Kevin Willard is ‘home’ at Big East media day, where his Villanova Wildcats are picked seventh

NEW YORK — Big East commissioner Val Ackerman was finished with her introductory remarks Tuesday morning, and it was time to take a photo. She invited the 11 men’s basketball coaches onto the Madison Square Garden court, and there was new Villanova coach Kevin Willard, hugging St. John’s coach Rick Pitino, whom he has known for years and worked under at Louisville.

Willard made the rounds. There was Ed Cooley, whom Willard later called one of the best tactical offensive coaches in the sport.

Villanova freshman point guard Acaden Lewis said he hasn’t seen Willard smiling quite like he has over the last two days in New York.

“It feels good to be back home, especially back in the Garden,” said Willard, who played at Pittsburgh when the school was a Big East member and coached 12 seasons at Seton Hall. “I missed the Big East tournament. I missed the battles that we had in here.”

Media day means preseason poll day, and if the other programs are onto something, Willard’s Wildcats will need to make some kind of run at that conference tournament in March to avoid Villanova missing the NCAA Tournament for the fourth consecutive season. The Wildcats were picked to finish seventh in the preseason poll of the league’s 11 head coaches. It’s a two-horse race at the top, with Pitino’s Red Storm getting seven first-place votes, three more than Connecticut.

“To be honest with you, I don’t even know who’s on anyone’s team,” Willard said when asked about his team’s preseason ranking.

That has to make voting hard, right?

“I didn’t vote,” Willard said. “I don’t know who voted for us. I think someone did.”

Someone must have, but Willard’s response — and his abstaining from the voting process — speaks to the meaningless nature of these preseason exercises that have become even more useless in the transient world of college basketball. Villanova brought with Willard a freshman point guard, Lewis, and junior guard Tyler Perkins, one of its two returning scholarship players from last season’s roster.

The rest of the Wildcats mostly are unknown to Villanova season ticket-holders, let alone opposing programs that haven’t had any need to dig into rival rosters at this part of the calendar. No Villanova players made it onto the three preseason all-conference teams.

» READ MORE: With an experienced Villanova point guard injured, freshman Acaden Lewis might get the keys right away

Willard was asked what he thought about the two-headed race at the top of the conference and mentioned, again, that he didn’t really know who was on either team. He was also asked what he thought those St. John’s-UConn games might be like later this season.

“I don’t care,” he said jokingly to a reporter. “I don’t. I’m not playing in them, why do I care what they’re like?

“I didn’t know this was St. John’s-UConn. It’s the V,” he said, pointing to the Villanova banner behind him.

While the event was “like riding a bike” to Willard, representing Villanova on the annual preseason stage was new. His first look at his roster against real competition came Sunday in an exhibition against Virginia Commonwealth, and the Wildcats won, 70-51. They play again Friday in an exhibition at Virginia before opening the season for real Nov. 3 against No. 8 BYU in Las Vegas.

Villanova will play 11 nonconference games before it opens Big East play on Dec. 23, when Willard will make his first trip as Wildcats coach to his old stomping grounds at Seton Hall, which was picked last in Tuesday’s poll.

By then, a lot more will be known about his new-look team — and the rest of the Big East, for that matter.

“I actually watched a podcast yesterday while I was waiting for dinner, and it’s kind of comical,” Willard said. “Preseason polls now, I don’t know how anyone ranks anybody. No one literally has any idea how these kids are all going to fit together, play together. No one’s really dove through people’s schedules to see what’s going on. There’s so much that goes into this. Like, KenPom, how can you have KenPom rankings? It doesn’t make any sense.

“I just don’t get it. This time of year, I just think you have to play basketball and see how everybody is.”

It all starts soon enough.

» READ MORE: For Villanova’s Matthew Hodge, a long wait is almost over: ‘It’s everything I’ve worked for’

The Villanova women’s basketball team was picked to finish fourth in its preseason poll Tuesday morning.

The Wildcats trail defending national champion UConn, Marquette, and Seton Hall.

Villanova’s Jasmine Bascoe, a first-team all-conference selection last season after collecting 16.2 points and 4.5 rebounds per game, was named a preseason first-team selection.