Jimmy Reilly, taking over for Herb Magee at Jefferson, looks back and ahead: ‘I want to be Villanova’

A good first season for Jimmy Reilly at Jefferson University, replacing the legend of Henry Avenue, ended at the rim, just short of special. A Jefferson shot for overtime, playing for an NCAA bid late Sunday afternoon … nope, didn’t fall.

Reilly stood in front of his bench, ready to move toward a handshake. Except Rams players were in various stages of collapse down past the baseline, so Reilly headed in that direction first. That’s the hard part, Jefferson’s coach said the next morning, seeing real pain from his players.

“If they didn’t care, we’d have major problems,” Reilly said.

If you’re guessing the coach hadn’t slept since the day before, go back further.

“I couldn’t even tell you the last time I slept,” Reilly said over the phone.

» READ MORE: Jimmy Reilly a natural successor to Herb Magee

Beating himself up? Sure, that’s how it works. We should have put a box-and-one on that Caldwell University guard who scored 23, the box surrounding the big man who scored 22. “We were always late on the double,” Reilly said.

Maybe one reason Reilly was the right guy to replace Hall of Famer Herb Magee is that he isn’t quite buying that a team trading early wins and losses, getting past a brutal early road schedule, treading water at 9-9 in the middle of January, should be termed a success by finishing 18-12, finishing first in the Central Atlantic Athletic Conference South.

To Reilly, replacing Magee is not the hard part.

“No one cares about me,” he said of toiling in Division II, comparing it to Kyle Neptune replacing Jay Wright at Villanova. “Everything he does, people are watching. If Kyle loses, Kyle is going through the wringer. He can’t get a break. Here, I care. My wife cares. My players care. There’s no message boards.”

Reilly’s goal is not to emulate his predecessor. “He’s my best friend — we talked this morning already,” Reilly said of his former boss, who was in the seats inside Herb Magee Arena Sunday. Reilly just understands that Herb Magee didn’t become Herb Magee by strictly emulating his own predecessor, Bucky Harris, and Jay Wright didn’t become Jay Wright by trying to be a carbon copy of Rollie Massimino. You pick and you choose.

Here’s the interesting part.

“I want to be Villanova,” Reilly said. “I’ll be honest, the reason we lost [Sunday], we weren’t Villanova. We were up nine points and the ball was moving. We were jump-stopping, we were kicking. Three possessions in a row, the ball wasn’t moving, they scored. That’s why we lost.”

Reilly had mentioned this as Jefferson’s season began, so it was not a surprise to hear it again as a post-mortem.

“All we do, every day, we do the Villanova drill,” Reilly said.

How close did they come to getting it right?

“I’m going to say zero,” the coach said, but that will be the plan again in 2023-24. “My kids laugh at me. My jump stops are called Brunsons. ‘You’ve got to get in the lane and you’ve got to Brunson.’”

Regrets, he has a few. He related a conversation with one of his top players, “You’ve got to relax coaching defense … that conversation became a real heart-to-heart. ‘You’ve got to relent.’ I really did relent. I think we lost a lot of games early because I relented.”

No more relenting, he’s saying. He recognizes his own voice.

“I’m trying to be Jay Wright, and I know that’s a really bold statement, and it’s going to look bad, but that’s what I’m trying to be,” Reilly said.

Has he talked to Wright about this? Did he get to some Villanova practices over the years?

“I don’t know Jay,” he said, saying he’d love to get together with Neptune sometime and compare notes. After the Caldwell loss, Reilly and a couple of assistants retired to the Henry James Saloon in Roxborough. There were the New York Knicks and Brunson on a screen.

“Jay Wright’s not Jay Wright if Jalen Brunson doesn’t go to Villanova,” Reilly said, although it was mentioned that Ryan Arcidiacono did the jump-stopping inside guard thing first.

“That was the argument,” Reilly said of talking with his assistants. “Arch started it.”

And Collin Gillespie continued it.

“Collin’s mom, by the way, committed to me, said, ‘Collin’s coming,’” Reilly said, realizing that such talk evaporated once Villanova got in the picture when Gillespie was a senior at Archbishop Wood.

Reilly knows he’s got a good foundation, all five starters back, led by Erik Timko, CACC player of the year as a sophomore.

“We’re going in the right direction,” Reilly said.

His daughter Maisie could be heard wondering when the phone call might end. How old is Maisie?

“She’s 3,” Reilly said.

“I’m 7,” Maisie herself said in the background.

“She’s 7 right now,” her father said.

Soon enough she will be. By then, maybe her dad will have gotten a little sleep.

“By the way, we will dominate,” Jefferson’s coach said before the call wrapped up. “We will be Villanova and we will dominate.”

» READ MORE: After loss to UConn, Villanova’s path to the NCAA Tournament has just one route