’Nova coaches burning midnight oil to prepare
RADNOR » Kyle Neptune had the look of an assistant coach Monday. One who had spent Sunday night on the recruiting trail and most of Monday scouring over video of LIU-Brooklyn, one of the two teams that top-seeded Villanova could face Thursday in the first round of the NCAA Tournament.
Neptune had glasses on as he took a break from his scouting duties. He normally wears contacts. And he looked him someone who went to bed late and was up early.
It’s all part of the job of being an assistant coach. Someone has to put the scouting report together. At Villanova, that falls to Neptune and fellow assistant George Halcovage.
“I got here at 7 a.m. and went right to work,” Neptune said.
Normally, the assistants are concentrating on one team, because 60 of the 64 teams that begin play Thursday and Friday already know their opponents. Villanova, though, is one of four teams awaiting the First Four results to find out who it opens against.
And so Neptune was in his office in the Davis Center bright at early Monday.
That kind of work is what has landed Villanova (30-4) as the top seed in the East Region, waiting for the winner of Tuesday’s game between LIUBrooklyn (19-16) and Radford (22-12). It’s both an honor from the selection committee, with Villanova essentially the No. 2 overall seed in the tournament, and an extra challenge for the Wildcats’ staff.
Neptune was tasked with scouting the Blackbirds (19-16), the tournament champions out of the Northeast Conference. Halcovage broke down the Highlanders (22-12), the tournament winners out of the Big South.
“We have a little cohesion with the staff,” Neptune said. “We’ve been together five years now that all three of us (with Ashley Howard) have been working together in some capacity and just like our team, there are no egos. Guys don’t care who’s doing what. We just divvy it up and go to work.”
Head coach Jay Wright had biographies on both teams as he headed home around 10 o’clock Sunday night and had a deeper report ready when he returned from the Coaches vs, Cancer breakfast Monday morning.
“Those guys were in here all night last night,” Wright said.
The work is not done. They watched more video Monday and will watch Tuesday’s game and then pull together a final scouting report.
“You’re literally working until the game, trying to get any advantage you can,” Neptune said. “You want to watch as many games as you can up until that point. You’re just going to keep going until whenever it is. For the NCAA tournament, you want to get as much information on the teams that you know could play. You want to put that together so you can organize it and see what we’re up against.”
That final scouting report will be extremely detailed. Junior swingman Mikal Bridges was amazed at how much information was in the scouting report when he saw one for the first time.
“I was like, ‘Geez, there’s a lot of stuff on here,’” Booth said. “I didn’t think there was that much information you could get on a team. You could tell they put a lot of work into it.”
Junior guard Phil Booth had the same reaction when he saw his first scouting report.
“I knew right away that this was what college was all about,” Booth said. “I was extremely amazed at the attention to detail. Everything you could know about the team you were playing and individual players was in the report. It was amazing.”
The coaching staff had to go through a similar situation before the Big East tournament, waiting on the result of the Marquette-DePaul game to find out the Wildcats’ quarterfinal opponent. The big difference there, though, was that Villanova had played each team twice, so they had head start.
This is a little different. The Wildcats have only played LIU-Brooklyn once, back in the 1997 NCAA tournament. Villanova has never faced Radford.
And that’s not the only difference.
“This is a little more difficult,” Wright said. “When you play a mid-major like this, and I coached there, they play different when they play against each other than when they play against you. So you have to figure out, how did they play when they played bigger-time teams and how did they play in their league? It’s a challenge, but, hey, it’s a good challenge to have.”
And Wright and the players are confident that the men assigned to put together the scouting report are up to that challenge.
“We’ll be ready,” Booth said. “The coaches do a great job of getting us ready for every game.”
*** NOTES » The honors continue to flow in for Jalen Brunson. The 6-3 junior guard was named as a second-team Academic AllAmerican by CoSIDA, the College Sports Information Directors of America. Brunson has a 3.34 grade point average in communications. He is the fifth Wildcat to earn Academic All-America honors and the first since Mark Plansky in 1988. Cardinal O’Hara great and former Archbishop Carroll coach Tom Ingelsby (1973 first team), John Pinone (1983 first team and 1982 second) and Harold Jensen (1987 first team) are the others honored by CoSIDA for academic prowess. Brunson was selected
as the Big East Scholar Athlete and Player of the Year. ... According to the NCAA, Villanova is only the second school to have four consecutive 30-win seasons. Kansas did it from 2010-13. Memphis had four 30-win seasons from 2006-09, but the 2008 season was vacated.