Jay Wright Created a New Blueprint for College Basketball Success at Villanova
Fresh off his fourth career Final Four appearance, Jay Wright dropped a bombshell on NCAA men's basketball. He was one of the few coaches capable of taking the torch from Coach K as the reigning king of college hoops, but instead decided to join the former Duke coach in retirement. Nobody saw it coming, and that's exactly the way the former Villanova coach wanted it. A farewell tour filled with accolades and admiration would have stood in stark contrast to the program he worked diligently to re-build over the last 20 years on the Main Line.
At a university where football is an afterthought, Wright never had the luxuries that most other top-tier basketball programs enjoy by riding the coattails of gridiron success. In order to compete with schools like Duke, North Carolina, Michigan, and Kansas, he was going to need to get creative. Simply poaching a few five-star recruits each year was not an option.
It didn't happen overnight, but since 2009 Villanova basketball has been every bit as good, if not better, than the powerhouse schools mentioned above. So what was Wright's secret sauce? How was he able to find consistent success with a fraction of his competition's resources?
A healthy respect for the past
Jay Wright arrived on campus in 2001 not only as a former assistant to legendary Villanova coach Rollie Massimino, but also as a Villanova basketball fan since childhood. Few people were more keenly aware of the rich basketball tradition he was tasked with re-kindling than him because he had lived it firsthand.
Therefore, Wright made it his personal mission to educate his players and fans on those who came before them. From Paul Arizin to Kerry Kittles and everyone in between, he told stories about former players and coaches and invited them back to be a part of the culture they helped create in the first place. It didn't matter if they were a star, role player or bench warmer. Anybody that was part of the Villanova family was welcomed back with open arms, and some were even appointed to his coaching staff. Ed Pinckney and Doug West were assistants under Wright in his early years as head coach and he's had at least one of his former players on his staff ever since.
Sometimes in sports an obsession with the past can be a bad thing. Nepotism isn't necessarily the blueprint for success. But in this situation, Wright read it perfectly. He knew that the best way to cultivate new interest in the reeling Villanova fanbase was to remind the tight-knit, small community that they succeeded against larger schools in the past and could do it again. The best path to a bright future was to first reflect on the program's history.
This mindset came to full fruition when Villanova returned to the court the season after Wright's first championship win in 2016. During the opening game at the Wells Fargo Center, Wright addressed the crowd and preached the mantra of "Tap the Rock" (one he likely borrowed from the Villanova football team). Using a stonecutter as a metaphor, he described how a rock can be tapped thousands of times before it finally cracks. At that point, it wasn't just the final tap that was successful, it took every tap before it to lead to that success.
Wright was making it clear that it wasn't just the prior year's team that had won a national championship. It was the collective effort of players that built the program over decades and the thousands of fans that supported those players through it that got them there. He even called special attention to Darrun Hilliard and JayVaughn Pinkston, two players who graduated a year before the championship season but were key in developing the players that actually won the trophy. For Jay Wright, success at Villanova was a family affair.
Humble and hungry
He may have arrived back on the Main Line knowing full well that he would have to leverage the school's history to succeed, but Wright also knew it wasn't going to be that easy. He was prepared and willing to put in the grunt work needed to re-build a program essentially from scratch.
Wright's predecessor, Steve Lappas, found success early on in his tenure with a Big East Tournament championship in 1995. Yet by 2001, 'Nova hoops was in a downward spiral. Their best player, Michael Bradley, was leaving for the NBA. The incoming freshman class was not promising, and there was a sudden realization that Lappas had exactly two NCAA tournament victories under his belt at Villanova, the last of which occurred in 1997. Wright was left with very little to work with, and had no time to recruit new players before his first season on the job.
Luckily, Jay Wright had a brief career as a salesman before he embarked on his coaching career, because getting fans interested in Villanova again was going to take smoke, mirrors, and a hell of a sales pitch. He started by truly becoming the face of Villanova basketball. He organized seemingly impromptu pep rallies at the center of campus, involving students in shooting contests to win prizes. He frequented dining halls and even stood on tables, begging fans to support Villanova basketball, promising that it was on its way back. In an especially wise move, he heavily promoted Villanova women's basketball as well, which at the time was a far more entertaining draw than the men. If he was going to fail as Villanova's head coach, at least he was going to go down swinging.
