Villanova senior Aidan Murphy is in the final hour of a plan that started in December. He is standing in section 113 at the Finneran Pavilion, surrounded by about 35 of his friends, who are all watching No. 9 St. John’s warm up before its Feb. 12 matchup with a flagging Villanova team.

The group of seniors, who are all sporting banana costumes, have 45 minutes to wait before the tip-off of the last Villanova men’s basketball home game in the Finneran Pavilion of their time on campus. As they stood in front of the frosted glass panels of the Davis Courtside Club, a question arose: “What the hell are we going to do for the next 45 minutes?”

“We just started chirping the St. John’s guys,” Murphy said. 

It worked. Villanova claimed its first Quadrant 1 victory of the season, 73-71, outlasting the nationally-ranked Red Storm and snapping their 10-game win streak. The bananas gained campus-wide notoriety as photos of them spread on social media and Fox Sports 1 continually featured them on the game’s broadcast.

Questions about the impact of the bananas on the outcome are valid, but for those in the bunch, they may as well be on the court. As St. John’s sophomore guard Simeon Wilcher stepped away from the foul line after making the first of two technical free throws with two-minutes, 41 seconds to play in the first half, he said something in the direction of the Bananas to the left of the St. John’s basket.

“He hit the first and then he turned to the bananas and said something,” Murphy said. “I don’t quite know what, but he was engaging with us and it riled the group up, and [we] went crazy trying to distract him from the next free throw.”

Wilcher missed the following foul shot. It would be bananas to say the group didn’t have an impact.

“We won by two,” Murphy said. “One point matters in that type of a game.”

So, how did the bananas arrive? According to Murphy, a smaller portion of the group that attended the St. John’s game intended to sport the yellow suits out on Halloween, but the plan fell through. Then, at a December Villanova home game, Murphy was inspired to break out the banana costumes to try and revive a student section on the same downward trajectory as the basketball team it supports.

“I can get a bunch of my friends and maybe we dress up in the same costume, get a little attention and people would think it’s funny,” Murphy said of his initial plan. “Bring a new energy to the student section that hasn’t really been seen this year or last year.”

Murphy is hesitant to take credit for the whole enterprise. According to fellow banana senior Owen Holmgren, all the ‘Nova ‘Nanners act as “one big entity.” The planning for the St. John’s game took place in a Snapchat group chat simply named “February 12th Banana Operation.” Logistics included bulk ordering banana costumes from Rasta Imposta, a New Jersey-based costume company of which one of the bananas knew the owner.

“I think it was 17 [dollars] per banana,” Murphy said. “The original price was 30. I guess we saved 13 bucks, if that’s worth anything.”

Originally the bananas targeted the Jan. 20 Villanova home game against Georgetown, but decided it would be hard to field a full Banana Bunch on the same night as the championship game of the College Football Playoff. Ironically, Villanova lost its game to Georgetown that night by one point, 64-63.

Once they settled on the St. John’s game as their target, the bananas also needed to make sure they had enough student tickets to the game to get the entire peel-clad parish in the door. Everyone got a ticket through the lottery, or got one from someone else who did. After those things were finished, all that was left was getting to the game early and going bananas.

“The St. John’s game was our final Finn game,” Holmgren said. “We were, like, ‘We might as well try to make up for four years in one game.’”

The Villanova community’s reception of the bananas was “overwhelmingly positive,” according to Holmgren. Many of the bananas are friends with senior guard Colin O’Toole, who joined the Villanova active roster in 2022 after spending the 2021-22 season as a practice player.

“[O’Toole] loved the idea,” Holmgren said. “He said a lot of the guys on the team love the idea. It’s been pretty cool to see the reactions.”

The Athletic Department’s marketing team loved the idea, too. Associate Athletic Director for Marketing and Digital Strategy Jake Whitten and the entire marketing team worked to feature the bananas at the Villanova next home game.

“Our team was meeting down in the Fitzgerald club, and we just looked up and saw two bananas walk by, three, four walk by, and we’re like, ‘Okay, wait. Something’s going on here,” Whitten said. “Then they all made their way down to the other end of the court and I’m like, ‘We’ve got to go talk to them right now.’”

As the marketing team worked to feature the bananas in the in-arena script for Villanova’s final game of the season, the basketball team suffered road losses to Providence and UConn that almost certainly popped the Wildcats’ bubbling hopes for an at-large bid to the NCAA tournament. The bananas questioned whether the effort to show up in force to the game against Marquette was worth it. Their verdict to make the effort was rooted in two ideas. First, fans should support their teams no matter what. Second, when will there be another chance to do this?

“Think about when the next time you’re going to be able to go to your college’s basketball game dressed up as a bunch of bananas with your friends,” Holmgren said. “It’s just not something that we’re going to get to experience again… I don’t think we would have done this as juniors or underclassmen. I doubt it. We’ve got two games left. We might as well do what we’re not going to be able to do after these two games and take advantage of this opportunity.”

Roughly 100 bananas occupied the front rows of the student section at Wells Fargo Center for Villanova’s 81-66 thrashing of Marquette. It was the second-best win of Villanova’s season by NET ranking, only behind the victory over St. John’s three games prior. 

There was a banana-centric hype video set to Kendrick Lamar’s “tv off.” Students donned t-shirts featuring a yellow cartoon banana spinning a white Villanova basketball on its finger that were laid over seatbacks before the game. The white shirts had navy block letters that spelled out “LET’S GO BANANAS.”

Graduate guard Jhamir Brickus summed up the environment for the team’s win postgame.

“It was bananas,” Brickus said.