Back home in Italy, Villanova center Luigi Suigo braces for his first college basketball game
Suigo is back in his home country for the first time since he moved to Villanova. The 7-foot-3 center, who will have family and friends in attendance on Sunday, is enjoying it.
ROME — Kevin Willard finished his six-minute interview session and gave way to the guy most of the cameras and microphones were there to see.
In came Luigi Suigo to a media scrum outside of the multisport PalaFonte facility where Villanova practiced Thursday in the southeast portion of the city. It was his turn to answer questions, but first, the camera operators had to readjust their shots for the freshman Villanova center, who at 7-foot-3 is more than a foot taller than his coach.
Suigo is home, back in Italy for the first time since he moved to Villanova late in the summer as a potential one-and-done high-priced center. Home? Sort of. Suigo wanted to provide a clarification.
“It’s not my home home, but still my country,” he said.
It’s an important correction. Suigo’s hometown of Tradate, northwest of Milan in the Lombardy region, is nearly 400 miles from where Villanova begins its 2026-27 season — and Suigo makes his collegiate debut — Sunday vs. Notre Dame (9:30 a.m. Philadelphia time, Fox 29). It’s like asking someone from Rochester how it feels to be back home in Villanova.
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OK, maybe not quite, and Suigo certainly felt at home alternating between answering questions in Italian and English.
“The best feeling is understanding what people are saying without my teammates knowing,” Suigo said.
And while most of them, he said, aren’t interested in learning much Italian during this four-day trip to Rome, he made sure to share some of the important things only hours after the team arrived at its hotel.
“At the hotel he was instructing us not to put meatballs with our pasta,” senior guard Jake Fiegen said. “Just American things that probably aren’t custom here.”
Thousands of Villanovans have or will make the trek to Rome this weekend to see the men’s and women’s teams open the 2026-27 season, but also for the celebrations over the weekend involving Pope Leo XIV, the first American-born pope and Villanova graduate who is expected to host an audience with a few thousand people on Saturday.
“Me, personally, I’m not a religious guy, so it’s not something crazy, but still he’s a Villanova alumni and, I mean, he’s the pope,” Suigo said. “He’s pretty important either if you’re religious or not.”
The audience Suigo is likely more excited by is the one he’ll have Sunday playing in front of his father, Massimo, and other family and friends.
It’s Suigo’s collegiate debut and it doesn’t come without fanfare, making the location for Sunday’s opener fitting. Few recent recruits have come to Villanova with the level of interest Suigo has. Even Jalen Brunson and the likes. Suigo played professionally last year in Serbia and was a potential late-first-round pick in the most recent NBA draft. He brought with him the nickname “The Italian Wemby” because of his perimeter skill set reminding some of NBA superstar Victor Wembanyama.
But Suigo is, at this point, much more Italian than he is Wemby. Willard used the phrase “growing pains” a few weeks ago after an exhibition game that Suigo struggled to make a major impact in.
He reiterated on Thursday the work-in-progress nature of where Suigo is at this point, just a few days away from the season starting.
“He’s getting there,” Willard said. “Every day he’s getting better. He’s watching film. It’s a big difference and big adjustment from playing where he played last year to now, the speed of the American game. He’s starting to understand the defensive concepts, the offensive concepts, but for a 19-year-old freshman he’s doing fantastic.”
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What’s the biggest area Suigo needs to show improvement in right now? Willard said the big man needs to know when to be physical.
“He has great hands, can shoot the basketball, is a very smart basketball player, but just understanding he’s still 7-3, 280 pounds and how to use his body to the best of his ability,” Willard said.
Fiegen, a transfer from Cornell with a lot of Division I basketball under his belt, said he thought Suigo was handling the transition to the American game and all of the attention that came with his arrival “with a lot of poise.”
Earlier, Willard was asked about the challenge of getting his team ready for an important nonconference game a day after having an audience with the pope. He pointed to his team’s experience in saying that wouldn’t be an issue, but there’s one freshman starter who is the wild card of sorts.
“I think the biggest thing is making sure Luigi is comfortable,” Willard said. “I think more than anything, being back home in Italy, having his family and friends here, this is a big moment for him. So making sure he’s comfortable and he’s ready to play is the biggest thing.”
Tip-ins
Villanova backup center Nico Onyekwere did not travel with the team to Rome. The Nigerian-born redshirt freshman was unable to travel due to a visa issue, according to a school spokesperson. ... Power forward Kwame Evans Jr., who missed the three-game exhibition slate while working his way back from an offseason leg injury, is expected to play Sunday. ... The men’s team practices again on Friday, but the session is closed to media.
