Villanova has parted ways with men’s basketball coach Kyle Neptune, the school announced Saturday. The Wildcats went 54-46 in three seasons under Neptune and never made the NCAA Tournament.
Assistant Mike Nardi will serve as interim head coach and the search for Neptune’s replacement will begin immediately, the school said in a statement.
“Since coming to Villanova, I have been struck by Kyle’s tireless work ethic and his dedication to the student-athletes he served,” athletic director Eric Roedl said in a statement. “We are grateful to Kyle for his long service to Villanova and his mentorship to the many outstanding young men he has coached.”
When Hall of Fame coach Jay Wright abruptly resigned following the 2022 NCAA Tournament, Villanova quickly turned to Neptune, a longtime Wright assistant, to carry the program into the modern era. Neptune served on Wright’s bench from 2013 to 2021 — winning two national championships in the process — before earning his first head-coaching job at Fordham following the 2020-21 season. He went 16-16 in his lone campaign with the Rams before Villanova rehired him as Wright’s replacement.
But it became clear early in Neptune’s debut season that he had his work cut out for him. Villanova lost to both Temple and Portland in his first month on the job, the start of a troubling trend of nonconference losses to mediocre teams. In each of Neptune’s three seasons, Villanova lost to at least one sub-150 opponent, including this season’s inexplicable November defeat to Columbia. Those early-season defeats regularly put the Wildcats in a hole, forcing them to claw from behind the remainder of the season. And while the Wildcats improved this year — even beating eventual Big East champion St. John’s in mid-February — they never found the consistency they needed under Neptune.
To that point: This season, despite posting the best offense of Neptune’s tenure — the Wildcats rank 26th in adjusted offensive efficiency, per KenPom — Villanova’s defense bottomed out to a sub-100 ranking, the program’s worst since 2012. Last season, the inverse was true: a top-15 defense in terms of adjusted efficiency but an inconsistent, sub-75 offense.
What hurt Neptune as much as anything was the perception that Villanova has fallen behind its Big East peers. UConn won consecutive national championships since Neptune became coach, and this season, Rick Pitino led St. John’s to the league title in just his second year with the Red Storm. Including those two programs, six of the league’s 11 members have made at least one NCAA Tournament appearance since Neptune became head coach.
Meanwhile, Villanova tied for sixth in the Big East in all of Neptune’s three seasons at the helm.
(Photo: David Butler II / Imagn Images)
