The 'Nova Knicks' date back to 2016, inside a Villanova dorm room, centered around despising one specific teammate.
Ryan Hockensmith is a Penn State graduate who joined ESPN in 2001. He is a survivor of bacterial meningitis, which caused him to have multiple amputation surgeries on his feet. He is a proud advocate for those with disabilities and addiction issues. He covers everything from the NFL and UFC to pizza-chucking and analysis of Tom Cruise's running ability.shook hands and unpacked all of their belongings. Then they sat down on their beds 5 feet apart from each other and started talking.
By the time preseason practice began, the two newcomers were already fast friends. Villanova had veterans at every position and Final Four-level expectations, so the two went through a bumpy initiation period on a loaded roster. That 2015-16 Villanova team had, Ryan Arcidiacono, Kris Jenkins and Phil Booth, and those guys were fed up with the program's recent string of getting bounced in the first weekend of NCAAs.
Brunson met Hart that fall and liked him right away. He found Hart's constant jawing to be coming from a place of love, and he often stood up for the junior when teammates railed on him. On a recent episode of their new podcast,"Roommates Show," Brunson described Hart as"a dog that needs to mark his territory."
After the game, coaches noticed the team looked deflated. That got worse two games later when No. 8 Virginia whacked the Wildcats 86-75. They thought they belonged on the list of the top 10 or so teams capable of winning the NCAA tournament. But they just got run off the court by two others from that group of 10. They'd already heard chatter that coach Jay Wright's Villanova teams were always good for a nice roster, a nice record and a nice second-round exit from March Madness.
Even today, DiVincenzo seems to struggle to process being on the bench back then. As he sat at his locker in late March, DiVincenzo says,"Tough, tough year." He doesn't speak for a second. Then he shakes his head and repeats the exact same thing."Tough year." Brunson was breaking out as a freshman starter on a team ranked in the top five, and his roommate was begging the medical staff to get him back on the court after his boot came off. During those moments, DiVincenzo credits Brunson for being the bridge from the team to him and one of the main reasons he was able to play a pivotal role in Nova's postseason without playing a single minute. The fabric of that relationship? Despising Josh Hart.
His date told him to go. He rushed off to shoot with DiVincenzo, and Fraschilla scheduled a second date with her. That was it, though -- the only happily ever after in this anecdote is that DiVincenzo was cooking on the scout team by the time the tournament rolled around. The other half felt terrified because they had had no answers for a freshman pretending to be a guy they had already struggled against."He was roasting us," Hart says."The shots he was hitting were absurd. If Buddy was going to make those, it was a wrap for us."On the first OU possession, Hield hit a step-back 3-pointer that Hart remembers vividly to this day. Oklahoma led 3-0, but then the practice hours of chasing after DiVincenzo kicked in.
But as the next season began, the Villanova team weight room was being renovated and DiVincenzo found himself in an open student fitness center jawing with Hart. Hart made some sort of insult that caused an agitated DiVincenzo to tell him,"Say it again," as he stood with a 10-pound plate in his hand. Hart said it again, and DiVincenzo swung the weight at him.
He pauses and starts to smirk as he looks over at the entrance to the locker room."Speaking of the bully, here he is," DiVincenzo says. Hart never raises his eyes as he gets ready to go out for a shooting session. But he answers several questions and finally says he needs to leave. He starts to jog out of the locker room and says he will answer one more as he runs.
In the second round of the NCAA tournament, Villanova stumbled again. Hart got stripped in the closing seconds, and No. 8 seed Wisconsin ended the Wildcats' season -- and Hart's career -- in a 65-62 victory. Multiple sources interviewed for this story said the DiVincenzo-Hart chilliness was real but played no part in the loss."Wisconsin was just really good, and a bad matchup for us," Booth says.
The team got to 22-1 and No. 1 in the rankings, emerging as a legit national title contender and potential top overall seed. But then a bizarre flood of midyear injuries -- including three guys with broken hands -- had Nova down to six or seven healthy players on many nights. DiVincenzo had to play major minutes, and Brunson and Bridges, a redshirt junior, basically couldn't come out.
That's about when the silent scorn began to break. Players were upset and complaining, and the coaching staff had no patience for it. When they got to the hotel, players and coaches asked for an open conference room to air it all out. And they did. Multiple sources said the meeting was particularly ugly, an hour of brutal honesty from a staff that thought the players were feeling sorry for themselves and a roster that felt as if the players were being run into the ground.
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