Meet the New Hosts of the State of the Nova Nation Podcast: Pat Zeng and Emma Houghton

As you may have heard on our season premiere, a passing of the torch happened this offseason, with Eugene and Chris’ time as hosts of the State of the Nova Nation coming to a close. After six fantastic seasons and 170 episodes covering Villanova basketball, they decided it was time to move on, but they wanted the podcast to carry on without them.

That’s where we come in.

I’m Emma Houghton and he’s Pat Zeng and we are so excited to announce that we are the new hosts of the State of the Nova Nation! We are both Villanova Class of 2020 graduates, and though the end of the year festivities were remote instead of in person, our virtual graduation more than sufficed.

At Villanova, I was a sports writer for the Villanovan and a member of WXVU Villanova Student Radio, doing color commentary for the men’s basketball team and hosting my own sports talk show. Pat was a four year radio host at WXVU and from his sophomore year on held the role of Sports Director and lead student play-by-play announcer for men’s basketball. During his time at Villanova, he also wrote for VU Hoops, covered the Eagles during their championship season for a small start-up (which was very difficult for a Giants fan) and has worked for the NFL twice. The two of us worked together numerous times as the student radio announcers, and even called Villanova’s victory over #1 Kansas in 2019 together.

In November of 2020, Pat and I started our own sports podcast called ‘Did You Hear?’ We discuss and analyze all major sports with an emphasis on uncovering storylines and statistics that mainstream networks are not talking about. We released bi-weekly episodes during the baseball season and at the end of every Villanova basketball game recorded game recaps breaking down Villanova’s performance.

We could not be more excited to take on the State of the Nova Nation podcast to put a specific spotlight on all Villanova action throughout the season. The structure of the podcast will remain the same as previous years. We will drop episodes on Tuesday and Thursday previewing and recapping games, discussing opponent strengths and weaknesses and analyzing Villanova’s team performance. Like you, we have high expectations for the team this season and are so excited to get started. Thanks again to Eugene and Chris for passing their passion project onto us, and thank you to everyone who has listened so far this season. Go Cats!