Nova looking for answers after upset by Columbia

After a home loss to a Columbia team that’s won just seven Ivy League games over the last three seasons, Villanova coach Kyle Neptune said he would have to watch the film to understand what went wrong.

The Lions’ 90-80 victory Wednesday night at Finneran Pavilion was their first against a Big East opponent since 2012. Neptune, meanwhile, suffered his second consecutive loss to an Ivy team; Villanova fell 76-72 at Penn last year.

Neptune, who enters a crucial season after failing to reach the NCAA tournament in his first two years leading the Wildcats, suffered his sixth loss to a team that entered the game with a sub-100 ranking on KenPom.

“If we had won that game, we would still have to get a lot better,” he said. “We’re just not where we need to be right now. We’ve got to go back, watch this film, learn from it and move onto the next game and get better.”

Columbia, picked to finish fifth in the Ivy League preseason poll, entered the game as 17.5-point underdogs on ESPN BET. Guard Geronimo Rubio De La Rosa had a team-high 22 points, and the Lions connected on 53.7% of their field goal attempts (29 of 54) and 92.3% of their free throw tries (24 for 26).

Columbia (2-0) never has had a winning season under coach Jim Engles, who was hired in 2016.

“I don’t think offense was the issue,” Neptune said. “We shot 45% [overall]. …. I thought we just couldn’t get stops. And I think we turned the ball over. And we just have to get better defensively. They scored 90 points. It’s going to be tough when teams score 90 points against you.”

In 2022, Jay Wright abruptly retired after winning a pair of national championships with the Wildcats, whom he turned into one of the most respected programs in America. Villanova then hired Neptune, a former assistant under Wright, to lead the program after one year as Fordham’s head coach.

Neptune is now 35-34 at Villanova, which was ranked 31st on KenPom entering Wednesday’s game. With the return of star Eric Dixon (33 points Wednesday), the Wildcats were projected to finish seventh in the Big East preseason poll and expected to compete for a first NCAA tournament appearance under Neptune. While both remain possible, Neptune said his team has serious challenges to address before its plays NJIT on Friday.

“They just executed us … outexecuted us, I should say, offensively,” Neptune said of the Lions.

“It is what it is. We’re human beings. You don’t want to come in and lose. Everybody wants to win, so we’ve got a little bit to think about that and accept the fact that it happened and now we’ve got to move on from it. We’ve got to go and get ready for the next game. We’ve got to get better.”