Villanova's Dominant Title Run Lifts Wildcats into Rarefied CBB Air

SAN ANTONIO — They had come to the court from all corners of the continent. Kyle Lowry from Toronto. Ryan Arcidiacono from Chicago. Josh Hart from Los Angeles. These generations of Villanova basketball greats wanted to be in San Antonio to watch their Wildcats win a national championship against Michigan. But as they climbed onto the raised stage at center court and felt the confetti rain down on them, they sensed that they were celebrating something more than Monday night's win—they were celebrating the ascension of a program. With two national championships in the past three seasons, there's no doubt that, right now, Villanova is college basketball's best program.

In a topsy-turvy NCAA tournament in which No. 16 seed UMBC beat No. 1 overall seed Virginia in the first round and No. 11 seed Loyola-Chicago advanced all the way to the Final Four, Villanova was the one dominant constant. The Wildcats beat each of their six opponents by double digits. And they culminated the run with a convincing 79-62 win over the Wolverines.

"I don't think these kids will even think that we dominated the tournament," head coach Jay Wright said after the game. "They'll just think we played Villanova basketball. We got better the next night. We did keep getting better. We got better from the Kansas game. We got better defensively tonight. That's what they take pride in."

The win didn't exactly happen as expected. In the opening minutes of the first half, the Wildcats were uncharacteristically wild. Their early decision to switch defensively made for some easy baskets for Michigan big man Moe Wagner, and the Wolverines guards were spacing the floor and driving right past their counterparts.

On offense, Villanova started off 1-of-9 from behind the three-point line. But then came redshirt sophomore guard Donte DiVincenzo. His first points of the game came on a three-pointer at the 12:44 mark, and they signaled the beginning of the end for Michigan's national championship dreams. By the end of the first half, DiVincenzo had scored 18 points in 18 minutes. And by the end of the game, he had scored 31 points and become the Final Four's Most Outstanding Player.

That DiVincenzo was the star of this game—rather than future NBA draft picks Jalen Brunson or Mikal Bridges—was the perfect metaphor for Villanova basketball. Two years ago, DiVincenzo sat at the end of the bench in a suit and watched Kris Jenkins hit the buzzer-beater that won Villanova its 2016 national championship. He'd broken his foot eight games into his freshman season, and spent the rest of the year running the scout team. On Monday night, as Brunson struggled with foul trouble and missed shots, DiVincenzo was simply the next man up.

Eric Gay/Associated Press/Associated Press

"Our team is built off of having multiple guys who can step up at any point," said assistant coach Kyle Neptune. "If it's not Jalen Brunson or Mikal [Bridges], it could be Donte. It could be Eric [Paschall]. It could be Phil Booth. We legitimately never know who it's going to be. It's a strength of our team."

That's the way that Jay Wright has built this program. This Wildcats team was composed from recruiting classes that ranked No. 48 (2014), No. 29 (2015), No. 45 (2016) and No. 28 (2017) nationally, per 247Sports. Although Wright often jokes that he'd take one-and-done players if he could get them, he has reached college basketball's pinnacle by developing a depth chart over several seasons—instead of several months.

"We have a chart with three years—three years out—and then a list under the chart of all the players we're recruiting, and we have a roster of our team on that chart that we all carry with us, and we change it, we change it based on our guys' play," Wright said. "So we're always doing that and evaluating our young people. The young guys, like, OK, is this guy going to be a good enough next year to be a starter? That's probably what we talked about. We call it roster structuring. Talk about it every day."

The way Wright develops talent also empowers his players. He encourages older guys to go at freshmen in practice and to lead them in the locker room. And that has created a pipeline of players who have gone from relatively unheralded recruits to NBA draft picks. "Every program wants the one-and-dones," Hart said. "They think that's the best thing since sliced bread. But we proved that it's not about one-and-dones, it's about high-character guys who are talented and want to buy into something bigger than themselves."

David J. Phillip/Associated Press

There's no question that what Wright has built is now bigger than himself. A few years ago, his reputation was as a great regular-season coach whose teams would too often flop in the first weekend of the tournament. Now Wright becomes just the 14th coach in history to win multiple national championships. The elite company he now shares biographical space with includes North Carolina's Dean Smith, Oklahoma State's Henry Iba and Florida's Billy Donovan. At just 56 years old, and with the Wildcats' operation running at an all-time peak, there's no reason to believe he won't be able to notch another one before he hangs up the whistle.

Wright would be loathe to praise himself, but his former players and current assistants formed a biased consensus in the moments after the game that their head coach's status as a legend had been secured. "We all know," said assistant George Halcovage, "that we're around one of the greatest coaches of all time."

On the stage at center court after the end of the game, after the trophy had been passed around and the All-Final Four Team was announced, the Wildcats were lingering on the podium, waiting for a television commercial break to end so that they could watch "One Shining Moment" together. Wright bounced between players, laughing with Lowry, hugging Hart and congratulating DiVincenzo. The Wildcats were on top of the college basketball world again, and they didn't look like they'd come down anytime soon.