Jay Wright at ease leaving Nova after ‘fighting it’ as coach

VILLANOVA, Pa. – Jay Wright settled in a sales space at the restaurant throughout the road from the basketball health club he known as house for 20 years and the cheerful waitress quizzed him at lunch if he had dined right here earlier than.

He had, the spot is a well-liked hangout at Villanova. So, naturally she requested, what does he do?

“I worked at the university for a long time,” Wright stated, with only a tinge of modesty.

“Oh,” she stated, prepared with a enjoyable truth, “the President comes in all the time and eats here.”

Yeah, it’s a favourite of this previous college worker, too.

Could or not it’s, Jay Wright, the Hall of Fame coach who constructed Villanova from sleepy Big East college right into a nationwide energy and received two nationwide championships earlier than he shocked the sport in April and retired at 60 after one final Final Four, forgotten already? Yeah, not fairly. Wright’s presence spreads and shortly prospects peer by poinsettias on the ledge of the sales space and gawk at the Hall of Fame coach or politely ask between bites of his buffalo hen salad if he can step out for a photograph.

Sure, why not?

The Nova retiree is working at a unique tempo — morning Bikram yoga, holidays at house with Patty, his spouse of 32 years. But he hasn’t vanished from public view solely. With 520 wins over 21 seasons at Villanova, he is set to start lending his experience to viewers in a brand new gig as a broadcaster for CBS and Turner Sports. He’ll make his debut as a recreation analyst — alongside fellow former Nova coach Steve Lappas — for the CBS Sports Network on Wednesday night time when his previous Wildcats staff performs Penn.

“I’ve got that rookie feeling,” Wright stated.

Trim, refreshed, upbeat, Wright says he’s shed the self-inflicted pressure that gnawed increasingly every season as the impeccably dressed architect of an unbelievable nationwide powerhouse within the tony Philly suburbs.

“Just being free, to really experience everything, has been incredible,” he stated in an interview with The Associated Press. “I know it sounds simple and stupid. But all of us coaches, we’re really out of our minds. People say it’s not healthy. No, it’s not. But it’s just what you do.”

Wright had tried to bury the thought when he coached that he wasn’t getting ready to burnout. That he wasn’t another obsessed coach who couldn’t let the sport go.

“And I now know I was one,” he stated.

He may’ve pushed himself one other 12 months or two after final season’s Final Four run however would have felt like a fraud.

“I knew I was fighting it,” he said. “I would go into a meeting with the team and I would stop myself and kick myself in the ass. Yo, let’s go. Get yourself fired up. I never, ever had to do that. Never.”

Wright hasn’t completely deserted the health club. But one time he attended apply, properly, he fell into previous habits and easily assumed command. The teaching employees was amenable, due to that entire Hall of Fame coach factor, and likewise as a result of the coach working apply was Wright’s son. Taylor Wright, now the interim head basketball coach at Episcopal Academy out within the Philly suburbs, had ceded energy to dad for a apply the day after Thanksgiving.

“I just had a couple of things to say,” Wright stated, laughing. “I’ve got to stay away from it. It’s just too tempting.”

He hasn’t strayed too removed from Villanova. Kyle Neptune, a longtime Villanova assistant who returned after one season as head coach at Fordham to succeed Wright, welcomed his mentor at apply. Stop by, any time.

“So much of what I know, and how I’ve learned the game, how I see the game, how I’ve learned to run a program, I’ve learned from being here,” Neptune said. “Of course, I’m not the same person. No one can be exactly Jay Wright.”

Wright says he’s around, he just doesn’t want to be around too much, which is why he declined an offer from a close group of alumns that wanted to fly him to the Michigan State game and hang. He wanted to let Neptune find his way without causing a distraction.

Villanova’s worst seven-game start since 1991 has knocked the Wildcats out of the AP Top 25 and suddenly made the Big East feel up for grabs. It was impossible for Wright to escape at lunch the Main Line malaise some fans felt barely a month into the season. Two old college roommates interrupted Wright for both a photo request and a quick critique of the scuffling Wildcats.

“We’re just having this mini-reunion and we’re saying Villanova isn’t as good since you left,” one woman said.

“Don’t say that! That’s not true,” Wright said. “We will be. We’ll be better.”

The 37-year-old Neptune can’t immediately escape Wright’s shadow — especially when he’s 50 feet away wearing a CBS blazer and a headset. And that’s OK with Neptune.

“A lot of what I learned, I learned from him,” Neptune said.

Wright says there were no health issues or even the challenging, changing world of college sports that led to retirement. It was a lifetime of basketball that spanned stints from coaching a charity team for the USFL Philadelphia Stars to an assistant on the U.S. men’s basketball team that forced him to slow down and look at life beyond the bench. He rejected all kinds of offers for other, often more lucrative jobs.

He’s also smart enough to know recruitment calls will keep coming. Wright says he’s not interested in another coaching gig, for now. But hey, the phone lines are open.

“I say no,” he stated. “Right now I have no interest. Right now. I just know enough about life to know that maybe it changes. I’m telling you, right now, I have no interest.”

Let’s see how a lot he likes broadcasting. Unflappable on the sideline, Wright says he’s not popping out with a listing of catchphrases — although how can he not say “ bang ” on an enormous Nova 3? — or try to predict performs like a roundball Tony Romo. He has veteran broadcaster Tom McCarthy at his aspect Wednesday to information him by any rookie jitters.

Wright made a cameo appearance on Saturday’s broadcast — his 2022 Final Four ring popping off the display screen — and his first, transient shot at calling the sport was sufficient to let him know for certain he made the precise name to shift careers.

“You’re looking across and you’re seeing the two coaches and you know what they’re thinking, you know what’s going on in their head, you know what’s going on in your head,” Wright stated, “I like this a lot better.”

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AP school basketball: https://apnews.com/hub/college-basketball and https://apnews.com/hub/ap-top-25-college-basketball-poll and https://twitter.com/AP_Top25