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00:00The news around the college basketball world is a big one, as Villanova has fired Kyle
00:09Neptune, no longer their head coach, one of the premier programs in this sport.
00:16When Jay Wright was at the helm, he steps aside.
00:21I think it was tied to NIL complaints, wah, wah, wah.
00:26Kyle Neptune, though, ultimately could not fill those shoes.
00:30The thing is, that was always going to be the case.
00:34Jay Wright was ripping off championship after championship.
00:37Kyle Neptune was struggling to make the tournament.
00:41And clearly, Villanova was giving Kyle Neptune the opportunity to make a run in the Big East
00:47and to win it outright.
00:50And if they did, obviously, that could have changed things.
00:53And they lose to UConn, Eric Dixon goes out, kind of sad, unfortunately, country's leading
01:00scorer shoots two of 15.
01:03But now, and I'm going to go to you, Coach, because I know you've been waiting on this
01:06for some time, not that you've been rooting against them, but you've been tracking this
01:09program very closely, Kyle Neptune out at Villanova.
01:13Not stunned.
01:14You know, and talking to people I know, you know, basically, it was, he had to get a run.
01:19He had to get a run.
01:21I think the game, honestly, that may have sealed them in, two of them, is up by four
01:25against Georgetown in the last 90 seconds a couple weeks ago.
01:28And then the 15-point lead versus UConn was unfathomable when they just completely self-destructed.
01:36And they had a bunch of close losses like that.
01:37So I'm not stunned that Kyle has let go.
01:40He was very well-respected.
01:42People wanted him gone last year.
01:43President wanted to give him a little bit more time.
01:45But now it comes to the point where you got to go outside the family.
01:50Villanova is a team.
01:51You compare it to a team like Seton Hall that had $1.5 million in NIL money.
01:55Eric Dixon got that alone, himself.
01:58So the coffers are there.
02:00And I know the NIL money is definitely there.
02:03So it'll be interesting to see, Joe, where does Villanova go?
02:06Maybe a guy like Ryan Odom, son of a coach, East Coast guy at VCU.
02:12Now there's talk about Virginia, but you got to go get a guy and go get a home run right
02:16now.
02:17I mean, think about what Jay Wright built at Villanova, back-to-back national championships.
02:22It's eerily similar to the dominance, not on the same level, but Nick Saban in Alabama.
02:27When you're the pinnacle of college football and college basketball, respectively, you
02:31have to keep that train in motion, right?
02:34Same pressure on Caleb DeBoer is the pressure now in terms of that Kyle Neptune had.
02:39And you just look at the resume, 70-62 overall.
02:42I mean, he was a .500 coach at Fordham for one year.
02:45And his best season was this year at 19-13.
02:48Never finished better than sixth overall in terms of the Big East.
02:52That dominance wasn't there.
02:54You didn't have elite top-five talent that you could hang your hat on and say, hey, we
02:58have this to build on.
03:01It's unfortunate.
03:02But again, this is the problem with NIL, and this is the problem when we see star coaches
03:06leave like Jay Wright.
03:08You know, Villanova, it's in Philly.
03:11It's a blue-collar team, blue-collar town.
03:14It's a similar situation to what Rick Pitino had taking over St. John's.
03:18You really have to make an impact, coach, within your first couple of years.
03:22Yeah, and I think I would push against that they did have, at least last year, top-15
03:27talent.
03:28When you talked about Eric Dixon, when you talked about TJ Bomba, when you talked about
03:30having Justin Moore, when you talked about having Malik Armstrong, right?
03:33You had players.
03:35And I think this is where you've got to be careful with the portal.
03:40You've got to get it right.
03:41You just don't blow it up and get the best players.
03:44You've got to find a way to mix in freshmen with the seniors and a couple of transfers
03:51here and there to figure it out.
03:53And I think I talked about this on my podcast a couple of days ago.
03:56Two people have figured it out, one in the men's game, one in the women's game, Pitino
04:00and Mark Campbell of TCU.
04:02And what they have done is they have flipped the script on how you can turn it around quick,
04:08and now coaches will not get the second year, the second contract, five, six years.
04:13You may be out in three or four years, Kevin, if you don't win.