'Nova's winning approach: All business under Wright

When Jay Wright arrived in Detroit for his first Final Four as Villanova coach in 2009, he wanted his players, coaches and support staff to enjoy the experience. But when the Wildcats went out for their national semifinal game that weekend against North Carolina, he knew that plan had major flaws.

"It was about 10 minutes into the game and I knew," Wright recalled last week. "You could just see the focus in Carolina. You could see our guys were just playing a game. I knew I didn't get these guys ready.

"Obviously, [Tar Heels coach Roy Williams] had been there many times. They were ready. They were playing on a completely different level than we were. We were there to play a fun game in front of a big crowd. So that's when I knew."

So seven years later, when the Wildcats arrived in Houston last Wednesday for the 2016 Final Four, it was strictly a business trip. The key words were "focused" and "dialed in" and "attitude." His players were pretty much kept apart from their families. The entire team met together, ate together, hung together, thinking only "next game," one of the coach's favorite expressions.

Then late Monday night, while wading through about six inches of streamers and confetti that had fallen from the rafters of cavernous NRG Stadium celebrating the Wildcats' national championship, Wright, his players, everyone involved with his program and 'Nova Nation discovered that only winning made the Final Four an enjoyable experience.

The team that Wright built, nurtured, prodded, cajoled, hollered at, and eventually hugged rose to the top of the college basketball mountain against the same team that taught its coach a lesson in 2009.

The Wildcats kept their focus after giving up a 10-point lead on an incredible tying three-point shot by North Carolina's Marcus Paige and topped it with one of their own: Kris Jenkins' 24-foot three-pointer at the buzzer that gave the program its second national championship, 77-74, over the Tar Heels.

Wright kept his own steely focus - "coach mode," he called it - even as delirium reigned all around him. He thought the officials might put a few tenths of a second on the clock after the big shot.

"I'm the adult," he said. "I've got all these 18- to 22-year-olds around me. They're going to go crazy and I'm going to have to get them gathered and we're going to have to defend a play with .7 seconds [left]. That's what I was thinking."

He still seemed stunned while addressing reporters about 90 minutes later.

"You dream that this happens, you don't know what it's going to feel like, how you're going to handle it," he said. "It is really surreal. I don't have a plan for what to do. I was prepared if we lost how to keep these guys' heads up [but] I didn't have a plan for this because we always say, 'Hey, whatever happens, we'll deal with it, but let's concentrate on the game.'

"I think that's the best thing we did in the tournament. For three weeks, we really stayed focused on basketball. We felt guilty by keeping them sequestered. My wife [Patti] even apologized to their families [Sunday] night, and they actually told her, 'We're all in. We support it.' Then Patti came and told me that, which made me feel better."

Through the tournament's six games, the Wildcats competed at a level significantly higher than what took them to their third consecutive Big East regular-season championship. That was particularly true in defeating four top-10 teams - No. 10 Miami, No. 1 Kansas, No. 7 Oklahoma, and No. 3 North Carolina - in their last four contests.

The offensive numbers were staggering: 58.2 percent shooting from the floor, 50 percent from three-point territory and 83.5 points per game for the tournament; 64.9 percent, 59.3 percent and 86.0 points per game in the Final Four. Defensively, they allowed 42.4 percent shooting by opponents and an average of 62.8 points while forcing nearly 14 turnovers per contest.

It all came down to the work in practice that Wright demands of the players.

"Coach puts us in the most difficult situations in practice every day," junior swingman Josh Hart said. "So it's just that experience, that decision-making, being able to go in there and make the right play. The repetition that Coach puts us in really helps us learn."

That practice work directly led to a national championship. With 4.7 seconds left, Ryan Arcidiacono took an inbounds pass, dribbled into the frontcourt and flipped the ball to Jenkins for the game-winning basket.

"We work on that play every single day in practice," Arcidiacono said. "It's not about me taking the right shot. It's about me making the right read. I think I just did that."

The reliance on seniors is another characteristic of a Wright-coached team. This season, Arcidiacono and Daniel Ochefu were the undisputed leaders, making sure practice habits were solid, scouting reports were studied and followed and that in-game mistakes were corrected.

The Wildcats trailed the Tar Heels, 39-34, at halftime Monday night. Wright met briefly with his assistants in the hallway before coming into the locker room but was met at the door by Ochefu.

"We asked everybody, all the managers, all the coaches, to leave the locker room," Ochefu said. "Guys were getting on each other. We got back to Villanova basketball. We started defending better, started rebounding the ball better. We just got it done."

"Those two ran the locker room, got everybody together," Wright said. "Arch is an amazing, special leader. He's one of the most selfless people. Same with Daniel . . . not many big guys like that, coachable and humble."

The example of Arcidiacono, who played in a program-record 144 career games, and Ochefu helped the players accept Wright's coaching and stay locked in on the games. The result was their return to campus Tuesday evening with the national championship trophy.

"It's like a dream right now, doesn't even seem real," Wright said. "First thing I thought of: That was an incredible college final. I watch them all on TV. That's what I'm still thinking about, that I'm so lucky to be a part of it."

Or maybe Villanova is the lucky one to have Wright.

jjuliano@phillynews.com

@joejulesinq