Among the insights of the piece:

• “There were some recruiting decisions, there were some decisions on style of play for this year, there was development of players . . . a little bit of each,” Wright said of what lead to the awful 2012 campaign.
• Jensen writes: “There’s a reason he got in the market for transfers, especially strong ballhandlers. Development alone won’t resurrect Villanova, at this point.“
• Current high school juniors are viewed as crucial recruits to Jay Wright. That is the last class that will likely be impacted by the success leading up to the 2009 Final Four run.
• Villanova changed a few program philosophies after the Final Four, to rely less on ball-handlers and get bigger to try and match the teams that knocked Villanova out of the tournament during that seven-year run — often going on to win the title themselves.
• “We tried to play big and play more of a power game, without a lot of ball movement and spacing,” Wright said. “We tried to change what we do, to try to adapt to our players. I think all of us understand, let’s just get back to who we are, let’s teach our players how we play, rather than adjust to what our players’ weaknesses are.“
• Jay Wright believes that he needs to re-build the “leadership structure” of the program to build more accountability among his players.
• According to Jensen, Jay Wright isn’t on the hot seat and won’t be this season.

Further stumbling could send Jay Wright down the path to the hot seat, however, just as it did for his predecessors. Rollie Massimino left under his own terms for UNLV, but recruiting was starting to dry up at Villanova by then, after his teams failed to get back to the mountaintop that they conquered in the mid-80s. His chair was getting warm by the time he decided to leave town. Steve Lappas never even sniffed the mountaintop and the blue-chip recruits eventually stopped sniffing around his program.

Jay Wright’s plan appears to be something of a “back-to-basics” approach of putting multiple ball-handlers on the court again and returning to something resembling the Villanova teams of the past. Not quite the four-guard systems that he ran in the past, but he hopes to not rely on a single guard to handle the rock again in the future.

That, is apparently how Dylan Ennis will coexist with Ty Johnson, Ryan Arcidiacono and, perhaps, Tony Chennault. It is also how the Wildcats can still be hot in pursuit of the Harrison twins, Aaron and Andrew, who are the top guards at their respective positions (and really, both could be easily classified as a “combo” guard). Randy Foye, Mike Nardi and Kyle Lowry were all recruited as point guards and were able to co-exist on the floor in 2006′s four-guard set. While the extreme guard-heavy line-up may stay retired, Jay Wright won’t shy away from using multiple ball-handlers in the future.

“This agreement represents a significant commitment to the continued success of our men’s basketball program,” Villanova director of athletics Vince Nicastro said at the time. “We are thrilled that Jay and his family will continue to be an integral part of the Villanova community.”

Wright had taken the school to the Sweet 16 for the first time since 1988 in the 2004-05 season and had the team performing at a very high level in 2005-06.

That was just the beginning of Wright’s streak of seven-straight NCAA tournament invitations. The height of that run coming in the 2008-09 season, when the Wildcats strung together four of their best tournament performances since 1985, to reach the Final Four. Wright became just the fourth Villanova head coach to reach the last weekend of the NCAA tournament and the first since his mentor, Rollie Massimino, took the school to the National Title.

That achievement led the Villanova administration to quietly re-up their agreement with Wright. There was no press release in 2009, but the extension was significant in length — and that security blanket has largely been the reason why Wright hasn’t seriously listened to overtures from other programs.

The actual length of Wright’s contract isn’t actually known, but it is lucrative and will go on for many more years.

“I’m going to be there as long as they want me there,” Wright told the Associated Press. “I’m locked in for a long, long time. Let’s leave it at long term.”

So while Jay Wright’s critics hope to see his deal allowed to expire, the Villanova coach is equipped and empowered to weather the difficult times. He expects next season to be another challenge as well, relying on players like Ty Johnson and James Bell to reach their potential quickly to replace the early departures of Maalik Wayns and (maybe) Dominic Cheek.

The 2011-12 season will go down in the record books as one of the Wildcats’ worst and the 2012-13 season could also be a struggle if player development isn’t as quick as fans hope. Either way, it seems, Jay Wright has a level of job security that should allow him to survive through a lot of those struggles.

AP Photo

“As much as I enjoyed it, I learned how much I love coaching,” Jay Wright told Philly.com about his experience covering the NCAA tournament for CBS. Wright worked in the Atlanta studios of CBS and the Turner Networks during the play-in rounds and second-round games on Thursday and Friday.

