Wildcats out West: Villanova gets a No. 8 seed, opens NCAA Tournament Friday vs. Utah State

The path to the scene inside Finneran Pavilion started 365 days prior.

Three seasons that ended without a trip to the NCAA Tournament, the longest drought in more than 20 years for a Villanova men’s basketball program that became a national power under Jay Wright, was enough to cause the school’s leadership to fire Kyle Neptune.

Villanova plucked Kevin Willard, a coach with a more proven track record, from Maryland in an effort to change course.

Exactly one year after Neptune was relieved of his duties, the Wildcats held a small gathering with players, coaches, their families, and donors and watched as they learned their NCAA Tournament seeding and destination.

Villanova is the No. 8 seed in the West Region and take on ninth-seeded Utah State on Friday in San Diego. A win would mean a likely date with top-seeded Arizona.

» READ MORE: Sielski: Villanova’s bad Big East tournament loss shouldn’t mar Kevin Willard’s good work. Just ask Dan Hurley.

“I think it’s a really big first step,” Willard said. “Getting back to being a winning program and getting everybody to understand that this is every year is expected to be an NCAA Tournament. Obviously the last three years before I got here they didn’t make it, so to get back there, this is where the program deserves to be.

“It’s big. I put a lot of pressure on myself and the staff this year to get to this point because I know how important it is to this program and to this university.”

It is unlikely the season extends beyond Southern California, but it is the month in which unexpected occurrences happen in college basketball. And considering the expectations, just having a Selection Sunday celebration probably is a win.

A team with just one returning scholarship player, Tyler Perkins, and a transfer portal class that experts did not rank highly was picked seventh in the Big East. The Wildcats finished third after going 24-7 overall and 15-5 in the conference during the regular season.

But their tournament resumé was that of an eight seed because it lacked much flair. A signature win over Wisconsin in December in Milwaukee aged well, but other chances against top competition did not go as well. Villanova was swept in its four conference games with UConn and St. John’s and also lost nonconference games against BYU and Michigan. The Big East, meanwhile, offered few chances for other marquee wins in a season in which just three of the 11 conference teams reached the NCAA Tournament.

Villanova, which went 2-6 in Quad 1 games, also began its postseason on a sour note. The Wildcats were badly outplayed by Georgetown, the Big East’s last-place team, in a 78-64 conference tournament quarterfinal loss Thursday night at Madison Square Garden. That loss probably resulted in Villanova dropping at least one seed line when the bracket was finalized by the tournament committee on Sunday.

“I figured that’s what was going to happen,” Willard said. “We didn’t play good, Georgetown played good. This time of year, all these games matter.”

The short-handed Wildcats, who are down starting power forward Matt Hodge (ACL surgery) and have had two players — Zion Stanford and Tafara Gapare — leave the program during the season, had days off on Friday and Saturday before returning to practice Sunday. Film study and game-planning preparations for Utah State, the Mountain West champion, would begin in earnest as soon as Sunday night.

“It’s a whole new season,” Perkins said. “We’ve done good enough to be in this position now, and what happened in the past is in the past. We can only control right now, so we’re going to every we can to be ready for right now.”

Right now means preparing for Utah State, which went 28-6 on the season and spent a week in the Associated Press Top 25 with a No. 23 ranking in mid-January.

“They actually play my father’s defense, a very good matchup zone,” Willard said. “They can really shoot the basketball, play up-tempo, a very good basketball team.”