Sitting in the since demolished Villanova Diner a year ago, Jay Wright was trying to explain why his team wasn’t quite there yet.

Months earlier, the Wildcats had rolled to a share of the Big East regular-season crown, produced the conference player of the year in Randy Foye, ranked as high as No. 2 and earned a spot in the Elite Eight.

Roll that in with a Sweet 16 run in 2005 and a 52-13 record over those two seasons, there seemed to be a good argument to label Villanova a national program.

Wright wasn’t ready to accept the mantle.

“You gotta do it with two recruiting classes,’’ Wright said. “We did it with Allan (Ray) and Randy and Jason (Fraser). If we can do it with the next group, then we’re on the way.’’

When the preseason polls debuted last month, there on line No. 25 sat Villanova, a team without a single senior on its roster, three untested juniors thrust into unfamiliar leadership roles and a host of sophomores and freshmen to carry the load.

Whether the ranking proves prescient or premature, the fact that Villanova was even on people’s radars let alone ballots says a great deal.

“I think that’s more of a nod to what we’ve been able to do here the last three years,’’ said Wright whose group made its third consecutive trip to the NCAA Tournament last season, losing to Kentucky in the first round.

For a long time, Villanova was mired in a lifelong celebration of the 1985 season. The Wildcats were a team with a past and no real present. There were flashes – a four-year NCAA run from 1995-99 – but consider when the Cats went back to the Sweet 16 in 2006, it marked their first back-to-back regional semifinal appearances since 1982 and 1983.

Like most of its Catholic school brethren, Villanova had been run over by the state- and football-funded Connecticut and Syracuse types in the battle for Big East superpower status. The question appeared to be not when the Wildcats would compete again, but if they ever really could. As the sports landscape shifted to the arms race of bigger and better facilities and longer and richer contracts, Villanova, with no football wells to tap into and an almost stubborn “we will not be defined by our sports teams” attitude, clung to 1985.

The Big East expansion that forced Villanova and the other Catholic schools to face their basketball mortality has changed things. The school two years ago pried open its wallet to give Wright a seven-year extension that might not put him on par with Billy Donovan but doesn’t leave him in line for hoops food stamps, either.

The university also gathered the $18.5 million necessary from private donors to build the Davis Center for Athletics and Fitness. Prior to the opening of the practice facility last month, a Villanova practice more closely resembled a decathlon. Track athletes customarily ran laps on the edges of the court while on the opposite side of the bleachers bisecting the airplane hangar Pavilion, the ping of aluminum bats on balls wasn’t uncommon as baseball players got in their swings during bad weather. Forget privacy. The primal instinct here was survival, the hope that no one would get smacked by an errant foul ball.

Of course, big contracts and snazzy facilities only get you so far. The hard part comes now. Staying in the collective conscience can be harder than wiggling your way in.

This preseason excitement is built on promise and potential. Rookies Corey Fisher, Corey Stokes and Malcolm Grant all come with glossy high school resumes and are expected to complement Scottie Reynolds, last year’s Big East rookie of the year. But promise and potential don’t always intersect with expectations. Wright knows that drill well. In 2003, Foye, Ray, Fraser and Sumpter arrived on campus, and immediately Villanova was tabbed a team to watch. That crew struggled through two NIT seasons, putting its coach directly on the hot seat before turning things around.
“This group hasn’t done anything,’’ Wright is quick to remind people. “We’ll take all the positives, but they haven’t done anything to earn them just yet.’’

Certainly, Villanova has more of a foundation to merit the attention now than it did four years ago. The question is whether or not that foundation is solid enough to build a national program.