A look at the Bears as Nova tries for a top 25 win and another early-season tournament title.

https://villanova.rivals.com/news/game-preview-baylor-5

It was another strong performance from the Wildcats on Friday.

https://villanova.rivals.com/news/nova-takes-down-mississippi-state-83-76

Mississippi State defeated Tulane 80-66 to advance and earn a date with Villanova tomorrow.

Iverson Molinar had 21 points and five assists for the Bulldogs, hitting 4-6 from deep. Reggie Perry had 18 points and five rebounds.

The Bulldogs shot 60.5 percent from the floor and 55 percent from three. They dominated the glass 41-16 but committed 25 turnovers.

Friday's game is scheduled for 2:30 on ESPN2.

There was a lot to like about Thursday's performance.

https://villanova.rivals.com/news/cats-open-myrtle-beach-invitational-with-98-69-win-over-mtsu

A look at the Blue Raiders ahead of tomorrow's early start.

https://villanova.rivals.com/news/game-preview-middle-tennessee-state

Per Jay Wright, five-star freshman Bryan Antoine has been cleared for competition following spring shoulder surgery. Antoine is available to play in upcoming games at Myrtle Beach Invitational.

The news comes less than two weeks after Antoine was cleared to start practicing with the team.

The team plans on being cautious with Antoine and I'd expect them to ease him into the lineup, starting with small chunks of playing time and seeing how he responds. Still, this is fantastic news for the Cats and is way ahead of the original schedule for Antoine, which didn't expect him to see the court until at least mid-December and more likely late December. The ability to get Antoine up to speed well ahead of the start of the conference schedule is huge, and the next couple weeks just got a lot more interesting.

We'll try to forget this one as quickly as possible, but here's our recap of a disastrous trip to Columbus.

https://villanova.rivals.com/news/cats-crushed-by-ohio-state-76-51

A look at the Bobcats as Nova looks to get back on track.

https://villanova.rivals.com/news/game-preview-ohio-10

A look at the Buckeyes as the Cats get an early-season challenge in what is a really interesting game.

https://villanova.rivals.com/news/game-preview-ohio-state-7

Tonight, 7 PM, TV Fox Sports 1, at Ohio State. Villanova ranked #10 in the weekly AP Poll, Ohio State is #16.
Vegas has OSU as a 3 point favorite to win the game.

Seton Hall's best player, Myles Powell, who is the Big East's pre-season Player of the Year and a pre-season All American, sustained a "serious" ankle injury on Saturday during the Hall's game vs. Stoney Brook. He may be out for an extended period of time.

Seton Hall was picked to finish first in the Big East this season. Nova second.

So I seem to be having some technical difficulties, I'm not sure if they're on my end or with the site. Our five takeaways from the Army game article has been published, but the homepage isn't displaying correctly for me, so I can't share the link at the moment.

You should be able to access it from the homepage, and if anyone could try and let me know if they see it or not that would be a huge help. In the meantime, I'll try to figure out what's going on and I will share the link in this thread when things are working again. Apologies for any inconvenience, hopefully the issues are only on my end right now.

Per Jay Wright, 5-star freshman Bryan Antoine has been cleared to begin practicing with the team.

This is great news and is slightly ahead of the late November target the program had been publicly discussing over the past month. We'll keep an eye on Antoine's progress to try to determine a potential date for a return to the court, but the timeline the team had been using was a return to practice in late November and a return to the court in mid-to-late December, so assuming there are no setbacks and that Antoine gets up to speed as expected, a target for a return would be early-to-mid December.

Regardless, this is a huge step for Antoine and a great sign for the Cats. We will update with futher information as it becomes available.

A look at Tuesday's season-opening win over Army.

https://villanova.rivals.com/news/cats-open-season-with-97-54-win-over-army

Game chats haven't been successful in my time here, so I'm not expecting much interaction. If you guys want to chat that would be great, go for it. If not, no worries, I'll just post some random observations from the Finn in the thread.