Wright said that he hoped that he wouldn’t have the chance to work in the CBS studio again next year. He also worked in the CBS studios during last year’s Sweet Sixteen and Elite Eight rounds.

“I did it last year for CBS, for one day [after his team had been eliminated in the first round], but it was for the Sweet 16 weekend, so this was different,” Wright said. “We went in there on Wednesday night for the play-in games and prelim shows, but Thursday and Friday was all day, from 11 until 1 in the morning. You never leave. You get breaks, but you watch games.

Every Big East head coach whose team wasn’t playing in the postseason (there were 5 of them), is doing work in the television studio this month.

On his expectations

“I knew we could struggle. I didn’t think we’d start 1-5,” Wright said. “I thought maybe, 2-4, 3-3, at worst. Then I thought maybe we could click. But you know it’s possible in this league.”

On team composition

“It’s like the NBA, you’ve got to have star power,” Wright said. “When you have those star guys, it makes it easier for all the other guys. When you don’t have those star players, it’s more pressure on the glue guys. They don’t look as good.”

“Mouph and Cheek,” Wright said, “are not where we thought they’d be.”

On Dominic Cheek

 “I knew at the end of last year, when we had a good sit-down talk and he said he wanted to be part of this, I knew he’d be fine,” Wright said. “I knew we were starting his junior year from way behind. That’s why I knew there was this possibility we wouldn’t be as good this year. If he would have been a big-time player in his freshman, sophomore year, now we’re going into his junior year, we’d be fine. He’s just now starting to feel comfortable in his role now.

“He was never a problem, he was just kind of like doing his thing. Now he’s talking to everybody, he knows the scouting report, he’s talking on the floor. He’s got the confidence of his teammates, his coaching staff. But it’s midway through his junior year. That’s OK for him. He can still have a great career. But it’s why we’re struggling.”

On where Nova is heading

 “I like this group,” Wright said. “I do think we’re getting better. It’s slow, but we’ve got to find a way to enjoy this process. It might not be fun to watch guys, sorry, but we’ve got to go through it.”

Then, things took off. He took the Wildcats on a seven season run of 21- to 30-win seasons, NCAA bids and postseason runs. It made his reputation as a superstar.

The last two seasons of that run were two of just three in that span where the Wildcats didn’t make it to the second weekend of the NCAA tournament, and they collapsed late in both seasons. This season has started off with a whimper and has shown only a precious few signs of hope moving forward.

How unusual is it for a coach and a program to take a dip like that?

Mike Kryzewski hasn’t missed a trip to the NCAA tournament since 1996, but that is perhaps a unique situation. The standards are a bit different for an elite program headed by an elite coach who tends to get his pick of the best recruits in the country. When Coach K failed to get past the first weekend in 2007 and 2008, it was a let-down. Getting blown off the floor by Villanova in the 2009 Sweet Sixteen was another low-point for a team that is annually expected to be among not just the top 25, but the top 5 or 10 in the nation.

UConn has missed the NCAA tournament seven times since Jim Calhoun took over in 1986. He followed up a 2009 Final Four with a trip to the NIT in 2010. In 2007 his Huskies didn’t make it to any post-season tournament and only managed a first-round exit in 2008.

Jim Boeheim won a National Championship in 2003 and then didn’t get past the first round in either 2005 or 2006. It took a Big East tournament run fueled by Gerry McNamara willpower to even make it to the 2006 tournament. In 2007 and 2008, Syracuse appeared in the NIT rather than the NCAA tournament.

Nobody looked to fire Boeheim in 2008. Nobody even questioned his undying devotion to the 2-3 Zone. They accepted the coach for what he was and eventually he got the program back on it’s feet among the elite.

Almost every head coach of an elite college basketball program has had seasons where his team didn’t quite click. Seasons where the execution was off, things went wrong, or bad decisions caused them to fail to live up to expectations. Sometimes they even string a few of them together.

This isn’t a defense of Jay Wright. The last two seasons ended with his team playing its worst basketball rather than its best. This season, meanwhile, is just a terrible mess for a team that is stocked with highly-rated recruits. There have rarely been teams in the Jay Wright era with so many 4- or 5-star talents.

What this is, is a reminder that the calls for Jay Wright’s head are perhaps premature. Villanova isn’t Duke, Kansas, or UNC. Villanova’s last run of seven consecutive NCAA tournament bids was under Rollie Massimino from 1980 until 1986, who followed that run with three NIT bids in six years. Even Jack Kraft, who won about 72% of his games at Nova, or Alexander Severance never quite had an elite run like that.

