Jay Wright has won two national titles, earned an Olympic gold medal as an assistant coach with USA Basketball, and was recently enshrined as a member of the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame.
But during his two-decade tenure at Villanova, he’s never put together a non-conference schedule like the one he’s about to try and navigate.
“This is without a doubt the most difficult schedule that we’ve had,” Wright said Monday on the College Hoops Today Podcast. “But I don’t think we’ll ever have a year again where we have two seniors (Collin Gillespie, Jermaine Samuels) return like we do this year. We owe it to them. They want to play the best games and play the best teams.”
There will be plenty of those.
In addition to Big 5 games against Temple, La Salle, St. Joe’s, and Penn, the Wildcats will begin a home-and-home series at UCLA on Nov. 12th and also travel to Baylor as part of the Big East-Big 12 Battle. There’s also a showdown with Syracuse at Madison Square Garden in the Jimmy V Classic and two marquee games in November at Mohegan Sun in the Hall-of-Fame Tipoff Classic. Villanova will open that event against Tennessee and then face either Purdue or North Carolina the very next day.
“Having a veteran team doesn’t mean that you’re going to win those games,” Wright said. “For us, having a veteran team means that you can handle preparing for those teams early in the season and you can handle emotionally and mentally if we lose those games.”
Villanova is currently ranked THIRD in the ROTHSTEIN 45.
To listen to the full interview with Wright, click HERE.
Leftovers
- Florida, Miami finalizing agreement to meet this season in Jacksonville
- CBS Sports Podcast (6/16) — Minnesota’s Niko Medved
- Dayton, Florida State to begin home-and-home series
- Florida/TCU, Wisconsin/Providence to headline 2025 Rady Children’s Invitational
- Texas A&M, Florida State to start neutral site series in Tampa
