With Villanova knocking on the top 25 door, is it NCAA Tournament or bust in Year 1 of the Kevin Willard era?

After victories over DePaul and Butler last week moved Villanova to 12-2 this season with a perfect 3-0 start to Big East play, it was fair to wonder whether the Wildcats would see their name in the Associated Press top 25 rankings Monday for the first time since November 2023.

If only they ranked 26 teams.

Villanova was just outside the rankings released Monday afternoon. The Wildcats fell just five ballot points shy of 25th-ranked Central Florida for the final spot.

Relatively meaningless rankings release aside, Villanova is playing really good basketball right now. The Wildcats have won five consecutive games. They were a slight road underdog at Butler on Saturday and won by 18. They flipped the script in the second half one game earlier and beat DePaul on New Year’s Eve. They controlled the second half and won comfortably at Seton Hall before the holiday break. And they rallied in overtime to beat Wisconsin in a neutral-site game in Milwaukee on Dec. 19 that was effectively a road game.

“We’re battle-tested,” first-year Villanova coach Kevin Willard said after the road win at Seton Hall, his old stomping grounds. His team spent its next two outings proving his words wise.

Villanova entered Monday rated 17th in the NCAA’s NET rankings and 21st in the KenPom metrics. Further, ESPN bracket guru Joe Lunardi had the Wildcats slotted in as a No. 6 seed in his latest Bracketology out Tuesday morning. Villanova is comfortably a tournament team through 14 games.

A season with limited expectations, in Willard’s first year after taking over for Kyle Neptune, has gone about as well as one could reasonably hope. The Wildcats have two losses to teams ranked in the top 10 in the country. They are 2-2 in Quad 1 games and 10-0 in the rest.

With 17 games to go — all of them Big East contests — has what some would have considered a rebuilding year turned into NCAA Tournament or bust?

It’s worth starting with the idea that preseason expectations in this new college hoops landscape are a bit unserious. The amount of player turnover that happens on a year-to-year basis make projecting records a bit like throwing darts after being over-served at the local dive.

KenPom metrics had Villanova rated 50th before the season started. Lunardi had the Wildcats on the bubble in his preseason Bracketology. Villanova rising 29 spots at KenPom has the Wildcats among the biggest climbers from preseason expectations to current performance.

But while the outsiders were unsure about Villanova, Willard himself was assertive about where he thought the 2025-26 season could go.

“We got to win,” Willard told The Inquirer in June. “From my perspective, laying the groundwork for the future and what we’re doing is extremely important. That’s more important than winning.

“But we got to win. I expect to win. We spent a good number on this roster. I think we have a really good roster.”

Missing the tournament while rebuilding for the future was “not my plan,” Willard said.

“There’s difficulties [in] taking over and really starting over and doing all that, but this is where my ego comes in a little bit,” he said. “I think we’ve done a pretty good job in years past of doing that and I think we’ve done a really good job of putting together a good roster that I expect us to win games, yeah.

“I don’t look at Year 1 anymore like you have a two-year grace period. I think that’s [BS] nowadays. I didn’t take this job and say, ‘I now get two years where I don’t have to work.’ We’ve got to produce.”

So far, so good.

The roster Willard put together has been better than many expected. The Wildcats start a freshman, a redshirt freshman, a redshirt sophomore, a junior, and a senior. That’s a pretty young roster in the modern college basketball world. KenPom metrics have Villanova ninth among the 11 Big East teams in experience. The Wildcats rank 256th in KenPom’s minutes continuity metric.

Point guard Acaden Lewis has excelled in his freshman season and is up to 12 points, 4.9 assists, 3.6 rebounds, and 1.9 steals per game against just 1.6 turnovers. Redshirt sophomore Bryce Lindsay, a James Madison transfer, leads Villanova with 16.9 points per game and is shooting 44.7% from three-point range. Senior big man Duke Brennan, a Grand Canyon transfer, is at 12 points and 11.3 rebounds per game. He’s the fifth-best rebounder in the country.

Junior Tyler Perkins (10.9 points, 5.1 rebounds), the lone returner to the roster with game experience, has played well at both ends. And redshirt freshman forward Matt Hodge rounds out a starting five that all average double figures with 10.8 points and 4.4 rebounds.

Willard talked before the season about a deep roster and how he wanted to play as many as 10 guys. But injuries and slower development have led to a shortening of the bench. Villanova played just eight players Saturday vs. Butler.

» READ MORE: Forged in Baltimore, Bryce Lindsay has overcome his share of adversity. Now he’s Villanova’s leading scorer.

Willard has also adjusted his own coaching preferences. Villanova shoots a three-pointer on 46.4% of its shot attempts, which ranks 48th in the country, far more than any other team Willard has coached (this is his 19th season as a head coach). The next closest was 41.7% by his 2012-13 Seton Hall team. Last year’s Maryland team, by comparison, took a three-pointer on 35.3% of its shots. (The Terrapins had a star big man, Derik Queen.)

A shorter-than-expected bench has also forced Willard to play a little slower than he usually likes. The Wildcats are 352nd out of 365 Division I teams in KenPom’s adjusted tempo metric. Maryland, meanwhile, was 66th last season.

Willard has also been working wonders in the second half of games. Villanova outscored Butler, 43-34, in the second half on Saturday. The Wildcats have been outscored in a second half just once this season, their overtime victory over Wisconsin.

So, back to the question at hand: NCAA Tournament or bust? The analytics site Torvik had Villanova’s NCAA Tournament chances at 96.9% on Monday. Missing the dance at this point would be a disappointment and would require a major collapse.

While Villanova’s marquee wins are over Seton Hall (41 NET), Butler (46), and Wisconsin (63), getting through the nonconference slate without a hiccup against a lesser opponent was a big deal.

A 3-0 start in Big East play, including two wins on the road, makes it pretty hard to imagine Villanova slipping up to a degree that would bump the Wildcats out of the tournament field — even if there are still four games to go against No. 4 UConn and a St. John’s team that is underperforming but will still provide a big challenge.

Up next is a home game Wednesday vs. Creighton. The Bluejays were 44th at KenPom and 52nd in the NET rankings on Monday. It’s a Quad 2 game, and after that is a Quad 3 game on the road at Marquette.

Slip-ups in one or both would change the math a little bit. But right now, all roads seem to lead from the Main Line to meaningful basketball in March.

Editor’s note: Jeff Neiburg is an AP top 25 men’s basketball voter. He had Villanova ranked 21st on his ballot this week.