2010 and 2011 were ugly for the Wildcats, but they were still 25 and 21-win seasons, respectively. Both ended well enough to warrant a tournament bid. If Jim Boeheim could replace his run from 2006 through 2008 with what Villanova did the past two years and this season, there is a good chance he would take it.

The sky is not falling and Jay Wright’s seat is not hot. He has time and a recruiting class or two to get his program back on top. A coach that took a scrappy underdog team filled with unheralded recruits to a Final Four has earned a little bit of slack. Even if you impute those successes on his assistants, remember that the head coach hires his staff — he is CEO of the program.

Does Jay Wright make decisions that frustrate fans? Absolutely, but without Wright’s 7-year run, would Villanova fans even be in a position to expect a bid to the NCAA tournament in any given year?

While it is fair to be disappointed, it is shortsighted to be looking at head coaching resumes so soon. Jay Wright isn’t finished yet.

Email from Jay Wright…

For the fourth consecutive year, we are organizing a program to bring inner-city youth to our exhibition game free of charge. They cheer our players from the stands and,after the game, get to meet them on the court for a special autograph session. This program has grown in each of its first three years and cumulatively has provided tickets to nearly 10,000 individuals. The participating organizations are very appreciative and this exposure to our program helps create a connection between the youth of Greater Philadelphia and Villanova University.

This season, our exhibition game vs. New York Tech will take place on Tuesday, November 8 at 7 p.m. at the WellsFargo Center. Tickets are normally $25 for the public, but for this special event, we are able to purchase the tickets at a rate of just$5 each. Our goal is to raise enough funds to fill the Wells FargoCenter with enthusiastic young fans from throughout Greater Philadelphia.

We truly hope that you will consider being a partof this special community outreach effort. If you have interest inmaking a monetary donation toward sponsoring tickets, please visitthis secure website: https://secure.touchnet.com/C21740_ustores/web/product_detail.jsp?PRODUCTID=91&SINGLESTORE=true

Any questions that you may have about this initiative can be directed to Steve Pinone at (610)519-5526. Also, if you are involved in a charity or children’s group in the Greater Philadelphia region and would like information on how to obtain complimentary tickets for them, please contact Chrissy Quisenberry at (610) 519-8882.

Thank you for your generous and ongoing support of Villanova Basketball and all of our initiatives. I hope to see you at a game this season!

Enthusiastically,

Jay Wright
Head Basketball Coach

Jay Wright was asked repeatedly about conference issues and whether the Big East basketball brand would suffer as a result of losing Pitt and Syracuse. Jay Wright would not admit that the losses hurt the league.

“As long as we have the seven basketball-only members, we are going to be a pretty good basketball league,” Wright said. “We need the football schools, we need good football schools because that is what good conferences have.”

Wright believes that the basketball-only schools, all located in large media markets, are key to basketball success for everyone in the league. The best recruits, he said, come from New York, New Jersey, Philadelphia and the DC area, and that by playing in those areas, schools like Houston or SMU (reported Big East targets) can get some of those top recruits and benefit from being in the Big East.

“The reason Big East basketball is so successful is that the players on a lot of those teams, no matter where they are, whether they are Louisville, South Florida, are coming from, Boston, New York, Philly, Jersey, DC, Baltimore. That’s where those players are coming from,” he noted. “The tournament is held in the Garden, when those schools come to play in Philly or New York, the families of those players come. The core of the conference is the Northeast because of where the players come from, where the media is.”

“Even if you bring in some of those other football schools, they’re just going to get connected to the Northeast.”

Regarding Villanova’s future, he said, ”I don’t care where we go as long as we’re in a conference that is northeast-centric and it’s a strong basketball conference with good football. It’s important for us to be with good football.”

When asked if Villanova was blocking Temple from joining the Big East, Jay Wright responded, “I feel bad. I’ve talked to Fran Dunphy about this . . . I feel bad that the Media is being given information that is wrong, and its schools in the Big East posturing for position, and that’s just the position we’re in right now.”

“There is a lot of politicking going on and it’s because we’re in a very difficult situation. I understand it. I don’t like it.”

Wright later went on to suggest that other schools used Villanova as an excuse to shift focus away from Temple toward other schools, presumably SMU and Houston. He felt that Villanova and Vince Nicastro in particular, were unfairly portrayed by the media in all of the Temple drama.

