With a coaching style that’s more about Zen aphorisms than zone defenses, JAY WRIGHT has built a powerhouse at tiny Villanova. Now, as his Wildcats enter the tourney as defending champs, he’s confronting a new koan: What happens when the underdog is on top?
SITTING IN HIS spartan o∞ce on the Villanova campus, Jay Wright conjures up a high-drama memory that offers, he says, a perfect example of his approach to coaching. (Spoiler alert: His anecdote is curiously lacking in what you’d typically call coaching.)
So he draws the scene. It’s a familiar one: Houston;last spring’s NCAA championship game, which you probably remember as culminating in one of the most frenzied finishes in college basketball history. Sure, the buzzer beater that won Villanova the game was plenty memorable, but for Wright, the night’s moment of real drama was at halftime.
With his team down by five to North Carolina, Wright was walking toward the locker room, trailing a retinue of assistants. (The pack included Jim Brennan, an army veteran and devotee of Tibetan Buddhism whom Wright calls his team’s “performance consultant” but who once referred to himself as Wright’s “dream interpreter.”)
As Wright reached the door, it swung wide before the coach could even lay hand to handle, and there stood senior center Daniel Ochefu—all six feet eleven inches of him. Ochefu put his giant hand on his coach’s shoulder.
“We need you to stay out,” Ochefu said, looking serious. “We got this. Me and Arch [senior point guard and co-captain Ryan Arcidiacono] got this.”
Wright was stunned. The most important game of any of their lives and the players were telling Wright that they’d handle the coaching. He could hear his assistants behind him.
“Fuck that!” one yelled.
“Get in there!” another said.
“We got this,” Ochefu repeated in a stern baritone.
This story is from the March 2017 edition of GQ.
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This story is from the March 2017 edition of GQ.
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