Sielski: 'Nova puts effort above everything
Hard as it might be to believe, for a few precious minutes Villanova was losing to Seton Hall on Monday night. It wasn't long into the Wildcats' 76-46 victory, and it wasn't long, period. Josh Hart made sure of that.
Hard as it might be to believe, for a few precious minutes Villanova was losing to Seton Hall on Monday night. It wasn't long into the Wildcats' 76-46 victory, and it wasn't long, period. Josh Hart made sure of that.
It was the way he did it that was instructive - about him, about the program that Villanova has become and, for years now, has been under Jay Wright. Seton Hall was up, 3-2, when Angel Delgado, its 6-foot-10, 240-pound junior power forward, caught the ball in the high post. Delgado entered the game averaging 14.7 points and 12.4 rebounds a game; he's a bull, hard to handle particularly for a team such as Villanova, which lacks a bruiser down low. But the Wildcats do what they usually do when confronted with such a player: They switched their defensive assignments mid-possession, went from man-to-man to zone, and demanded that every Villanova player be tougher and play harder than any Seton Hall player.
Kris Jenkins face-guarded Delgado. Hart darted over, knocked the ball from Delgado's hands, and took off for a breakaway dunk. In the most telling statistic in the box score, Delgado took just seven shots, finishing with eight points, six rebounds, and five turnovers. The Wildcats swarmed him as if he were a new substitute teacher and they were students in the rowdiest class in school. Seton Hall missed 17 of its first 20 attempts from the field, shot 29 percent for the game, and committed 16 turnovers.
You want the Villanova Wildcats in a nutshell - that's it. Whether it's a magical night in early April or a midseason Big East game at the Pavilion against a tired opponent - Monday's was Seton Hall's third road game in six days - they come to grind you into dust, and they dare you to stop them from doing it.
"We pride ourselves on being the hardest-playing team every game," said Hart, who had 11 points, four steals, four rebounds, and three assists Monday. "That's why we've had the success we've had the last several years. We bring it every game. No one game is bigger than the next.
"There's no such thing as fatigue. As long as you're mentally dialed in and you're with your teammates, you're not worried about that."
This has been Wright's mantra since he became the program's head coach in 2001. On the walls of the team's locker room hang two wooden triangles. The first has the words RUN, EXECUTE, REBOUND, and DEFEND aligned vertically. The second has PRIDE, START, TOGETHER, HARD. "I know I stole it from someone," Wright said, and it might sound like the sort of cheap motivational mumbo-jumbo that a salesman might pitch on a late-night infomercial. But somewhere along the way - in 2005, Wright estimated, when he led 'Nova to the NCAA tournament for the first time - it became a philosophy made manifest and tangible, the defining characteristic of a team that, as of Monday, was ranked No. 1 in the country again.
"That's the culture that's set here," Hart said. "Coming in, I felt like I blended well with that culture. I knew each and every time out, 'You've got to play your hardest,' and that's just how I am. And if you don't do that, even in practice, you'll hear it. Someone's going to get the best of you. We hold each other accountable. We know that if someone's not giving it, you've got to kick their butt, and you've got to talk to them, and you've got to teach them."
From Randy Foye to Kyle Lowry, from Scottie Reynolds to Ryan Arcidiacono to Hart and Jenkins, the whole machine keeps rolling and feeding itself. If you come to Villanova, you will play hard all the time, especially on defense. The Wildcats were fifth in the nation in defensive efficiency last season, according to the database KenPom.com, and they won a national championship. Ahead of Monday's game, they were just 21st, though, and after their humdrum 13-point victory over St. John's on Saturday, Wright teed off on his players over what he regarded as their insufficient effort. His rotation is just seven players deep, and the season is long, and he made sure that all they did Sunday was watch film - no practice. He's doing what he can to keep them fresh. All he asks in return is everything they have.
"I think positively and hope we're never going to have a night like that," he said. "And when we do, I'm kind of surprised because we do take pride in that. And then we just address it. That's what we're proud about tonight. We could have hit shots and won tonight, but I thought we played really hard tonight. When you do it against Seton Hall, you know you did it because they play hard. . . .
"Our effort defensively and on the glass is not consistent every night. We've had some games where we've not played well defensively and Kris has hit six threes and we find a way to win. We have a game at Butler; we don't play well defensively, and we lose. We're trying to get the consistency to play like we played tonight every night."
What choice do they have? Just ask their best player. This is Villanova, 18-1 and atop the mountain and still climbing. There is no fatigue. There is no choice.
@MikeSielski