BUFFALO, N.Y. -- Somewhere, Villanova lost its way. A basketball program averaging 24 wins per year for a decade, a program that had just been to a Final Four, a program perennially ranked in the top 20, was in trouble.
In 2009, Villanova went 30-8 and reached the Final Four. In 2010, the Wildcats went 25-8. Early in 2011, 'Nova was ranked as high as seventh in the country.
When Villanova left the Carrier Dome in late January of 2011 after an 83-72 upset win over No. 3 Syracuse, the Wildcats were 17-2 and 5-1 in the Big East.
On the outside, everything looked perfect. On the inside, it was anything but. The foundation the program was built on was crumbling.
Today?
This 2014 Villanova team is 28-4 and a No. 2 seed going into its NCAA tournament opener against Milwaukee Thursday night. The team has wonderful chemistry, the players are unselfish and genuinely like each other, and everybody is devoted to the “core values” coach Jay Wright constantly preaches.
But that 2011 team lacked those intangibles. They were certainly talented, but something wasn’t right. You could see it when they played. The Wildcats won just four of their last 12 games and then tied a program record for losses a year later by going 13-19.
As numerous players transferred out or left early for the NBA, Wright knew it was time for a change.
A big one.
Wright knew he had to start looking for a different kind of kid. One who not only wanted to come to Villanova but also wanted to stay there.
“We just said we’ve got to start looking at guys that want to be NBA players but also want to get their degree, and if it doesn’t happen after two years, they’re not going to be disgruntled that they’re still in college,” Wright said. “They want to enjoy college for four years.”
Unless the talent level is off the charts, it’s impossible to win when your players are more concerned with impressing scouts and trying to improve their draft status than playing an unselfish brand of team ball.
At some point during that stretch from mid-2011 through the end of 2012 -- when Villanova won just 17 of 44 games -- Wright and his staff recognized that they had to build differently.
“We started looking for a kid we knew would be happy to be a four-year guy,” Wright said. “If he was good enough to leave after two years, that would be a surprise to him, but he wanted to be in school for four years, he was going to enjoy the process, he wanted to be here.”
No. 2 seed Villanova faces No. 15 seed Milwaukee at approximately 9:25 p.m. Thursday at the First Niagara Center.
And the nucleus of a team that finished the regular season ranked third in the country is the product of that change in philosophy.
Guys like Darrun Hilliard, JayVaughn Pinkston, Tony Chennault, Ryan Arcidiacono, James Bell, Daniel Ochefu and Josh Hart were hand-picked not just for their ability but also for their character and desire to be Wildcats for the long term, not just the short term.
This team has a genuine unselfishness that was missing at 'Nova a few years ago. It seems like all five guys on the court are pulling in the same direction. It’s tough to win when they’re not.
“We just developed that on and off the court, just from going out to eat together, hanging out together, going down the shore, playing in the gym, we’re in class together during the summer, we’re always together,” Arcidiacono said.
“We trust each other. We know that if anyone messes up, somebody else is going to pick them up. We just have good guys. We just love playing together. We love being together all the time. No one really cares who scores the points or who gets the glamour, we’re just hear to play Villanova basketball and win.”
A far cry from the end of that 2011 season, when it was painful to watch the Wildcats take awful shots instead of passing to open teammates, blow lead after lead and fail to win a game in either the Big East or NCAA tournament after opening the season with such promise.
“The thing is, it wasn’t the kids’ fault,” Wright said. “It was us just not being diligent enough in explaining to the kids before they got here what the culture was about.
“Around the Final Four time it just got so easy. Kids wanted to come and they were great players and great kids, so we were like, ‘Fine.’ We didn’t talk to them about the fact that we want you to be a part of this for life.
“Now, we’ve been fortunate, and a lot of those guys stuck but some of them transferred and some of them left, and there was about a two- or three-year period where it was on our staff. We just weren’t diligent enough.”
Is it possible to find kids who are talented enough to play professionally in the future but dedicated enough to Villanova to stay on campus for four years?
Wright says no question.
“The great example is Kyle Lowry,” Wright said. “Kyle never came here thinking, ‘I’m going to leave after two years.’ I actually had to tell him, ‘Look, you’re going to be a first-round pick and you’re 5-11. With small guys if you come back another year, you might not be a first-round pick. Two teams, Memphis and New Jersey, want to take you, so you’ve got to seriously think about this.’
“Randy Foye after his junior year had a chance to go, and he said, ‘I want to be here for another year, this is my family.’
“We just had to get back to getting those type of guys. It wasn’t the other guys’ fault, it was our fault for them saying, ‘We want to come to Villanova,’ and we said, ‘Great, let’s go,’ and they said, ‘We want to be pros,’ and we said, ‘Great, Kyle’s in the NBA, Randy’s in the NBA, Dante [Cunningham] is in the NBA.
“We just didn’t sit down and say, ‘We want you to go to the NBA too, but let’s talk about what Villanova is all about, what the culture of this team is all about.’ We didn’t do that. It wasn’t their fault. It was ours.”