Jay Wright understands that expansion and college athletics is about football though. Good football is important to supporting a strong basketball conference, but for the Wildcats, it goes deeper than that.

“The bottom line is that Villanova wants to be in the Big East for football. Bottom line. We’ve said it. We’ve worked with the Big East on it. We understand the situation in the Big East right now. We don’t like that we’re not in right now, but we have to be loyal members and let the football schools do what’s best. They know what’s best.”

Villanova football and Temple’s conference affiliation seem to be tied together too.

“Temple has nothing to do with that. Everything to do with Temple is great, just put Villanova in for football. That’s all. If they’re going to put Temple in? Great,” Wright said.

“You’ve got to put Villanova in for football. We’re thirty year members. Bottom line. We have great respect for Temple, we know all the positives that would come if they came, just put Villanova in for football. Period.”

Villanova has to do whatever it takes to protect its own position according to Wright. The ‘Cats aren’t concerned with anything but positioning themselves for the future and holding the Big East together.

“If we’re in for football, we have no problem with anything. Once we’re in for football, whatever is best for the conference, but we have to protect Villanova, and we can’t get involved with any other school.

“We can’t even help the other basketball schools right now. That’s what everyone else is doing in our league, and when that settles down and everyone’s committed, then I think we can look around and think, ‘what do we do with other schools.’”

The power is in the hands of the football schools though.

“Right now we need to let the football schools do what’s best for football. We are lobbying that we’re best for football.”

“This has been going on for a couple of years for Villanova. The school is ready, everybody is ramped up, we’ve worked our butts off to get football.”

Wright didn’t express any concern with having Temple’s basketball team in the conference, so long as Villanova football has a seat at the table.

“We’re not worried about any other school. Getting football in the Big East helps Villanova basketball, that’s what we need to concentrate on. What happens after that, we’re fine with whatever the Big East says.”

Can Villanova football succeed in the Big East? Wright thinks it can.

“Everyone who has come in for football has benefitted. Connecticut was not even in. They came in for football and look where they are? Who knew anything about Louisville football before they came in, now look where they are? Rutgers has had football forever, but once Big East football got started — now everybody knows about Rutgers,” the coach postulated. “It’s all east coast markets.

“So when you come in this conference, you’re going to benefit in football, and that’s what we need to do, but we have to get this stabilized first.”

Realignment has taken its toll on Jay Wright and the other basketball coaches in the Big East, who have more work to do off the court. Media responsibilities, working with the Athletic directors, and talking boosters off a ledge, take up a lot more time now than they used to.

“It forced us coaches to be more disciplined. We coaches are forced to be more disciplined about it. We deal with it in the morning and then have to forget about it and get on with practice. It has surprised me that nobody in recruiting has asked about it.” Wright noted. “I think the Big East brand is so strong basketball-wise, I think kids don’t even think anything will happen to Big East basketball. So, it hasn’t affected us yet, but we’ll see.”

“The NCAA likes to hide behind, ‘it’s all nicey-nice collegial,’ but we all know it’s big business. Now that’s out there. So now lets see how it works when it’s out there.”

As for Syracuse and Pittsburgh, Wright doesn’t have a moral objection to playing non-conference games against those schools. He did say that playing four games in the Big Five makes scheduling a bit tight and that the openings on his schedule would dictate whether Villanova would be able to add the departing rivals in the future.

“I always like when they come to the Wells Fargo Center and it’s packed,” Wright said. “I like that. We benefit from that. You have to value your opponents, you have to give some credence to the people you play against, they bring value.”

Wright quickly gained followers on the popular social media site, reaching 1,600 or so in his first three hours online.*

Why would Wright join Twitter? Having a presence on the site will allow him to build a presence in the online marketplace. Wright is clearly interested in expanding his personal “brand,” as evidenced by his appearances on television as an analyst during the NCAA tournament (after Villanova was eliminated). Twitter serves as another avenue to expand that brand.

Additionally, Twitter is extremely popular with the teenage players that he and his staff regularly recruit. Other coaches that Wright is friends with or who have coached under him, such as Patrick Chambers, have been using the site and likely singing its praises to him.

Twitter allows him to build a presence that those players can follow and see. Pete Carroll famously used his Twitter account at USC to tweet pictures of himself with various celebrity fans and boosters of that program to publicly portray the “glamorous” USC lifestyle for all recruits to see.

