There isn’t much to say about Kyle Neptune. With most coaches on the hot seat, you can do the “what went wrong” thing, or you can talk about what bad aspect of the school the failure represents. With Kyle Neptune, the only thing to do is call him Kyle Pluto. Get it? Get it?? Get it??? Cuz he’s about to get demoted.
Villanova hired a guy who went .500 at Fordham. That guy is now going .500 at Villanova. This is all adding up. But because he’s been so consistently .500, I do have one request:
Last year, Kyle Neptune finished the season 18–16 at Villanova, bringing his all-time Villanova record to 35–33 and his all-time head coaching record to 51–49.
This year, Kyle Neptune is 1–1, remaining two games over .500 in his lifetime as a head coach.
Can Villanova at least let him get two games under .500 this year before they let him go?
Every bad coach is bad in their own special way. Larry Eustachy was a bad coach because he couldn’t stop going to frat parties after losing on different Big 12 campuses. Kenny Payne was a bad coach because nobody informed him the Louisville job would involve coaching basketball. Kyle Neptune? Well, there’s this picture, inexplicably emblematic of Neptune’s entire being, but we need more than that. We need something to remember him by. We need to be able to say, “Kyle Neptune! The .500 guy!”
The NFL has Jeff Fisher. Major League Baseball has Khris Davis always batting .247. The NBA has Doc Rivers losing in the playoffs.
College basketball needs Kyle Neptune’s record to stand at .500 forever.
College basketball needs Kyle Neptune to finish his Villanova career with his .500 career mark intact, and to then go .500 at Rider for three straight seasons before landing a job with the Knicks as Jay Wright’s assistant.
When, though, is Kyle Neptune going to be .500?
Again, he needs to be two games below .500 this year to be exactly .500 overall. Also, I don’t think Villanova can fire him after a win unless that win’s especially ugly and/or they’re going into a holiday break. Here’s the upcoming schedule:
- 11/8: NJIT (H)
- 11/12: Saint Joe’s (A)
- 11/15: Virginia (N)
- 11/19: Penn (H)
- 11/24: Maryland (N)
- 11/27: Rider (H)
- 12/3: Cincinnati (H)
- 12/7: TBD – Big Five (N)
- 12/11: Fairleigh Dickinson (H)
After that, Villanova gets into Big East play.
The Wildcats should beat NJIT. They should beat Rider and Fairleigh Dickinson. They should beat a lot of others on this list too—everyone besides Cincinnati and Maryland, in a reasonable world—and because Kyle Neptune’s natural state is .500, it’s going to be hard to pry him away from splitting those games. The absolute earliest Villanova could get to a record two games below .500 would be immediately following the Penn game. That would take a three-game losing streak, though, and Kyle Neptune usually only has a few of those a year.
I think Villanova’s best hope here—or at least their best hope within these boundaries we’ve constructed for our own enjoyment—is that Kyle Neptune splits the next four, splits with Maryland and Rider, loses to Cincinnati, and then suffers an ungodly loss in the Big Five third-place game, ideally to La Salle. A Fran Dunphy victory dropping Nova to 4–6 would be a Philadelphian Christmas movie. Then, Villanova could let their interim interim coach against Fairleigh Dickinson before luring their real interim, Jay Wright, out of retirement for the conference season. Villanova fans are nodding right now as they read this. We’ve persuaded Villanova fans. There’s a give and take here, and what we’re giving them is three months of Jay Wright in exchange for perpetual Mister .500 status for Neptune. We’re all in agreement on this plan.
I’ll fax it to the fates.
