Team: Villanova Wildcats

2023-24 Record: 18-16, 10-10 Big East

2023-24 Big East Finish: Tied for sixth, and won the tiebreaker with Providence by way of a season sweep of the Friars.

Final 2023-24 KenPom.com Ranking: #37 out of 362 teams, down from their preseason rank of #23.

Final 2023-24 BartTorvik.com Ranking: #31 out of 362 teams, down from their preseason rank of #20.

Postseason: They barely escaped DePaul in the first round of the Big East tournament, then forced a shorthanded Marquette team to overtime, perhaps even more barely than the win over DePaul. Villanova ultimately lost that game to MU, then came nowhere close to qualifying for the NCAA tournament, then lost a home game in the NIT to VCU by nine points.

Key Departures: Hoooooooboy, go get a beverage and pull up a chair, we’re going to be here for a loooooong while.

Let’s start with the guys that Villanova knew they were losing, guys who were on their final year of eligibility. Justin Moore tops the list, as he’s the top scorer of the three guys who were on their bonus years of eligibility. In his final season on the Main Line, he averaged 9.8 points, 3.6 rebounds, and 2.2 assists per game, but generally looked like a shadow of his former self before his Achilles tear that ended his 2022 season. Tyler Burton came up to Villanova for his bonus year after four years at Richmond. It’s probably safe to say that it wasn’t as great as anyone hoped as he saw statistical declines across the board, but he started in 33 of 34 appearances and chipped in eight points and six rebounds a night. Finally, Hakim Hart’s college career is wrapped up after making the trip north after four years at Maryland. Hart was a starter for the Terrapins, but he mostly came off the bench for the Wildcats while playing over 22 minutes a night. He added 6.3 points and 3.2 rebounds to the effort.

Those guys were planned departures, built into the system, known quantities. We continue with the departures that prompt questions about what’s going on outside of Philadelphia. We should start that questioning process with Mark Armstrong, who turned pro after averaging 8.4 points, 2.3 rebounds, and a team high 2.4 assists per game. You are not surprised to find out that this did not work out for him, and he ended up undrafted and on an Exhibit 10 contract with the Brooklyn Nets, not even a two-way deal.

Armstrong is out the door after just two seasons with Villanova, as is Brendan Hausen. After averaging six points and two rebounds while shooting 38% from long range in 18 minutes a night, Hausen is going to try his hand at playing for Jerome Tang at Kansas State. TJ Bamba must have missed the Pacific Northwest, as he’s leaving Villanova after one season following three campaigns at Washington State. He’s at Oregon now after standing as the #2 scorer on the VU roster last year at 10.1 points per game. We’ll add Lance Ware to the section as well. He saw his minutes go into a major decline as the season went along, and he ended up averaging less than 11 minutes a night. The former top 50 prospect from New Jersey is going from Kentucky for three years to Villanova for one to UT-Arlington for his bonus season of eligibility.

Key Returners: Two.

There are two key returning players.

One is Eric Dixon, who started at center all year for the Wildcats even though he’s listed at only 6’8”. He was the leading scorer at 16.6 points per game and the top rebounder at 6.5 a night, just beating out Tyler Burton’s 6.1 as the only two guys north of five. He was also tied for second on the team in three-point range attempts, knocking down just under 35% of his nearly five tries per game. This will be his fifth and final year of college hoops thanks to the COVID bonus relief.

The other is Jordan Longino, who started five games at the beginning of Big East play and averaged nearly 22 minutes a game across the season. Injury cost him five games in total after that and probably some minutes since they were in decline late in the year, with the Wildcats going 2-3 in the games he missed. Longino averaged 6.6 points and 2.5 rebounds per game while shooting just a shade under 33% from long distance.

Key Additions: The Wildcats bring in four freshmen, including two top 100 prospects. Matthew Hodge (6’8”, 200 lb, Belmar, New Jersey) is #70 in the 247 Sports Composite, while Josiah Moseley (6’6”, 185 lb, Round Rock, Texas) ranked #82. They also add redshirt freshman Kris Parker (6’9”, 195 lb, Tallahassee, Florida) on a transfer from Alabama where he did not play after ranking #99 in the 2023 247 Composite.

Villanova has four more transfers on the roster, but only one has eligibility past this season. That guy is Tyler Perkins (6’4”, 205 lb, Lorton, Virginia), who was a freshman at Penn last season. All told, he averaged 13.7 points and 5.3 rebounds per game and hit nearly 35% of his three-pointers, but I think he’s at Villanova for another reason. I think he’s at Villanova right now because he hung 22 points, six rebounds, and a block on the Wildcats in a 76-72 Quakers victory at The Palestra last season. If you can’t beat ‘em, take ‘em.

Jhamir Brickus (5’11”, 205 lb, Coatesville, Pennsylvania) is with the Wildcats because of the COVID bonus season of eligibility, and like Perkins, he’s a cross-town transfer. Brickus spent the past four seasons with La Salle, and he had a breakout season as a senior. He averaged 13.9 points, 3.5 rebounds, 4.8 assists, and just over a steal per game while hitting 40% of his threes. That was a career best for him, but he’s still a 37% career shooter.