It is also an NCAA-approved method for coaches to contact players — private direct messages on the site are allowed as if they were emails. This is key because direct messages work similarly to text messaging when used from a mobile phone, but are not banned by the NCAA like texts are.

Coaches like Jay Wright are essentially forced to tweet, just to keep up with other coaches who are using the newer technologies and formats to recruit. Even Joe Paterno, who has been coaching since 1950, has taken to using Skype to contact recruits.

Will Wright’s embrace of social media change his position regarding the players’ use of those sites during the season? In all likelihood it will not. Jay Wright’s use of Twitter will be carefully controlled and planned — he has people for that. The players, however, don’t have a carefully-crafted social media strategy.

The ban was instituted last season after players found their Twitter and Facebook statuses being reported in the media and online, and analyzed by fans. Wright and his staff felt that the potential for a tweet posted in an emotional post-game moment or some other player comments to be misinterpreted was too great and potentially detrimental to the program. None of that will change because the head coach signed up for an account.

So expect that once October 15th rolls around the Villanova twitter contingent will dwindle again until some time in March or April.

—————————————-

*It took me about three years to get to 1,150 followers on Twitter, so two-hours is a pretty impressive pace.

VUhoops.com has reached out to Jay Wright for comment on the issues discussed in this post and will update here with any response.

Should we take it seriously this time?

Unlike Kentucky, however, a move to College Park, Maryland would perhaps be an easier one for Jay’s young family. Just a few hours away from friends and family, Maryland offers almost all of the same resources as Villanova, and boasts a program that generates enough revenue to ensure that those resources will never dry up. Meanwhile, Villanova is in a precarious position within an increasingly-unstable Big East conference.

Despite not generating nearly the same profits as Maryland, Villanova has committed more resources to it’s basketball program — spending around a million dollars more per year on the sport. Boosters have also shown a commitment to provide for Jay Wright’s needs, most recently ponying up the cash to build him a brand new practice facility.

Analysts and Villanovans rightfully took this speculation seriously.

Not that there was anything to it. As of midday, Jeff Barker of the Baltimore Sun was reporting that Maryland officials have not reached out to Jay Wright. Sources close to Jay Wright’s management told VUhoops that they hadn’t heard anything about the Maryland situation as of this morning.

Jay Wright has not expressed any interest in the Maryland job so far, and while it is always possible for things to change, indications so far are that the coach intends to stay on the Main Line for now. Then again, if Maryland significantly ups it’s basketball budget and coach’s salary, things might get interesting.

(UPDATE 5/7): It looks like Sean Miller of Arizona will be taking the Maryland job.

(UPDATE 5/8): Jeff Goodman now states that Miller will be staying in Arizona.

Jaime Dixon and Jay Wright both have suffered notable disappointments at their respective schools recently, but is either a serious candidate to take over a program that has NCAA sanctions looming?

Jay Wright has had numerous opportunities to leave Villanova over the years. Most offering significant increases in pay and programs that were far healthier than the one at Tennessee.

An established coach will be unlikely to want to go to Knoxville and deal with the difficulties and sanctions left behind by Pearl — certainly not in the middle of a successful stretch of their career, and likely not while they have impressive recruiting classes lined up at their current school.

That’s not to say that Jay Wright will never leave Villanova, or that Jaime Dixon cannot be coaxed away from Pittsburgh. However, to leave either of those jobs and the success they have had their to take over at Tennessee would seem illogical.

Of course, money plays a part in all of this, and Tennessee could plan to offer their next coach an obscene amount of money — but that strategy doesn’t always work. Last offseason we saw Oregon try to throw money at Tom Izzo to leave Michigan State to no avail, and DePaul (somewhat more successfully) attempted to buy themselves a big-name coach. Oregon’s efforts were largely a failure, while DePaul had more than a few swing-and-miss attempts before landing Oliver Purnell.

Among the red flags that would keep a wise coach away from Tennessee:

There’s the specter of looming potential sanctions from the NCAA violations under Pearl’s watch. There’s the fact that athletic director Mike Hamilton’s job appears to be on shaky ground. And there’s the fact that Pearl’s success at Tennessee was more an outlier than the norm, raising questions as to whether his successor will be able to cope with the raised expectations.

All that the Vols appear to be accomplishing with this leak is to raise fan expectations to unrealistic levels.