Commentary: Villanova's inspiring head coach

By B.G. Kelley

I love this Villanova team.

They play with heart. They play with smarts. They play together.

When the college basketball season began back in November, I wasn't convinced, as were many other b-ball aficionados, that the Villanova Wildcats were, as some pundits predicted, a top-10 team.

There were too many questions: Could the Cats sustain the losses of JayVaughn Pinkston and Darrun Hilliard, two superb players in last year's most-wins-in-a-season 33-3 campaign? Could Josh Hart, the MVP of last season's Big East Tournament, ratchet up his game? Could Kris Jenkins fill the offensive void left by Hilliard, last season's leading scorer? Could Daniel Ochefu remain free of foul trouble and injury long enough to stay on the court and contribute? Could freshman sensation Jalen Brunson fit in with team leader Ryan Arcidiacono?

'Nova answered all the questions.

As a result, they will play in the NCAA Tournament's Sweet 16 Thursday.

When Villanova toppled a terrific Xavier team, 95-64, on New Year's Eve, I became a believer, a disciple, even proselytizing that Wildcat head coach Jay Wright was doing his finest coaching job since coming to the leafy, Augustinian-run Main Line campus 15 years ago. The Cats were displaying pluperfect teamwork, exceptional three-point shooting, crisp-as-celery passing, and shutdown defense.

I had admired and respected Wright for years for a number of reasons besides his X's and O's IQ and his success. He demanded that his kids perform as well off the court - both in the classroom and in demonstrating their character - as they did on the court in passing and shooting.

That's not easy. College kids can be limitlessly malleable and vulnerable, wanderers at times in need of an anchor - a role model - to instill in them the importance, indeed, the priority of academics, responsibility, and character, qualities that succor accountable adult lives. If that anchor is a coach, so be it.

In the long-range vision of what's important for the overwhelming majority of student-athletes, winning in the sports world on the court won't mean as much as winning in the real world beyond the court. To his credit, Wright has used both a hammer and a hug to minister and mentor.

Just by the subtle way he quietly but firmly disciplines kids for unacceptable behavior, or by the way he counsels and cares about them in their future lives, I sense that the Jesuit philosophy regarding sports participation resonates in Wright: Athletics should integrate and promote a unity of the body, mind, and soul to complete human wholeness and, in turn, help produce a better person, a better society.

I often think of songwriter Paul Simon's words in terms of a coach's obligation to his kids:

Hear my words that I might teach you;

Take my arms that I might reach you.

I also admire Wright's humility. He could have easily been full of himself with the success Villanova has enjoyed in his coaching tenure - in the last four years alone, he has rung up 113 victories against only 27 defeats. He never became full of himself. He knows coaching is a fickle profession and that, for the most part, players win games, not coaches.

Student-athletes fortunate to discover coaches like Wright - or St. Joe's Phil Martelli and Temple's Fran Dunphy - coaches who often deliver that turnaround difference in a kid's life, should listen to and lock on to them.

They can only become better people for it.

B.G. Kelley is a Philadelphia writer who played in March Madness for Temple University. bgklly@yahoo.com