Villanova Basketball’s Quad Goals: Evaluating Nova’s NCAA Tournament Resume (Dec. 19)

It’s time for another installment of Villanova’s Quad Goals, our ongoing series in which we track the Wildcats’ NCAA Tournament Resume. If you need a refresher on the NET ratings or the Quad System, check out our previous article for additional details.

The bad news: Villanova lost to Penn and Kansas last week. The good news: Kansas is Top 5 in the NET and Penn ranks 69th. In other words, Villanova’s four losses are all Quad 1. That’s right, even Penn.

As we’ve learned, there really isn’t a penalty for losing Quad 1 games when it comes to the selection committee. Unfortunately, the problem Villanova is facing now is that they’re not winning Quad 1 games. Those are SUPER important. And as the season goes on, the number of opportunities for those wins Nova has left continues to drop.

As it stands today, Villanova has a single Quad 1 victory over Florida State on a neutral court. Barring some kind of collapse by FSU, that one seems pretty stable. Their lone Quad 2 victory, another neutral court win over OK State, doesn’t look like it’s moving up to Quad 1 unless the Cowboys surprise a lot of people and jump at least 20 spots through the course of Big 12 play. That leaves the Big East.

Right now Villanova only has four games on its schedule that look like locks to remain Q1 games. Unfortunately, none of them will be easy. It’s four road games against Creighton, Butler, Marquette, and St. John’s. Then the Wildcats have six games that could end up being either Q1 or Q2 as the opponents are currently ranked within 15 spots of the quadrant cutoffs. Given that it’s split between three home and three road games, it’s probably a safe assumption that 50% of these will wind up being Q1 games.

So that means Nova has about seven chances left a Q1 victories in the regular season, more than half of which will be on the road. Let’s say they win three of those and pick up another Q1 win in the BET, giving Nova five Q1 victories entering Selection Sunday. To put that into perspective, last year Nova ended the regular season with seven Q1 wins and picked up two more in the Big East Tournament. For additional perspective, here are all the teams that entered Selection Sunday with five Q1 wins:

We don’t have a big sample size to go on, but last year’s Selection Sunday looks like a positive indicator for where we’re projecting Villanova to finish the season. If the Wildcats resume in Q1 is 5-9 with 20+ overall wins for a team from a Top 5 conference, they’d probably be in line for a 9, 10, or 11 seed in the tournament. And personally, I think those win totals are conservative.

All that said, we’re trying to predict more than half the season with those estimates. Let’s get back to Villanova’s Quad.

Villanova’s Quad Goals

If there’s one thing to take away from the rankings this season, it’s that whether it’s pollsters or computers they really respect a team that can beat the defending National Champions. Every team that’s beat Villanova has seen a significant bump across multiple polls. While that doesn’t do anything for Nova’s win column, it at least keeps them from racking up bad losses.

The full schedule breakdown is below, but here are a few takeaways from the latest update:

• The last time we looked at the NET, Penn ranked #102. Today, they’re #69, a huge jump of 33 spots from just over a week ago. Because this was a true road game (eye roll in Graham Couch’s direction), it now qualifies as a Quad 1 loss for Villanova. It may not stay there as Penn faces lesser competition in the Ivy League, but for now that keeps the Wildcats undefeated in Quads 2-4.
• While Marquette is now the only Big East team in the NET Top 50 at #19, the conference has three schools in the 26-50 range. Those currently include Villanova (26), St. John’s (30), and Butler (45). That’ll be important for the Big East Tournament as neutral court wins over Top 50 teams will count as Quad 1.
• Villanova’s next Quad 1 game will likely be when they host St. John’s at The Finn on January 8th. The game will air on FS1 at 7 PM EST.