Analyzing the impact of Villanova’s early Big East tournament exit on its NCAA Tournament profile

Thursday night had turned to Friday morning when Villanova coach Kevin Willard sat in the press conference room at Madison Square Garden and talked about turning the page.

It was another quarterfinal exit from the Big East tournament, but unlike the previous three seasons under Kyle Neptune, more meaningful basketball awaited.

“We’ll let this one sting,” Willard said after third-seeded Villanova fell, 78-64, to the conference’s last-place team, Georgetown. Instead of facing UConn in the second of two Big East semifinals Friday night, the Wildcats were off and planned to take another rest day Saturday.

Then, Willard said, it will be back to the practice floor on Sunday. There will be a lot to work on and, after learning their seeding fate and their first-round NCAA Tournament opponent during the NCAA’s selection show, film study to go over.

“It’s a whole new season,” Willard said.

Even before Thursday’s result, it was hard to imagine the new season would last more than a game or two. Now? The loss will have some fallout, and it’s even less likely Willard’s Wildcats manage to sneak into the second weekend.

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

It was one of those games that couldn’t help you if you won and only hurt you if you lost.

The impact was easy to see on the various bracket projections in the aftermath. ESPN’s Joe Lunardi was slated to have the Wildcats on the No. 9 line by Saturday morning, just two days after they were in line for a seventh seed.

Beat Georgetown, lose to UConn, and that No. 7 spot likely would have remained.

Now, every part of the first weekend just got more difficult for Villanova. Even if the Wildcats are on the eight line, it’s still a first-round game against a better team than a No. 10 seed, and a victory in round one would mean facing one of the venerable No. 1 seeds in round two.

What might that look like? Lunardi had Villanova as a No. 7 seed and heading to Buffalo just two days ago. A win over a No. 10 seed (like North Carolina State, for example) would set up a date with second-seeded Michigan State.

Buffalo might still be the destination for Villanova, but the seed dropping could mean a second-round date with top-seeded Michigan.

The Wolverines pounded Villanova, 89-61, in December.

A lot has changed since that Dec. 9 matchup in Ann Arbor, Mich., but a lot is still true of this Villanova team.

There is something to be said for winning the games you’re supposed to win. The Neptune era yielded no NCAA Tournament berths in part because there were too many losses in those such games.

This Wildcats team still has some of the same profile it had in December. Good team, not great. Capable of playing NCAA Tournament teams close, but also a team that was ran off the floor in recent games against St. John’s and UConn.

Thursday did nothing to shake that reputation. Georgetown is not St. John’s, but the Big East tournament is a big stage, and Villanova was beaten up to the tune of a 46-25 rebounding disadvantage.

Thirty-two games into the season, you sort of are what you are at this point. It’s March, and any team has a shooter’s chance, but it’s hard to imagine this short-handed Villanova team being capable of flipping the script in a hypothetical rematch vs. Michigan.

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The NCAA Tournament committee will take context into account, which means there’s a nonzero chance the short-handed nature of Villanova’s rotation has an impact on its seeding.

Starting power forward Matt Hodge suffered a season-ending ACL injury two weeks ago at St. John’s, and while the Wildcats closed their regular season with rather comfortable wins over DePaul and Xavier in the two games that followed, the lack of depth is glaring.

More likely, this is only an internal issue and not one that will have any effect on Villanova’s seeding.

Willard acknowledged after the game that he still has some work to do with the tinkering of playing time and rotations.

Backup wing Malachi Palmer has played well after being inserted into the starting lineup, but Villanova hasn’t figured out many answers for its lack of size when Palmer isn’t on the floor. It didn’t help that Zion Stanford, who like Palmer is 6-foot-6, left the team when the Wildcats could have used him more than they had been. They are down to two rotation players who are taller than 6-6, and they’re both centers that have yet to share the floor together.

Deploying that two-big look or figuring out how to play better when the small-ball unit is on the floor is some of what Willard will be studying.

It may be too little, too late, but for the first time since 2022, the meaningful part of the season didn’t end in New York.