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Easy to Root for Collin O’Toole | Meet the Wildcats

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Villanova Wildcats senior guard Collin O'Toole.

This is one in a series of stories introducing the Villanova Wildcats’ 2024-25 roster.

A former practice player who managed to make his way onto the gameday roster, Collin O’Toole fought tooth and nail for the ability to call himself a Villanova Wildcat, and a Division 1 basketball player.

A 6-foot-1, 175 pound guard with D1 basketball bloodlines, O’Toole walked on during his freshman season with the Wildcats. The embodiment of the ‘coach’s son’ archetype, O’Toole’s father, Tim, is an associate head coach under Jeff Capel at the University of Pittsburgh. The elder O’Toole also served as the head coach at Fairfield University of the MAAC, his alma mater, for the better part of a decade.

Collin O’Toole grew up all over the country, wherever his father’s coaching career took him, be it the Tri-State Area with Fairfield, the Bay Area with Stanford and Cal or Pittsburgh. There he attended Central Catholic High School, taking the Vikings to a PIAA state playoffs berth during his senior season. Growing up around the game, O’Toole almost certainly absorbed an encyclopedia’s worth of basketball knowledge, priming him to carve a collegiate path of his own one day.

Walk-Ons: Fan Favorites

Following the completion of his high school career, O’Toole spent a year at Connecticut’s St. Thomas More preparatory school, giving himself another year to train for college basketball. Rather than taking a scholarship offer, O’Toole decided to go it his own way, enrolling at Villanova and then walking on.

While Collin O’Toole probably won’t ever play major minutes for the Wildcats, it’s easy to root for such a hard-working success story. Seeing the walk-ons check in toward the tail end of a blowout is always a great moment both for them and the fans who keep up with the team, seeing them score their first baskets or pick up other statistical milestones. 

Through parts of three seasons on Villanova’s active roster, O’Toole has appeared in roughly nine minutes of game action, never taking a shot but adding a rebound and an assist to his résumé.

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