In the meantime, Wright had another full-time job in figuring out how to make the on-court product better. That meant getting his players to buy-in to what he was preaching and taking on the humble, yet hungry attitude that he was displaying publicly. Flipping the whole team at once would be impossible, so he leaned on two players that already exuded what he would eventually deem simply "Villanova Basketball".
Brooks Sales was a rising senior after being a starter the previous three years despite lacking the big numbers you'd expect from such a player. He was an excellent rebounder at power forward, and when he wasn't cleaning the glass he was doing all of the other dirty work that it takes to win games. That's exactly what Wright wanted out of his players. Complementing Sales was junior Ricky Wright, an undersized big man who was an effective scorer in the post and brought a physicality to the game that belonged in the mid-80's heyday of the Big East. Both players put the good of the team firmly above any individual accolades. Wright steered into that by letting them take charge of the team so that their attitude trickled down.
It wasn't exactly miracle work, but Villanova did win 16 games in the 2001-02 regular season and in the Big East Tournament beat Syracuse and took UConn down to the wire. While there would be no NCAA tournament berth, Jay Wright saw a golden opportunity in the NIT for his new team. In that tournament, coaches can campaign for games to be held on their home court, and he did just that. After a convincing victory over Manhattan College at The Pavilion, he tried to keep that momentum going with his biggest pep rally yet before taking on Louisiana Tech in the second round.
On March 18th, 2002, Wright invited all students to The Pavilion for free pizza and a boat load of games and prizes. As a sophomore who lived just a two minute walk from the venue, I was going to attend no matter what, but the pizza was especially enticing on the day after St. Patrick's Day. During the proceedings, Wright personally thanked students for showing up. He made eye contact, shook hands - including your humble author's - pushed for more pizza, and left no doubt that he was the man that was going to eventually turn Villanova around. The following day his team won a thriller by three points in front of a particularly energized home crowd. Their season would end a few days later at the hands of Temple on their home court.
In his second season on the job, Wright was able to integrate his first recruiting class into the team. It was a highly-touted group that included McDonald's All-American Jason Fraser. Wright could have simply handed the keys of the team to this group of freshman and hoped for the best, but he instead slow-played it. With Ricky Wright still entrenched as the clear team leader, the youngsters had to earn their minutes and show that they had the work ethic and team-first attitude to warrant a more expanded role. It took two years for this group to be fully in-synch with Wright, but by the time they were juniors they had become one of the most lethal groups in college basketball. Eventual champions North Carolina were pushed to the brink in their Sweet Sixteen game by a short-handed and severely undersized 'Nova team. They showed even more improvement in their senior year - which ended just shy of the Final Four - and the precedent was set for what was expected out of a Villanova player under Wright.
These expectations were both simple and complicated at the same time. Effort on both ends of the court had to be there at all times, even if you were severely undersized for the position you were guarding, which was almost always the case. Selfish play was always unacceptable, but so was passing up an open shot. If you don't have the confidence to take a shot when you're open, then you're hurting the team. Wright didn't have a rigid system in place, so players were given autonomy to mostly make their own decisions, so long as it was the right one most of the time.
As you might imagine, the definition of right in this instance was a nebulous one. In Wright's mind, it was clear as day though. Three years after his first recruiting class graduated, he took his team all the way to the Final Four for the first time in 2009. After that run he was able to assemble the top freshman class in the country the following season. In theory, one of the best teams in the country was about to get an infusion of talent that made them even better. In practice, this new class put Wright's player-autonomy axiom to the test and it nearly broke him.
The top two players of this class were Maalik Wayns and Dominic Cheek, ball dominant guards whose decisions would dictate Villanova's fate. Those decisions were often at odds with what Wright saw as right. The result was an abysmal 2012 season that ended with a 13-19 record and no postseason tournament invitations. Wright was at a career crossroads. When he took an honest look in the mirror, he saw someone who was no longer humble nor hungry. Success and all of the obligations that come with it had gotten to his head. He got lazy with recruiting and simply brought on the best players available to him and hoped for the best.
