Kyle Neptune Is Walking His Own Path At Villanova, Not Trying To Be The Next Jay Wright

The new head coach of the Villanova men’s basketball team walked into the gym last Thursday at Archbishop Stepinac High School in White Plains, N.Y. — and for the first time in more than two decades his name wasn’t Jay Wright.

Kyle Neptune wore blue and white sneakers, black sweatpants and a black collared shirt with a “V” above the left breast pocket. At 6-feet-5 and 200 pounds, his muscular biceps tested the limits of his shirt.

After speaking to the 137 high school coaches in attendance about his defensive schemes and practice drills, Neptune posed for pictures with several coaches and chatted with them about Villanova basketball.

When the 2022-23 season starts in November, Neptune, a former Wright assistant and most recently the head coach at Fordham, will be taking over for one of the greatest coaches in recent college basketball history. Wright led Villanova to four Final Fours and won two NCAA championships before suddenly announcing his retirement in April at the relatively young age of 60. Nicknamed “GQ Jay” because of his stylish Italian dress suits and resemblance to movie star George Clooney, Wright guided Villanova to eight Big East regular-season titles and five Big East Tournament championships.

If there’s anyone who knows what Neptune, 37, is going through these days, it’s North Carolina coach Hubert Davis, who also spoke at the coaches clinic. Davis replaced legendary North Carolina coach Roy Williams, who guided to the Tar Heels to three NCAA championships before retiring in the spring of 2021. All Davis did was become the first man ever to lead a team to the NCAA championship game in his first full season as a head coach. The Tar Heels beat arch-rival Duke in the Final Four before losing to Kansas in the championship game.

“I have a passion and a desire to walk the same path as Coach [Dean] Smith and Coach [Bill] Guthridge and Coach Williams … with my own personality, and in my shoes,” Davis had said upon taking over.

Now Neptune is following a similar path in taking over for a legend, and he will do it his way. There’s only one Jay Wright and he knows it better than anyone.

“We’re just trying to focus on our team, trying to be the best team we can be by the end of the season,” Neptune said succinctly. “Everything else is noise.”

Just as Davis took over an experienced team with several key veterans, Neptune inherits a Villanova team that isn’t starting over. The Wildcats did lose fifth-year seniors Collin Gillespie and Jermaine Samuels, and junior guard Bryan Antoine, a former McDonald’s All-American who transferred to Radford after an injury-plagued career in the Big East.

But they return graduate students Brandon Slater and Caleb Daniels and redshirt junior forward Eric Dixon and have a core of young talented players in the mix, including freshman forward Cam Whitmore, who could be the program’s first one-and-done player since Tim Thomas in 1997.

At some point, the Wildcats are also expected to get back senior guard Justin Moore, who averaged 14.8 points and 4.8 rebounds before tearing his Achilles during last year’s run to the Final Four. Neptune said he did not know when Moore would return, but speculated possibly sometime in December or January.

In the CBSSports.com preseason poll from July, Villanova ranks No. 16 nationally. In the recent Lindy’s College Basketball preview, the Wildcats were also picked 16th nationally and second in the Big East.

Neptune says Daniels, Slater and Dixon will anchor the starting lineup but that the other two positions are up in the air.

“Caleb, Brandon and Eric are locks, we’re just trying to figure out our team from there,” Neptune said.

Neptune is especially high on the 6-foot-8 Dixon, who averaged 9.1 points and 6.4 rebounds last season and could be poised to make a big jump.

“His body looks great, he’s shooting the ball great, I think he’s just in a spot where he’s coming off finally getting a lot of experience and he’s actually been a scorer his whole life,” Neptune said. “Now he’ll get an opportunity to be in that role.”

The 6-4 Daniels is now in his third season at Villanova after transferring from Tulane. He averaged 10.2 points last season but will be asked to play a bigger role without Gillespie and Samuels in the mix.

“He was a scorer his whole life, he was a scorer at Tulane, he just wasn’t in that role the last couple years, now he’s in that role,” Neptune said.

The 6-8 Slater averaged 8.5 points and 3.7 rebounds last season while battling through a hand injury.

“He’s more of a defensive guy, utility guy, we’re going to look to him to score more this year,” the coach said.

The Wildcats also return several key second-year players in 6-5 sophomore guard Jordan Longino and 6-3 redshirt freshman guard Angelo Brizzi.

“Brizzi is extremely talented,” Neptune said. “Most people have never seen him play, he’s been really impressive in preseason. He’s big, he’s physical, he can make shots, he can make decisions.”

In the 6-7 Whitmore, the Wildcats have a gifted forward with size, strength and quickness who was named the Most Outstanding Player at the FIBA U18 Americas Championship while helping lead USA Basketball to a gold medal. He is projected as the No. 6 pick in next year’s NBA Draft by ESPN.com and would be Villanova’s first one-and-done since before Wright was named head coach in 2001.

“Yeah, why not?” Whitmore asked me rhetorically in June.

Asked what he would have to do to achieve that goal, he said: “Give max effort. If I give max effort both ends of the floor and get my teammates involved and do what I do and just get a bucket, then it could happen. I think so.”

Asked to describe his own game, Whitmore said, “I’m basically versatile, I can do everything on the floor. I’m scoring at all three levels, getting my teammates involved, facilitating.”

The 6-2 Armstrong believes his future teammate could be a one-and-done, too.

“Yeah, I do and he’s physically gifted,” he said. “He has everything, he can do everything at multiple positions. He has the athleticism for the league so he can definitely go one-and-done if he performs his first year.”

As for Armstrong, who starred at Saint Peter’s Prep in Jersey City, Neptune loves his quickness.

“He’s a really talented young guard, extremely fast, probably the fastest guard I’ve coached at Villanova,” he said. “Extremely fast, extremely athletic, extremely intelligent.”

The coach also loves 6-4 freshman guard Brendan Hausen, calling him “probably the best shooter we’ve coached.”

“Give him 100 threes, he’s making no less than 90,” he said. “No less.”

Despite all his team’s talent, Neptune himself will be making a huge coaching jump, going from Fordham in the Atlantic 10 (where he finished 16-16 a year ago) to the Big East, where he’ll be competing against coaches like Creighton’s Greg McDermott, Providence’s Ed Cooley, Xavier’s Sean Miller, UConn’s Dan Hurley, Butler’s Thad Matta and Seton Hall’s Shaheen Holloway on a nightly basis.

“Whichever team you’re playing, if it’s home or way, it’s going to be a battle,” Neptune said.

“It’s a daunting league.”

Like Duke’s Jon Scheyer, who takes over for the retired Mike Krzyzewski at Duke, all eyes will be on Neptune as he looks to follow a legend.

But he will try to walk the path with his own personality and in his own shoes.

“I think Kyle does a good job relating to the guys, especially this generation,” said Saint Peter’s Prep coach Alex Mirabel, who coached Armstrong in high school. “The team is working extremely hard for Kyle and the staff that’s there.”

He also pointed out that Neptune — and the team — will be motivated to prove that the Villanova culture, the Villanova brand, haven’t dropped off without Wright, who now works as a as Special Assistant to the President.

“Jay was a legend,” Mirabel said, “but at the same time you don’t want to let Jay Wright down so you have to do everything in your power that you can.”