NCAA Basketball: Villanova’s fall, holiday breakdown among biggest takeaways
By Joey Loose
8. The death of Villanova?
Things are not looking pretty at Villanova at this point. Frankly, the program has dominated the new Big East for nearly a decade and were certainly due for a down year, but this is a really tough start for Kyle Neptune in replacing Jay Wright as head coach. It’s not the only struggle, as this team clearly misses some of the leadership from Collin Gillespie, Jermaine Samuels, and others from recent years.
Villanova sits just 2-5, having lost each of their last four games, and they haven’t exactly looked great in their wins. They’ve been mediocre at best following an opening night win against La Salle, including a loss at Temple and a rough outing in a win over Delaware State. These initial struggles should have shown us that the Wildcats weren’t ready for what was coming next.
After a close loss at Michigan State, Villanova headed to the Phil Knight Invitational and left with three straight losses, falling to Iowa State (in overtime), Portland, and Oregon. They’ve gotten some nice performances from Caleb Samuels and Eric Dixon, but there’s just not the same level of talent on this team this year. They’ve shot poorly from long range, especially the last two weeks, and the defense hasn’t been very impressive.
This really poor start isn’t really the death of Villanova, but this is about a bad start as possible for Neptune as head coach of the program. The Wildcats will hope to get Justin Moore back from injury very soon, but can he alone fix these issues? This was a ranked team before the season began and now it looks like they don’t belong anywhere close to the NCAA Tournament. Is there still time to turn things around?