Enoch Boakye (6’11”, 250 lb, Brampton, Ontario, Canada) and Wooga Poplar (6’5”, 197 lb, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania) are on their fourth year of college hoops, but they don’t have a bonus year of eligibility after this season. Boakye had two unremarkable campaigns at Arizona State before spending last season with Fresno State. He gave the Bulldogs just short of 8 points and 8 rebounds a game as they went 12-21, but he was #11 in the country in defensive rebounding rate according to KenPom.com. Poplar has been in Coral Gables for the past three seasons, getting a bit better every year for Miami. He had a breakthrough season in 2023-24, going for 13.1 points, 4.8 rebounds, and 2.1 assists per game, and Poplar has hit over 37% of his threes in each of the past two years.

Coach: Kyle Neptune, entering his third season in charge at Villanova and fourth as a Division 1 head coach. He has an overall record of 51-49, and 35-33 with the Wildcats.

Outlook: I want to start with something I noticed back during NBA Draft Declaration Season in the spring. Eric Dixon looked into his professional options, as any leading scorer on any team should do to be honest, and ultimately elected to return to Villanova for his fifth and bonus season of eligibility.

Here’s how he announced it on Instagram:

Seems relatively harmless or whatever you want to call it, right? Yeah, I want to focus on the highlighted sentence in the graphic. “I’m ready to handle some unfinished business with my Villanova basketball family!”

I’m not bumping on the unfinished business part. That obviously refers to VU’s failure to reach the NCAA tournament in the past two seasons after having a tournament caliber team in each of the 10 previous seasons and 17 of the previous 18. I’m bumping on the “with my Villanova basketball family” part.

What family, Eric?

You are one of five players that return from last year’s roster, six if you want to count Wade Chiddick who has been elevated from practice player to actual roster player, and you’re one of two that played actual minutes last year. There are nine new faces on this roster. Nine! This isn’t a family, you’re not returning to run back a highly successful operation for another crack at glory! Multiple guys left this program with eligibility remaining, which is not entirely like Dad saying he’s going out for cigarettes and never coming back, to keep your family metaphor going here.

I’m not even trying to shade Dixon for finding out that he’s not an NBA prospect and returning to school. Honestly, I think Dixon’s a much better fit as “NBA rotation player” than he is “high major college feature player,” but that’s the round hole that Kyle Neptune seems insistent on hammering the square peg that Dixon is into over and over again.

And since I brought up Kyle Neptune, I’ve got a bone to pick with him, too. Jon Rothstein asked him “What’s the biggest differences in this team that you’re about to coach versus the last two,” for his College Hoops Today website. Here is the first sentence out of Neptune’s mouth:

I think we have guys that really fit what we do.

I’m sorry, WHAT?

Yes, Neptune goes into detail to make his point, so if you want to go read his whole point, knock yourself out. Here’s why I had my reaction, because I do these summer check-ins and so I have the receipts:

Year 1, immediately taking over from Jay Wright: Three top 120 freshmen, two in the top 60. One of the freshmen went pro after one year and Neptune miiiiiiiiight have spent a lot of time slamming him to NBA scouts, and the other two are mentioned above as leaving after two years.

Year 2, coming off a rough injury-plagued season: Two bonus year transfers, two multi-year transfers, neither of whom actually stayed with Villanova for a second season, one freshman who was unrated and unranked and did not play.

Missed the NCAA tournament both years, went 10-10 in Big East play both years.

Kyle. If you have guys that fit what you do NOW, what were you doing for the last two years? Disregarding Jay Wright’s assessment of talented high school prospects because….. reasons? Taking transfers that had no business playing for you because they were awful fits? Or are you just admitting that you’re an awful talent evaluator…. and if that’s the case, why am I supposed to believe you when you say these new guys that you’ve added this offseason are great fits for your system?

And that brings us around to what this team actually looks like….. and beyond the mental hurdle that we all now have expecting things to go poorly for Villanova because that’s what’s happened the last two years…… the computers don’t like their chances, either. BartTorvik.com has Villanova at #43 in the preseason ratings, and technically, that means the computer thinks they’re going to be worse than last year. Ever so slightly, but that’s still down. The projection is 11-9 in the league, which is pretty much the same as the 10-10 marks the past two years.

And even if it works out well for the Wildcats, and Neptune wipes away some concerns about whether or not he’s long for this job….. there’s four guys on this roster that are on their final seasons of eligibility. Torvik has three of them as the top three contributors on this roster. Even if it all works out in their favor, we’re going to be right back here next season wondering what Neptune is going to do filling all the voids that he intentionally left for Future Neptune to deal with down the road.

If it doesn’t work out in their favor, if it somehow goes worse than the past two years? It might not be Future Kyle Neptune’s problem to deal with anyway, I suppose.