It is a tumultuous time in college basketball, but Kyle Neptune is providing steady leadership at Villanova and is approaching the season with a strong focus.
Over his first two seasons as head coach, Neptune’s Wildcats have recorded 35 wins and 33 losses and have not reached the NCAA Tournament. In both years, Villanova ended its season in the first round of the National Invitational Tournament (NIT).
“Honestly, pressure is something that I don’t really think about,” Neptune said at Big East Media Day on Oct. 23. “I just look at attacking each day, trying to be the best we can each day, and whenever that day is over, whatever the result, come back the next day and attack it again.”
Despite Neptune’s first two seasons as head coach ending the same way, the Villanova roster has looked very different each year as the transfer portal and NIL money have changed the landscape of the college game. The NBA draft is no longer the only siren luring players from their collegiate homes.
Last season, Neptune added four new players through the transfer portal, none of whom are on the roster this year. Nine members of the team left Villanova last May due to graduation, joining the NBA draft or entering the portal.
Continuing the trend, the 2024–2025 squad will also feature a new wave of freshmen and transfer players. This year’s team will include even more new faces on the court, as Neptune brought in a more balanced group that includes five transfer players and four freshman recruits.
Fortunately for the Wildcats in 2024–2025, Neptune also has veteran leadership in a pair of seasoned players: graduate forward Eric Dixon and senior guard Jordan Longino, who are entering their final seasons of college eligibility with accomplished Villanova careers behind them. Notably, both Dixon and Longino were on the squad for Villanova’s Big East Championship and Final Four run in the 2021-2022 season.
“Those two guys [Dixon and Longino] are stabilizing forces for us,” Neptune said. “They know what we do here and they’ve been a part of a lot during their time here. They’re kind of our anchors.”
Neptune also described Dixon’s decision to return to Villanova for a sixth year as “extremely important” for his hopes for this year’s team. After entering the NBA Draft in April, Dixon withdrew from the draft on May 28 and opted to use his final year of college eligibility back at Villanova.
As the only sixth-year player on the team, Dixon has fully witnessed the coaching transition from Jay Wright to Kyle Neptune. Wright coached Dixon during his first three seasons, including one redshirt year.
Although Neptune had a brief head coaching stint at Fordham in 2021–2022, he was an assistant coach at Villanova for the eight previous years and learned under Wright’s tutelage. Neptune’s presence during the height of Villanova’s latest success, in which it won two national championships, gave him close familiarity with the university and its culture as he replaced Wright.
“There’s nothing really different [from when I started at Villanova],” Dixon said. “Our beliefs are still our core beliefs and still our core values. So I think that [Neptune] does a great job of keeping that the same for me.”
Neptune anticipates that the duo of Dixon and Longino will lead the Wildcats toward the top of the Big East, and each has for himself what it is like to succeed. Dixon and Longino’s longtime loyalty to the Villanova program in the era of the transfer portal also sets them apart as leaders on the team.
With the emergence of NIL in 2021 and the transfer portal being a viable way out for even a minimally disgruntled player, developing players for several years is no longer guaranteed for a head coach.
Despite the lack of consistency in the roster year-to-year due to the transfer portal, Neptune sees brand partnerships and compensation for athletes through NIL as an exciting new frontier in college sports.
“Kids are getting paid, in some cases, an exorbitant amount of money,” Neptune said. “If you’re just saying that, why is that bad? So, things will always change, it’s just a matter of how you’re going to deal with it.”
Although the landscape of college basketball has transformed over the last three years, Neptune said as players come and go, he leans on the same Villanova system that has existed since he was an assistant coach.
“We haven’t changed our thought process in terms of recruiting [since 2021],” Neptune said. “We try to recruit guys who we feel will fit Villanova as a whole, in terms of just our culture as a university.”
Other than their talents on the court, one quality that Neptune scouted for in his recruiting was a connection to
Philadelphia and Villanova’s culture as a university. Neptune’s newest additions to the roster share some of these local connections, possibly more than ever in his time as head coach.
Senior guard Wooga Poplar returned to his hometown of Philadelphia after playing his first three seasons at the University of Miami. Two of the new transfers even defied city rivalries by joining the Wildcats from other Philadelphia Big Five programs: graduate guard Jhamir Brickus came from La Salle, and sophomore guard Tyler Perkins played at Penn.
“I love our chemistry,” Neptune said. “It’s really hard to tell before the season starts, but I will say this group is for sure bonding with each other and want to compete for each other.”
Additionally, guard Kris Parker transferred to Villanova after redshirting his first year at Alabama. Although Parker did not make the decision to transfer until August, Neptune was already familiar with Parker after recruiting him just over a year ago.
Meanwhile, Neptune is also bringing in his largest freshman class yet. Villanova’s only freshman from the 2022–2023 roster, forward Jordann Dumont, redshirted and did not appear in any regular season games.
“Any freshman coming into college basketball, it’s a challenge to overcome,” Neptune said. “They’re going against bigger, stronger guys, more intelligent, and guys that have been coached at this level, and then you’re learning the system just like anybody else would be. I think [our freshmen] have all been unbelievable.”
Fortunately, Neptune’s latest freshman class have had plenty of opportunities to adjust to college-level play before the season starts, practicing alongside the likes of the 23-year-old powerhouse Dixon.
Knowing from experience how suddenly a promising season can go awry, Neptune is hesitant to make any definitive projections for how the 2024–2025 Wildcats will look.
Other questions entering the new season circulate around the athletic director position. In August, Mark Jackson announced that after filling the role since 2015, he would be moving to Northwestern University. Jackson was a constant presence during the season for Neptune, who said that they would converse multiple times a week and at certain points, every day.
In the meantime, Lynn Tighe is serving as Interim Athletic Director with over 25 years of experience working at Villanova.
But a team of nine new additions and a leadership transition in the Athletic Department leaves room for more of what Neptune knows best: change.
“Mark [Jackson] was a huge piece of our campus and the men’s basketball team specifically,” Neptune said. “But at the end of the day, this is a sport and a business that is transient…We’ll miss him and we acknowledge that he did an unbelievable job while he was here, but it’s time to look forward to the future.”
Neptune’s plans for the early part of the season are, instead, to acclimate the new players as he determines what this year’s recipe for success will be. After two intense seasons in which Villanova failed to make the NCAA Tournament, Neptune knows how to tune out his critics and focus solely on what happens on the court each game.
“If you go back to last year, our goal was to be playing our best basketball by the end of the season, and we didn’t reach our goal,” Neptune said. “With our new group, the goal is the same. We’re at work doing that now, trying to get our guys acclimated to our system. We [the coaching staff] definitely like where this team is.”
For Neptune, there is no looking back. The only way is forward.
