Dan Hurley says Villanova is NCAA Tournament-bound. The Wildcats still have to prove it.
'Nova's victory Wednesday night was big. But it won't matter as much as it could if the Cats don't keep rolling.
The reigning king of college hoops had wrung himself dry over the previous couple of hours, as he does every game, win or lose — the ranting, the raging, the whining, the often-brilliant coaching. Dan Hurley then changed out of his navy blue suit and into UConn sweats for his meeting with the media Wednesday night, after his team had lost to Villanova, 68-66, at Finneran Pavilion. He was just as comfortable touting the Wildcats’ NCAA Tournament bona fides as he was ensconcing himself in his cozy postgame ensemble.
No, this was no upset; Villanova, now 11-5 overall and 4-1 in the Big East, was favored ahead of tipoff, and the Huskies didn’t have their best player, star freshman Liam McNeeley, who was out with an ankle injury. But those circumstances didn’t change the reality that the result was vital for the Wildcats — their only Quad 1 win of the season, the biggest victory of Kyle Neptune’s three-year tenure as head coach, a necessary box to check if they’re to qualify for the tournament, especially with a game against 13-3 St. John’s at Madison Square Garden looming Saturday.
Early-season losses to Columbia and St. Joseph’s, to an Ivy League team and a mid-major, had set them back. Wednesday night pushed them forward, and the coach in charge of the program that has won the sport’s last two national championships went on and on about the team they are and could be.
“They pass the look test of an NCAA Tournament team,” Hurley said. “They’re obviously going to have to win a lot of games in the Big East to make up for the Columbia game and the St. Joe’s game. But you can’t tell me that’s not a team that’s an NCAA-caliber team with one of the best players in the country.”
That player, Eric Dixon, missed 14 of his 20 shots from the field Wednesday. And that team hasn’t quite crossed the threshold into being a surefire participant in March Madness; tournament soothsayer extraordinaire Joe Lunardi had Villanova at No. 76, among his “Next Four Out,” in his latest bracketology breakdown Thursday morning. And Hurley was doing what all coaches in his situation do. UConn had lost a close game to a conference opponent, so he talked up that opponent in the name of making his team look better just for coming up a couple of points short.
Doesn’t mean that Villanova won’t prove worthy of a tournament berth. Doesn’t mean the Wildcats haven’t turned their season around since those struggles back in November. Just means that Hurley was going to make them — Dixon, Wooga Poplar, Jordan Longino, Jhamir Brickus, Tyler Perkins, all of them — sound like a squad that already had assured itself of a Sweet 16 appearance, not one that still needs to scratch and climb to reach the tournament for the first time in three years.
“I don’t think many people are going to win here or beat this team at home this year,” Hurley said. “I think that’s a really good team. Obviously, Dixon is a bundle, and Poplar looks like one of the best players in the league, too.
“The stuff they run, I think, is really good — what they do with Dixon, the way they move him around all over the court. It’s really, really hard to guard. They run really good stuff for their best players.”
Yes, the praise and compliments poured out of Hurley, and yes, the Wildcats deserved those laurels he was throwing at their feet. The Huskies entered Wednesday scoring almost 84 points per game, and Villanova chopped 18 points off that average and forced them into 13 turnovers. Dixon, on a night when his jumper was off, managed 23 points anyway, driving to the basket repeatedly, and making all nine of his foul shots. Longino was terrific, scoring an efficient 12 points and getting some karmic justice in the game’s closing sequence.
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With Villanova up a point, Longino blocked a shot by UConn’s Alex Karaban, only to be whistled for a foul he never committed. (“The ref called it a foul. So it was a foul,” Neptune said, biting his lip between the sentences.) Karaban, an 83% free throw shooter in his career at UConn, missed both attempts. The Wildcats escaped. But when someone asked him after the game whether this was his biggest win at ’Nova, Neptune rolled his eyes.
“I mean, honestly, I don’t think about it like that,” he said. “This is a long season. We’ve got over half the season to go. We’ve just got to continue to get better. Personal stuff doesn’t really matter at this point. You look back at that stuff at the end of the year and reflect.”
The end of the year? That’s too deep in the distance to contemplate now for Neptune, for his players, for anyone connected to the program. UConn is over. UConn is in the past. And UConn won’t matter as much as it could unless, come Saturday night, Rick Pitino ends up sounding an awful lot like Dan Hurley.