season, learned “so many different things” from him such as work ethic, taking extra shots after practice, treating your body right, learning about nutrition and the way he led, both by example and vocally. But what really impressed him about Brunson were all the little things.

“He dove on loose balls. He took charges. Even as a junior, leading scorer, best player in the country, he was doing all those little things,” Gillespie said. “As a freshman, you’re sitting there watching it and thinking, ‘This guy’s the best player in the country and he’s our leading scorer and he’s diving on a loose ball or he’s taking a charge.’

“So you’re looking at yourself and you’re like, ‘This guy’s the best player in the country. He’s doing all this stuff so I’d better be doing it, too.’ I think that’s probably the most important thing that I took away. I guess that’s kind of the way that I wanted to be. I wanted to be a great leader, great player, but pride myself on doing all those little things.”

Brunson, now with the Dallas Mavericks, calls Gillespie “like a brother to me” and “just a great person to be around.” He is proud of the player Gillespie has become.

“He has grown every year as a leader,” Brunson said in a telephone interview. “Stats-wise and all that stuff, he’s obviously been productive as each year goes on, but just how he’s led the team, how he’s embodied Villanova basketball, especially during the times the past two years when you had no tournament, and now you’re going through a season with COVID-19 and the struggles with that. So he’s gone through a lot and to see his toughness and his leadership, it’s special to watch.”

Gillespie’s education included the frequent times at or after practice, or during the summers, when he and Brunson engaged in one-on-one battles that Gillespie jokingly – or maybe half-jokingly — described as “torture.”

“He’s a killer,” Gillespie said. “He’s never going to take it easy on anybody and he’s never going to let up, whether he’s down or he’s up in a game, or whether I’m a freshman or a junior. It’s just that killer instinct for never taking his foot off the gas has really kind of been instilled in myself.”

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During the pickup games, Gillespie learned Brunson’s method of dribbling into the post to either score or make a play to a teammate, an area of his game where he has excelled the last two seasons.

“He’s definitely picked apart my game, just a little bit of everything,” Brunson said. “I think it just comes from how hard he works and his toughness and just his decision-making. Obviously, he has a lot of tools in his bag where he’s able to use depending on the given situation, but he’s just so confident in everything he does. I’m just so happy where he is now from where he came from.”

Gillespie said he’s also taken from the examples of former teammates such as Phil Booth, Donte DiVincenzo, and Eric Paschall in playing hard and with intensity, being competitive, and doing what it takes to win.

Because of his injury, Gillespie, who played in eight NCAA Tournament games his first two seasons, will miss the postseason for the second consecutive year. So the question becomes whether he would decide to return next season.

“I’m considering it but I haven’t really thought about it or made any decisions on it yet,” he said Saturday. “I’m kind of just taking it one day at a time. I’m going to get the surgery and start the rehab and see how I feel afterwards. Then later on down the line, depending on how I feel, I’ll sit down with the coaches and my parents and then make the decision.”

In the meantime, Gillespie’s teammates will try to pick up the slack from his absence and attempt to embark on a long run in the postseason. They don’t want to let him down.

“He’s meant everything to this program,” fellow senior Jermaine Samuels said. “He embodies what Villanova basketball is. None of us take that for granted. He’s a special kind of person.

“For me, he just set the tone in all different ways, on and off the court. That’s my best friend, that’s my guy for life. There’s a lot of lessons that he’s taught me, especially when it comes to basketball, just being the way he is, a hard-nosed kid, a Philly-raised kid. He means the world to me.”