Kevin Willard believes his new-look Villanova team has closed the gap between the Wildcats and Big East powers

NEW YORK — The first thing worth mentioning is that most of the hoopla and prognosticating going on Thursday morning at the Marriott Marquis in Times Square is rather meaningless. The transactional nature of college sports — Villanova’s men’s team, for example, has two returning players — has made it so that trying to predict an order of teams, and which players will fill out the all-conference teams, is like throwing darts with one eye closed after several pints.

Kevin Willard at one point responded to a reporter who asked about scouting other teams that he had “no idea who is on anyone’s roster.” Surely he knows a few, but the sentiment was an honest one. Villanova won’t play a Big East game until Dec. 19, and Willard has to continue getting his new-look team ready for the start of its 12-game nonconference slate.

But where Villanova landed in the preseason coaches poll was fitting. The Wildcats are third, right where they finished last season, behind the 1-2 punch of Connecticut and St. John’s at the top of the Big East. Villanova went 15-5 in the conference last season, Willard’s first campaign as Villanova coach. St. John’s was 18-2 and UConn was 17-3. There was a clear top tier, a clear No. 3 in Villanova, and then the rest of the pack started with fourth-place Seton Hall at 10-10.

Willard took the data from last season and went to work in the offseason. The Wildcats lost just about every time they matched up with NCAA Tournament-quality teams. Blown out and beaten up at Michigan. Bullied twice by St. John’s. Beaten twice by UConn, which went to the Final Four. Not composed enough down the stretch in a tournament loss to Utah State. The offseason rebuild had a clear goal: Get bigger, more physical, more experienced.

Leading scorer Tyler Perkins is back, as is forward Matt Hodge, who is recovering from an ACL surgery. But the Wildcats are likely to roll out a five-man starting lineup one month from Thursday in Rome against Notre Dame with four newcomers. They include 7-foot-3 center Luigi Suigo, a 19-year-old freshman from Italy projected to be selected in the first round of next year’s NBA draft. Next to Suigo in the front court are two seniors who played three seasons of Big Ten basketball prior to transferring to Villanova in 6-10 power forward Kwame Evans Jr. (Oregon) and 6-6 forward Devin Royal (Ohio State). Junior Illinois-Chicago transfer Elijah Crawford is projected to start at point guard next to Perkins.

The bench has two senior guards in Jake Fiegen (Cornell), a sharpshooter, and a smaller scorer in Buddy Simmons (St. Bonaventure), who scored 16.4 points per game last season. Hodge will be a 22-year-old redshirt sophomore whose shooting prowess will be useful as soon as he’s ready to return from surgery. Freshman Adam Oumiddoch, a 6-5 guard, also will get minutes and contribute. Willard may play as many as 11 guys after finishing last season with an eight-man rotation that sometimes was more like seven. That final rotation had two freshmen, two sophomores, and a redshirt sophomore.

» READ MORE: Villanova men picked third, women second in preseason Big East polls

This team, by contrast, will start a junior, three seniors, and a freshman lottery pick, while the top of its bench rotation has two seniors and a 22-year-old redshirt sophomore.

Willard was open about what separated his roster from the better ones last season and what he had to do to rectify that.

So, gap closed?

“Absolutely,” he said Thursday. “I think in practice, if you come watch practice, the level of physicality, it’s almost a little bit too much. I haven’t practiced longer than 90 minutes so far. Just the experience we have, the games that these guys have played in, they understand what high-level basketball is all about.

“I think one of the issues last year was we were so young at times we just didn’t understand the physicality we were going to have to play. Last year’s group played with unbelievable heart and passion. It’s why we won so many games. It just wasn’t old enough and physical enough to be able to understand what you have to do to win at a little bit higher level.”

There’s a different understanding with this group.

“We already know the expectations that come with coming to Nova and what we have to bring every night,” said Evans, who has shed the walking boot he wore on his left leg during the team’s Summer Jam open practice in July.

Those physical practices and the different bodies Villanova has in the rotation are certainly noticeable to Perkins, who is back to full basketball activities after right shoulder surgery.

“It’s definitely an adjustment,” Perkins said. “This year when I drive the paint I got 7-3 Luigi Suigo and 7-1 Nico [Onyekwere, a reserve center]. It’s not every time you can get a layup. Shooting over them has also been something I’ve been noticing.”

» READ MORE: Kevin Willard accomplished most of his goals in Villanova’s roster rebuild. Then came Luigi Suigo.

A new roster with a new makeup also means the coach has changed his approach.

“It’s two total polar opposites,” Willard said when asked if his coaching style changes this year. “Last year’s team was really fun to coach because you had to do so much coaching and teaching. So from that standpoint it was really fun. This team is a lot of fun because they know what they’re doing.

“From that standpoint it’s a lot of fun because we kind of let them be who they are and the team can kind of evolve around their personalities instead of mine.”

What the personality of this team ends up being remains to be seen. The Wildcats begin a three-game exhibition slate on Oct. 11 at Rutgers and then open their season Nov. 1 in Italy. They have a measuring stick game on Nov. 21 vs. Michigan in South Philly and play at Kansas on Black Friday.

Are they ready for UConn and St. John’s? Are they ready to be back in the conversation at the top of a conference Jay Wright once lorded over?

Perkins had a pretty simple answer for what proving that looks like.

“Just winning games,” he said. “That’s what it takes, to win games.”