Villanova and Kyle Neptune have to figure out what kind of program they want to be

NEW YORK — For what seemed forever, Villanova’s coaches and players had no idea what the future held for them.

They were clustered on the court here late Thursday night at Madison Square Garden, each of their faces a mixture of anger and disappointment and hope, the game clock at 0:00, the officials scrutinizing a last-second layup by Marquette’s Kam Jones as if Abraham Zapruder had filmed the sequence. Turned out the ball was still touching Jones’ fingertips when the regulation buzzer blared. Turned out the game was still tied. Turned out the Wildcats had five more minutes to go before their NCAA Tournament chances crumbled to dust.

Kyle Neptune kept praising his players into the wee hours of Friday morning after Marquette’s 71-65 victory in the Big East Tournament quarterfinals, complimenting their fight and their competitiveness. He kept painting the Wildcats as plucky underdogs when — in Justin Moore and Eric Dixon, in TJ Bamba and Tyler Burton and Mark Armstrong — they have enough talent that their 18-15 record and their likely berth in the NIT are unsatisfying conclusions to another unsatisfying season.

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“I think we’re playing our absolute best right now,” Dixon said. “A couple of different bounces, anything can happen. This one went to overtime. I thought this group did a great job of coming in and getting better over time. Hopefully, it’s not over yet, but we’re the best team that we’ve been.”

Great sentiment. Perfect party line. But it’s just not true. The Wildcats ended last season by losing three of their final four games, and they’ve lost three of their last four games this season, and they’ve hardly covered themselves in glory lately: a double-digit loss to Seton Hall, a 24-point deficit against Creighton, maybe their worst performance of the season in Wednesday night’s win over awful DePaul, then Thursday.

“We fully expected to play through, get through, be able to win this thing,” Neptune said. “This is the best league for college basketball in the country. The margins are very small.”

But there was little cause to think Villanova was capable of that kind of run, no matter how small the margins among the Big East’s teams might be, and it was as if Neptune felt the need to pay lip service to the expectations of the past, not of the reality of this team and this season.

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No one could believe that what happened here Wednesday against DePaul was just another tight game in the Big East Tournament, another night at the Garden when anything could happen. The Wildcats played terribly and nearly allowed what should have been an overmatched opponent to pull off an earth-shaking upset, and Neptune and his players did themselves no favors by trying to spin that game or their recent losses as the product of a few bad breaks and good teams’ making tough shots.

This is a program with its guard up at all times, and the people within it could stand to acknowledge what everyone can see to be true: For all the NIL money that Villanova can throw at recruits and transfers and its own players to coax them to come and to stay, it takes more than dollars to build and shape a roster capable of doing more than barely missing the NCAA Tournament. The Wildcats were less than the sum of their parts this season, and the program’s decision-makers have to get to the bottom of why.

More than once Thursday night, Neptune walked along the sideline in front of Villanova’s bench, glanced at his players as if looking for help, but didn’t signal for any of them to bounce out of his seat and get in the game. If he considers himself so shorthanded, then he and his staff have to come to a clearer understanding of what kind of players they are recruiting and what kind they should recruit.

The Big East isn’t getting any easier, and those margins that Neptune spoke of reveal themselves not in the expenditures of NIL collectives but in the same intangible qualities that have always made for a great program. Are they attracting players who really want to be at Villanova, who will improve and thrive once they’re there? And what criteria are they using to identify those players?

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Two years into Neptune’s tenure, and it looks like they’re still trying to figure out those answers. In that way, the scene at the end of regulation Thursday night was fitting. Villanova’s coaches and players were out there on the court, and their fans and followers and backers were in the stands and at home watching on TV, waiting, unsure what was to come. They still are.