The Villanova Wildcats own three national championships — each more dramatic than the last. In 1985, eighth-seeded Villanova stunned mighty Georgetown 66-64 — still the greatest upset in championship history, sealed by shooting a record 78.6 percent from the floor in the title game. In 2016, Kris Jenkins' buzzer-beater at the horn beat North Carolina 77-74 in one of the greatest finishes ever played. In 2018, the Wildcats steamrolled the field behind Jalen Brunson and Mikal Bridges, the most dominant title team of the decade. Few programs have a March résumé like Nova's.
The modern golden age was the Jay Wright era: 2001 to 2022, two national titles, four Final Fours, and a culture — "attitude," the program calls it — that turned Villanova into a blue blood on its own terms. Wright's retirement in 2022 sent the program into an unfamiliar wilderness: three straight NCAA Tournament misses under Kyle Neptune, the longest drought on the Main Line in a generation. The 2025 hire of Kevin Willard from Maryland was a statement that the wandering was over.
Willard needed exactly one season to restore order. The 2025-26 Wildcats went 24-9, finished 15-5 in the Big East, and ended the three-year tournament drought — even if the ending stung, a first-round exit to Utah State. Expectations on the Main Line recalibrated overnight: ESPN's Myron Medcalf projects Villanova third in the Big East for 2026-27, behind only UConn and St. John's, with a ceiling of 26 wins and a Round-of-32 run — and a floor of 22 wins, a fourth-place finish, and another NCAA berth. Even the worst case has Nova dancing.
Getting there required a full roster overhaul. Gone are two of the top four scorers — Bryce Lindsay to Indiana, All-Big East guard Acaden Lewis to Miami — plus Malachi Palmer (Minnesota), Zion Stanford (Towson), Tafara Gapare, and graduates Devin Askew and Duke Brennan. Willard rebuilt around returning third-team All-Big East guard Tyler Perkins (13.7 ppg), the do-everything senior who sets the program's tone, and sophomore forward Matt Hodge (9.2 ppg) — though both are recovering from surgery, with Hodge's torn ACL a longer road back.
The portal haul is headlined by two proven high-major starters: 6-6 forward Devin Royal, who shot just under 50 percent from the field as a junior at Ohio State, and 6-10 forward Kwame Evans Jr., one of the top big-man options in this year's portal after averaging 13.3 points and 7.4 rebounds at Oregon. Around them, Willard added guards Elijah Crawford (UIC), Jake Fiegen (a catch-and-shoot savant from Cornell), Darryl Simmons II (St. Bonaventure), and Brady Muller (Bucknell), plus forward Abdou Samb (Towson). The wildcard is 7-3 Italian freshman Luigi Suigo — raw, but a genuine rim presence — backed by 7-1 redshirt freshman Nico Onyekwere.
Willard's stated priority was unmistakable: get bigger, get more physical, get more veteran on the perimeter — while keeping the three-point identity that made last year's team dangerous. Four Wildcats shot over 36 percent from deep a season ago. "I wanted to be able to play both small and big," Willard said this summer. "From that 2 to 5 range we can manipulate the roster any way we want." With Perkins as the catalyst and the imposing frontcourt trio of Royal, Evans and Suigo, Villanova projects as one of the Big East's best rebounding teams.
The question, as ever with a rebuilt roster, is who becomes the No. 1 option when the shot clock is dying in March. Perkins is the heart; Royal and Evans were secondary options at their last stops. But the depth is real, the size is real, and the coach has already proven he can win immediately in this building. Nova Nation, which sat through three empty Marches, can feel the standard returning to the Main Line.
And the future is being built loudly: Willard has offers out to nine of the top 25 players in the 2028 class, including five-stars Colton Hiller and Isaiah Hamilton. The message to recruits and rivals alike is the same one the program has sent for forty years — from the perfect game in Lexington to Jenkins' shot in Houston: Villanova plays for championships, and it isn't asking permission.
The 2018 title team deserves its own reverence: the most efficient offense of the KenPom era, bombing threes at a historic rate, with Brunson, Bridges, Donte DiVincenzo -- whose 31 points off the bench buried Michigan in the final -- and Eric Paschall. It was beautiful basketball, and it cemented Wright's program as the decade's standard. Finneran Pavilion, the on-campus jewel on the Main Line, remains one of the great intimate arenas in the sport -- 6,500 strong, deafening, and soaked in the belief that championships are Nova's birthright. The students camp; the alumni return; the standard never wavers.
