Ford: It's test time for Villanova

The tournament season arrives for Villanova in Madison Square Garden on Thursday in the quarterfinal round of the Big East championship. How long it will last as the Wildcats wind through the conference play and then leap into the deep pond of the NCAA tournament is anyone's guess.

Villanova is very good - good enough to be ranked No. 1 in the nation for a few weeks of the regular season - but being good is far from a guarantee, and the recent March history for the Wildcats has been more maddening than madness.

"Everyone has a right to say what they want," senior guard Ryan Arcidiacono said recently. "We judge ourselves on the regular season, and we'll go from there with the tournaments. . . . We can't control what the teams did before us. In our time, we just haven't been as successful. That's on us. We can own up to that, and everybody has the right to get mad at us if they want to."

It's more about being perplexed than angry for Villanova fans. Including this season, the Wildcats have compiled an 84-9 record in the regular season over the last three years, and they backed it up last season with their first Big East tournament championship in 20 years. But despite favorable seeding (a No. 1 and a No. 2), the last two NCAA tournaments were flops.

Villanova should make the Big East final again before running up against either Xavier or Seton Hall on Saturday, the two strongest conference opponents this season, and maybe the Wildcats will become only the fifth team to repeat as tournament champion. That's not just a testament to the overall strength of the league, which held its first tournament in 1980, but a reminder of how fickle the basketball gods can be at this time of year.

"I always try to instill in them how difficult this is to do and how focused you have to be," coach Jay Wright said this week. "When they're young, you have to prepare them for the fact that this ends abruptly, and you can't guarantee that next year we're going to be in this position."

Last season's Big East triumph was followed one week later by a quick exit just two games into the NCAA tournament, a three-point loss to No. 8-seed North Carolina State. In that game, the Wildcats, traditionally dependent on guard play and outside shooting, were unable to make their shots and were dominated in the paint and on the boards.

"I know we have to answer to the fact that we did not get to the second weekend again. We have to own that," Wright said after the loss. "But it's not going to define us within our program. It's going to define us outside our program, and we accept that."

Since 2009, when Villanova won four NCAA games to advance to the Final Four, the Wildcats are 3-5 in five tournament appearances and haven't beaten a team seeded higher than 15th (and one of those wins was in overtime). They have lost to a 7-seed once, an 8-seed three times and a 10-seed once. In four of those losses, the Wildcats ran into games in which their shots simply didn't fall, and in the other, an opening loss to North Carolina in 2013, ran into a team that could bury three-pointers better than they could.

"Our goal is always to play our best basketball at this time of year," Wright said before heading to New York. "And I think we are right now. But you've got to go do it. It just takes one clunker, and none of these things we talk about matter."

The Wildcats bring familiar perimeter weaponry to the court this season, which serves as a knife that can cut two ways. The four top scorers are guards Josh Hart, Arcidiacono and Jalen Brunson, and 6-foot-6 forward Kris Jenkins. Nearly half (48.7 percent) of that quartet's combined field goal attempts in conference play were three-pointers. Their offensive firepower is more on most nights than opponents can handle - only four of their 27 wins were decided by fewer than 10 points - but the other nights are the ones you worry about. Villanova plays tenacious defense, but it takes complete games to keep going during tournament play.

"I like where we are," Wright said. "But I want them to understand that you don't get to do this all the time. This is special. Kids tend to relax and say, 'Hey, next game, whatever.' I don't want them to miss this opportunity. You like that they're young and indestructible and confident. You don't want them to lose that. You just want to make sure that's an advantage to them and not a disadvantage."

The advantages enjoyed by Villanova on a basketball court far outweigh the disadvantages and, over a 30-game test, the Wildcats will almost always be near the top of the class. This is the time of pop quizzes, however, and quick expulsions for the wrong answers.

It is a nervous time, and it begins Thursday in the midtown monster that hoisted them to the rafters a year ago but promises nothing this time. Nothing but a chance, and Villanova certainly has that this week and in the weeks to come. It is almost as much as you can ask.

bford@phillynews.com

@bobfordsports