There was some debate as to the starters, but it looks like it's going to be Gillespie, Moore, Samuels, JRE, and Bey. The earlier thought was that it would be DCR instead of Moore, and we'll have to wait til tip to know for sure.

One observation from warmups, Gillespie didn't seem to be bothered by the mask as he was draining shot after shot.

Getting familiar with Army ahead of tonight's season-opener.

https://villanova.rivals.com/news/game-preview-villanova-vs-army

On the eve of the 2019-20 season, Villanova's 2021 recruiting board took a hit as high-priority wing A.J. Griffin verbally committed to Duke.

Griffin is a five-star player currently ranked 8th in his class by Rivals. He was on campus at Villanova for a visit earlier this month but apparently that wasn't enough to lure him away from the Blue Devils.

It's a disappointing development for the Wildcats, but they remain in a decent position with a handful of other elite 2021 prospects. This development likely moves players like Max Christie, Trevor Keels, and Trey Patterson up the Cats' 2021 board.

The good news is that in less than 24 hours we'll have actually basketball to focus on and can but recuriting on the back burner a little bit until the spring.

Liam Murphy (NJ) visited VU in September. He is also looking at G'town.

We're getting information out of Sunday's secret scrimmage between Villanova and North Carolina.

The most eye-opening nugget was the performance of Justin Moore, who scored 39 points on 9-12 shooting from three-point range. That's an encouraging sign for Villanova going forward.

The teams played 4 separate sessions, with each team winning two.

Villanova won the first session, which lasted 20 minutes, 44-36. The Cats also took session two, a six-minute period, 8-7. North Carolina took the next two, a 43-36 win in 20 minutes and an 18-12 victory in eight minutes. Both teams played zone defense in the final two sessions.

We've learned to take the results of all preseason matchups, either scrimmages or exhibition games, with a grain of salt. Still, it's great the Cats were able to play pretty much even with the Tar Heels, and hopefully, Moore can carry that kind of shooting over to the regular season. At the very least, it should provide an excellent learning opportunity and some much-needed experience for this young Villanova team.

It's always a pleasure to observe Jay Wright work, and Thursday's open practice gave us some intriguing insights.

https://villanova.rivals.com/news/observations-from-open-practice-1

A rundown of the topics Wright discussed Thursday afternoon.

https://villanova.rivals.com/news/jay-wright-speaks-at-nova-media-day

Villanova hosted its annual men's basketball media day on Thursday. We'll have some more comprehensive coverage coming later, but wanted to just get out a couple of quick observations while putting together some more in-depth thoughts.

-Jay Wright was not pleased with the performance against USC. The first indication of that was the fact the start of media day was delayed as the team was in a film session. Wright also hinted at his displeasure with the performance last week a couple of times during his media availability.

-The start of open practice was much louder than in previous years. I don't know what the takeaway from that is, but it was something that certainly stood out.

-Collin Gillespie will not play in the "secret" scrimmage against North Carolina, but Wright is hopeful he will be ready for the season opener. He said they plan to test Gillespie on Monday, seeing if he can participate in live practice.

-Bryan Antoine is progressing and appears to be on track for a mid-to-late December debut. Wright said everything's been going well, there have been no setbacks, and he hopes to have him participate in practice towards the end of November.

We'll take a deeper dive into Wright's comments and have a look at what we saw in the open portion of practice later today or tomorrow.

Rivals' Eric Bossi caught up with elite 2022 big man Jalen Duran and got an update on the progress in his game and on his recruitment. Duran is already ranked No. 2 in his class and stands at 6-10. Holding early offers from Miami, Maryland, and Penn State, he told Bossi that Villanova has been interested as well.

In addition to the fact Duren is just a sophomore in high school, there is another concern for programs looking to recruit him, and that's the NBA. It's very possible that 2022 will be the first year that high school players can go directly to the NBA, and at this point, it's hard to see Duren not taking that path if it's available.

The good news is you can keep a close eye on Duren, his development, and his journey towards either highly-coveted recruit or NBA lottery pick, as he plays at Roman Catholic in Philadelphia.