College Basketball | Villanova shows everyone the Wright way

by Jack Kerwin  |  [email protected]

Tired of it. Really, just tired of it.

For me, it takes more energy than this aging, maybe even maturing individual is willing to muster in order to hate, dislike or even hold any modicum of distaste for the Villanova University men’s basketball program.

Just don’t care anymore about your hang-ups, prejudices or preconceived notions with how the school is for elite snobs, how Jay Wright is a fraud or how the Wildcats’ fan base is the most obnoxious thing going in the world of sports.

Yo, get it. Wasn’t smart enough or rich enough to get into ’Nova, either, and neither coach of my alma maters (in and out of town) merits much more than a yawn outside of #FireHim dissent. The fans? Look in the mirror sometime.

Seriously, Temple people, Saint Joe’s people and any other people in, around and beyond Philly, grow up. This infantile jealousy trying to masquerade itself as some “come hell or high water” loyalty to whatever faction you’re claiming as your own is so worn out … and forever misguided.

You’re frustrated. Unsatisfied. Unfulfilled with what your school, your team, your coach is doing, or not doing. So you focus all that venom brewing inside in the direction of the school, the team and the coach who has given every program in the country a template on how to succeed.

​Really? Why not learn instead, and demand the following from your own ...

It’s pretty simple. Just a couple steps:

1. Stop with the limitations and excuses. If you’re a Division I program, then your ultimate goal every season is the same – to win the whole damn thing. Not saying it can happen, or will happen, but if you’re not striving for that – regardless of budget or conference affiliation or TV money – then you have no biz being in the biz.
2. Get the right individual to run the show. None of this restrictive “connection to the program, the school, the area” garbage. In Philly, we are blinders-wearing provincial on so much stuff that we fail to realize that there is a world outside of the city that actually can add to things here should it come, oh, say, in the form of a blue-chip recruit from 2,500 miles away.

’Nova hit a home run with Wright, not because of his previous stint at the school or his growing up in the Philly ’burbs, but because he can coach – in practice and in games – and he can recruit like few others. He didn’t hone his skills along the Main Line before grabbing the reins in 2001. He did so at Hofstra, an afterthought on Long Island that he made relevant by adhering to Step 1. The dude went after it. Ultimately nailed down back-to-back NCAA berths before bolting for greener pastures along Lancaster Avenue.

The real beauty is, everyone who points out their perceived flaws of him, from him being phony to him being lucky, falls to realize how brilliant a coach he is. With creating a culture for the program and going out and getting the players to fit in it. With instilling a tenacity and desire in his players, even the most talented among them, to go all-out on the court, especially on the defensive end. With demanding peak performance and not accepting when it isn't there.

Hey, they guy has failed more than he has succeeded when you look at the bottom line of the sport: how you do in the NCAA tournament. ’Nova, even with winning a title in 2016 and making two Final Fours under Wright’s watch, has been a high-seeded disappointment most seasons.

But the Wildcats keep coming because they stick to No. 1 and have No. 2.
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Nothing less than respect is deserved for that.
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Jay Wright shouts instructions to his top-seeded Villanova Wildcats during this past weekend's East Region action in the NCAA Tournament.

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’Nova hit a home run with Wright, not because of his previous stint at the school or his growing up in the Philly ’burbs, but because he can coach – in practice and in games – and he can recruit like a mutha. He didn’t hone his skills along the Main Line before grabbing the reins in 2001. He did so at Hofstra, an afterthought on Long Island that he made relevant by adhering to Step 1 (stop with the limitations and excuses). The dude went after it. Ultimately nailed down back-to-back NCAA berths before bolting to greener pastures along Lancaster Avenue.

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