Villanova Bracketology: No Boost to Wildcats After Quad 1 Win

The Villanova Wildcats picked up their second top ten win of the season on Wednesday, Feb. 12, knocking off No. 9 St. John’s 73-71 on a go ahead three-pointer from Tyler Perkins at the Finneran Pavilion and giving a breath of life to a season that looked dead in the water less than two weeks ago.

Despite the massive win, Villanova remained at the No. 52 spot in both the NET rankings and KenPom ratings, the same slot they’d occupied ahead of the start of play on Wednesday.

What goes into the lack of a change? For one, it’s more difficult to climb the rankings the closer a team gets to the top, trying to climb over a dogpile of tournament hopeful teams clogging up the standings… as opposed to the relative miles of empty space in the middling tiers of college basketball. As the season goes on and résumés become fleshed out, it becomes even harder to make waves.

The Wildcats’ lack of success in lower quality matchups will also remain a millstone around their neck through season’s end. Villanova possesses a 1-5 record in Quadrant 1 games — although UConn currently holds the No. 31 spot in the NET rankings, so that could improve to 2-5 in a hurry — a 5-2 record in Quad 2, and 3-2 and 6-1 records in Quadrants 3 and 4, respectively.

Those early season losses to teams like Columbia, St. Joseph’s and Virginia (who fell off a cliff in the wake of longtime head coach Tony Bennett’s retirement) will prove difficult to overcome, a large part of why Villanova’s best path to the NCAA Tournament is through a Big East championship and automatic bid (5.5 percent) rather than an at-large bid (4.7 percent).