Over the next two seasons Wright became highly selective with who he brought into his program. The four players he chose were Ryan Arcidiacono, Daniel Ochefu, Josh Hart and Kris Jenkins. All quality players, to be sure, but more importantly proved that they had the right attitude to navigate the two-way street called trust. Trust that their coach would put them in the best position to succeed, and the trust they would instill in him that their decisions would prioritize team over self. By 2016 all four played a separate and distinct key role in the most important play in school history. By getting back to his core tenets, Jay Wright resurrected his career and validated his program as championship caliber.
Bang
Results never mattered to Wright, and that's why he got them
Obviously, Jay Wright had a vested interest in winning basketball games. The currency of any coaches job security boils down to wins and losses, so he needed to keep piling up W's if he wanted to remain the head honcho at Villanova. What he understood inherently from the very beginning, though, was that making winning his primary objective wouldn't get him there. Rather than drawing up a winning formula on a white board, they key to sustained success would be establishing an infectious attitude that focused on good habits - whether on the practice court, in the classroom, or at home - as opposed to the end result.
Remarkably, Wright had the patience and discipline to see this through. He concentrated only on what he could control, and mostly didn't sweat what he couldn't. Injuries, bad calls, and unkind rims were all going to happen, and those things might mean the difference between a win and a loss sometimes. As long as his team was going about their business the right way, he wasn't going to sweat that fine line. But did he truly convince his players of this?
Even though his recruiting focus was on how well the player would fit rather than talent, Wright did bring some of the most talented players in the country to Villanova during his tenure. These guys dominated in high school, often carrying the weight of their teams on their shoulders. For Wright, they didn't need to be the hero they were in high school, and that could be a bit shocking at first for these athletes. Players who were used to getting the ball on every possession now had to learn how to play a complementary role. It took practice, discipline, and a healthy dose of humble pie. That's why Wright learned to be choosy with who he brought on board.
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There are plenty of examples of players that never meshed with Wright's philosophy, but far more examples of those who thrived. The latest - and possibly greatest - example of this transformation was Jermaine Samuels. He arrived at Villanova as a top 50 high school prospect out of the Boston suburbs. At 6-foot-7 and right around 200 pounds, he wasn't exactly an imposing forward, but he owned the paint both as a scorer and rebounder. On Wright's team, the offense always ran through the guards, so there was bound to be some growing pains for Samuels, but his freshman season became downright ugly.
It was a lot tougher to be a traditional forward in the Big East at his size, and Samuels found out the hard way. He appeared in 25 games that season, but shot a putrid 25% from the field and 19% from three-point range. The silver lining was that this coincided with the second national championship run for Villanova in a three year period. He may have struggled personally, but Samuels saw firsthand that he was in a highly functional environment that he could learn and develop in if he had the right attitude. As for his scrawny frame, that was nothing that Strength and Conditioning coach John Shackleton couldn't handle.
Just as he had done for Mikal Bridges a few years prior, Coach Shack bulked Samuels up while he learned how to complement the talented guards that surrounded him. Gradually, he felt comfortable not being the go-to guy on his team and by January of his sophomore season he was fully entrenched in the starting lineup. He put personal achievements and the pressure to dominate to the side and simply played the role that put his team in the best position possible.
For the next couple of seasons, Samuels established himself as the ultimate "glue guy", holding the team together and being a constant agitator for the opposition. If there was a loose ball that needed to be grabbed, a put-back that needed to be tapped, or a defensive stop that needed to be made, Samuels was usually there before anyone else. By his second (due to COVID) senior season, he was a 230 pound monster that opponents had to game plan for despite his modest stat line. Most games he even played spot minutes at center when Eric Dixon got in foul trouble.
At season's end, Villanova had made an improbable run to the Final Four and Samuels was named his region's Most Outstanding Player. When asked about it after the regional championship game, his response was quite revealing.
"...I never even, you know, thought about something like that, all I was focused on was trying to play Villanova basketball." - Jermaine Samuels
So did Jay Wright convince his players that results were less important than attitude? As Jermaine Samuels just showed us, they may have been even more convinced than Wright was himself.
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