Villanova Basketball: 3 takeaways from Jay Wright’s sudden retirement

At the end of the 2021-22 season, it was already known that Coach K of Duke was going to retire, after giving the whole sport a one-year notice. But we all thought that he was only going to be the only Hall-of-Famer to depart from the coaching ranks. Turns out, Jay Wright of Villanova Basketball would follow him just a few weeks later.

Coach Wright and the Wildcats went to the Final Four this year, beating the Houston Cougars in the Elite 8 to make it four Final Four appearances before falling to the Kansas Jayhawks. We knew that it was the final game for 5th-year seniors, Collin Gillespie and Jermaine Samuels but turns out that the departing core would include the head coach.

A decade ago, Coach Wright was considered a “good” but not “great” head coach, and Villanova Basketball was in the mid-to-upper tier of the Big East. But conference realignment went in their favor and they became arguably the most successful program in college basketball since 2013, including several Final Four appearances, two national championships (2016, 2018), and six seasons of 30+ wins.

Losing Jay Wright is going to have a massive impact on college basketball and especially the Big East, where the other 11 teams could now believe that they have a shot at winning league titles more than they have. There’s also news about who the successor will be for Villanova.

Kyle Neptune was an assistant at Villanova for eight years and at the height of the program’s success before spending a year at Fordham this past season. Will he be able to keep the Wildcats in the national conversation and how does the team and the Big East move forward from this?

Here are some instant takeaways I have from Wright’s retirement,