Villanova started Big East play with a bang. Is a Top 25 ranking on deck?

NEWARK, N.J. — More than an hour before the game, Kevin Willard was on and around the basketball court at the Prudential Center, the place he called home for 12 seasons as Seton Hall’s head coach.

The first-year Villanova coach, like most head coaches, is normally tucked away going over final game preparations while assistants get his players loose. But Willard was home. It was an emotional couple of days since the Wildcats arrived here Monday evening.

“This place helped raise my family in a very special way,” Willard said. The family saw the same security guards that used to carry his young children — one now a college freshman, the other a high school senior — around after games.

Before tipoff, Willard embraced Seton Hall coach Shaheen Holloway, who coached under Willard for 11 seasons at Iona and Seton Hall. A video prior that played prior to the national anthem showed highlights of Willard’s tenure at Seton Hall, and the sell-out crowd of 11,153 mostly responded with a nice ovation for the coach who left in 2022 for Maryland and returned Tuesday for his first game against his old program with one of its bitter Big East rivals.

The show at that point was over. “Walking out, once I got out, we got to win a game,” Willard said.

It was a sloppy-at-times Big East fight during the first half, but Villanova used an emphatic 16-0 run early in the second half and pulled away from Seton Hall in an eventual 64-56 victory that wasn’t as close as the final score suggested. Villanova led by as many as 20 midway through the second half.

The Big East opener was a matchup of two teams off to hot starts. Willard’s Wildcats improved to 10-2 and handed Seton Hall (11-2) its second loss of the season.

The Wildcats entered Tuesday ranked 30th in the NCAA’s NET rankings, and they were surely going to be ranked higher on Wednesday morning after winning their first Quad 1 game of the season. By 10 p.m. Tuesday, the metrics site KenPom had Villanova ranked 24th. Seton Hall was just outside the Associated Press Top 25 this week. The Pirates were 27th based on ballot points. Surely, Villanova will be in the conversation to be ranked for the first time since November of 2023 next week.

The Wildcats’ two losses are to No. 10 Brigham Young and No. 2 Michigan. They hit the holiday break with a home victory over Pittsburgh and two road wins at Wisconsin and Seton Hall.

“We’re trending in the right direction,” Willard said. “I like that fact that no one’s really talking about us.”

They are now. It was a light day on the college basketball calendar, and given Seton Hall’s surprising start to the season and Willard making his return to Newark, there were plenty of eyeballs watching Villanova pass the eye test.

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Freshman point guard Acaden Lewis “controlled the game,” Holloway said after Lewis led all scorers with 16 points on 6-for-11 shooting to go with five rebounds, two assists, and three steals (to cancel out three turnovers) in a season-high 37 minutes. Redshirt-freshmen Matt Hodge added 12 points and six rebounds and redshirt-sophomore Bryce Lindsay scored 15 points on nine shots.

The night was far from perfect for Villanova. The Wildcats turned the ball over 18 times and had trouble with Seton Hall’s press after the lead ballooned late in the game. They allowed 16 offensive rebounds and had just eight of their own.

But Villanova had an answer every time Seton Hall pushed back in the second half. Devin Askew hit a three-pointer to push the lead back to 17, 50-33. Hodge put back a Lewis miss with just over eight minutes to play that stopped a 6-0 Seton Hall run and bumped the lead back to 16. The Pirates then got it down to 13 before Lindsay made a three-pointer. He made 3 of 7 attempts on the night.

“We’re battle-tested,” Willard said. “We played BYU on the road, Michigan on the road, Wisconsin on the road, three Big 5 games … so I have a lot of confidence in the fact that our guys have played against a lot of good teams."

Villanova overcame its own struggles because of its defense. Willard said the game plan was to make dynamic Seton Hall point guard Budd Clark, a West Catholic graduate, be a scorer and not a “sprayer.” The Wildcats, who utilized a zone defense, forced him into tough spots and limited his driving opportunities. He also was limited to just five minutes in the first half due to foul trouble, and Seton Hall’s offense was disjointed without him. Clark finished 1-for-11 from the floor, and Seton Hall as a team converted just 33.3% of its shot attempts.

The Pirates were 15-for-30 on what were considered layups by the official stats, but the majority of their shots on the night were well contested. The 16-0 run happened mostly because of Villanova’s active hands that forced steals and easy transition buckets.

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Earlier in the season, defense was one of Willard’s major concerns. It has recently become a strength. Why? Lewis said physical practices where fouls aren’t called have translated into higher-intensity stretches of defense during games.

Villanova returns home on New Year’s Eve for a game vs. 8-5 DePaul. But first, a few days off to celebrate the holiday, a break that got a little merrier with Tuesday’s win.

“We’re trending up,” Lewis said. “Since that Michigan game we really locked in and built with each other. [Michigan] showed us there’s levels, and we’re building up to that level to see them again when March comes around and we want a different look when that happens.”

After Tuesday, playing meaningful basketball in March seems like a real possibility.