‘We just worry about ourselves’: Villanova picked third in preseason Big East men’s basketball poll

NEW YORK — Out with the old and in with the new?

For the Big East men’s basketball programs, in some ways, that answer is yes.

No more Hall of Fame coach Jay Wright at Villanova. Welcome back to Xavier, Sean Miller. Welcome back to Butler, Thad Matta. Hello (and welcome back) to Kyle Neptune at Villanova. And hello to Shaheen Holloway, the new coach of the Seton Hall Pirates whose St. Peter’s Peacocks stole the hearts of basketball fans last March when they reached the NCAA Tournament’s Elite Eight.

There’s a lot of newness around the Big East ahead of the 2022-23 season. And, a team not named Villanova sits atop the conference’s preseason polls, too.

Creighton, ranked ninth in the country in the first AP poll of 2022-23, received eight first-place votes and was chosen as the top team in the conference in a poll of coaches at Tuesday morning’s Big East media day at Madison Square Garden.

Villanova, ranked 16th in the AP poll, received one first-place vote and finished third in the preseason polling, behind unranked Xavier (two first-place votes).

The preseason polls of the last nine years were dominated by Villanova. In 2021, the Wildcats were picked for first for the seventh time in the eight years. They return a lot of experienced talent and have a promising freshman class, although the star of that class, Cam Whitmore, who was selected Big East preseason freshman of the year, will likely miss the start of the season following thumb surgery.

Is the post-Wright era starting with a little bit of disrespect?

“We don’t look into the rankings at all,” said senior guard Justin Moore, a preseason second-team all-conference selection who is recovering from an Achilles injury and remains without a timetable. “We just worry about ourselves, getting better each and every day, and the rest will take care of itself.”

Villanova has a motto that’s been repeated by plenty of previous players and certainly one previous coach, and it’s written on the walls inside Finneran Pavilion: “We play for those who came before us.”

It’s in that essence that Brandon Slater, a fifth-year forward, answered a question about the preseason poll.

“If we were picked last or first, our motivation would come from each other,” he said. “Our teammates and our coaches, it matters that we play hard for each other.”

The more things change, the more they stay the same. But to be fair to the Big East, there are plenty of holdovers to this new-look conference amid the changes.

“At the end of the day … elite college basketball coaches, that hasn’t changed. Elite talent, that hasn’t changed,” Neptune said, between answering questions about succeeding Wright for what must feel like the 1,000th time.

» READ MORE: Villanova’s full men’s basketball schedule for 2022-23

If Creighton coach Gregg McDermott has his way, more holdover traditions will remain.

“Jay did an unbelievable job of making it clear from the beginning that, if this league was going to be successful, we as coaches had to put the league first,” McDermott said. “As a result, I think the relationships between the coaches in this league have been as good as any league I’ve been a part of. And that has to continue.”

McDermott will be part of making that happen. He’s now the longest-tenured coach in the conference. And his Creighton team, versatile and experienced, looks like it will be among those at the top of the conference this year and into the future.

“I don’t think about things any differently,” he said. “In the coaching business, things are always changing, and I’ve just been fortunate to be at a really good place for 13 years.”

That run started in the spring of 2010 when Villanova was one season removed from Wright’s first appearance in a Final Four. It seems that now, just months removed from Villanova’s latest trip to a Final Four, McDermott and Creighton are as close to getting over the hump as they’ve ever been.

» READ MORE: The elephant in the gym? Jay Wright is not there anymore at Villanova.

It sounds good on paper in October, but a lot can happen during a four-month basketball season. Villanova knows that as well as anyone. So, too, does Creighton. The Bluejays were picked seventh in the 2019-20 Big East preseason poll. They went on to go 13-5 and won the conference’s regular-season title.

Which team was picked seventh Tuesday morning? Holloway’s Seton Hall Pirates. That coach knows maybe more than anyone at Madison Square Garden on Tuesday that the game on the floor will, eventually, speak for itself.

That much will never change.