Leibig ‘pretty cool’ with being part of party as Villanova gets top seed in East

RADNOR » After greeting family and friends and milling around for a bit, it was time for the Villanova players to sit down to watch the NCAA men’s basketball tournament selection show Sunday night.

Although there were several rows of chairs designated for the team in the Connelly Center, there were no seats assigned for each individual, so the players sat where they wanted in the first row.

Haverford High grad and senior walk-on Tom Leibig sat next to Mikal Bridges, the Most Outstanding Player in the Big East Tournament, which wasn’t a surprise. They’re good friends and have been roommates for the past two years.

“We’re pretty tight,” Leibig said.

There really wasn’t much suspense for the Wildcats. They locked up an automatic bid and a No. 1 seed by beating Providence in overtime Saturday night to win the Big East tournament title.

Still, Leibig, Bridges and all the players smiled when Villanova’s name popped up on the big screen as the No. 1 seed in the East and No. 2 seed overall in the 68-team field.

It’s the second straight year, the third time in four seasons and the fourth time overall that the Wildcats have been selected as a No. 1 seed.

While being a top seed has become somewhat routine, it never gets old.

“Not at all,” Leibig said. “It’s pretty cool.”

“This is the reward for all the work we put in during the season, and pulling out all of those tough games,” junior guard Phil Booth said. “We’re fortunate and we don’t take it for granted. We’re happy to make the tournament. There are teams out there that didn’t get in so it’s big for us to get a No. 1 seed again.”

“We never want to get to the point where we take this for granted,” Villanova coach Jay Wright said. “This is very special.”

The second-ranked Wildcats (30-4) will take on the winner of the LIU-Brooklyn/Radford game in the first round at 6:45 Thursday

night at PPG Paints Arena in Pittsburgh. The Blackbirds (18-16) and Highlanders (22-12) meet Tuesday in Dayton (6:40) for the No. 16 seed in the East Region.

With a win, Villanova would get the winner of the game between No. 8 Virginia Tech (21-11) and No. 9 Alabama (19-15). Purdue (28-6) is the No. 2 seed in the region, followed by Texas Tech (24-9) and Wichita State (25-7).

“We know we’re going to have a target on our backs,” Booth said. “We know every team is going to give us their best shot and we will, too, so we know how it goes. We just have to prepare for each team and take it one game at a time and see how it goes.”

That’s where Leibig and fellow walk-ons Denny Grace, Matt Kennedy and Peyton Heck come in. They don’t get to play much. Their value is in practice and keeping the other players sharp during games.

“We have to make sure the guys pay attention to detail,” Leibig said. “Every little thing people don’t see we have to see so at practice we can make sure that these guys are playing hard and doing what we do. It’s

almost like a player-coach type of thing. It’s not for everybody, but we enjoy it.”

The players and the coaching staff appreciate their contribution.

“They do everything we ask of them and get no glory,” Wright said. “They do all the dirty work and they don’t ask for anything.”

Leibig, for example, was recruited to play for Division II East Stroudsburg and Division III Gettysburg and Dickinson, but the 6-4 guard but chose to attend Villanova and try out for the team as a walkon.

Villanova’s academic reputation and its employee tuition remission policy played a major role, too. Leibig’s father, Dave, is a career counselor for the university.

“I get free tuition so that helps,” said the younger Leibig, who will graduate with a degree in communications in May.

Leibig served as a practice player on the national championship team in 2016, which meant he got to work out with the team, but did not dress for games or travel. He made the squad as a walk-on last year. Walkons don’t get to play much. Leibig has played in 20 games in his career,

seven last year and 13 this year. So why do it? “It’s the connection with the guys, and a chance to be part of something that’s bigger than yourself,” Leibig said. I think that’s the most important thing. It’s an opportunity to be part of this great program, play for a great coach and be around a great group of guys.”

And Leibig and the other walkons are an equal part of that group.

“Our guys treat them with great respect and they know how important they are to us,” Wright said. “They teach our guys how to think about others rather than themselves because the walk-ons live that every day.”

And when one of the walk-ons gets the opportunity to shine, as Leibig and Grace did during Senior Day against DePaul, it makes for a special moment. Both players scored the first and only points of their respective careers in that game.

Grace buried a 3-pointer with 57 seconds to play and the bench went crazy. And when Leibig buried a baseline jumper 27 seconds later, it was Bridges who led the celebration

on the sideline. He waved a towel while jumping up and down.

“We really appreciated that,” Leibig said. “It shows how great those guys are and how much they care about us.”

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Penn is going dancing, too. The Quakers earned their first trip to the NCAA tournament in 11 years by beating Harvard, 68-65, in the Ivy League tournament championship game Sunday.

Penn (24-8) is the No. 16 seed in the Midwest Region, and its reward is a first-round date with topseeded Kansas (27-7) Thursday at 2 p.m. at Intrust Bank Arena in Wichita, Kansas. The winner of the PennKansas game gets the survivor of the game between No. 8 seed Seton Hall and No. 9 N.C. State Saturday in the second round.

This is Penn’s first trip to the tournament since 2007. Its last NCAA tournament victory was a 62-55 triumph over Washington State in 1980. The Quakers were a No. 12 seed that year. The year before, Penn advanced to the Final Four, where it lost to Michigan State and Magic Johnson in the national semifinals.