How can something so obvious seem so shocking?

Kyle Neptune's first two seasons as Villanova's basketball coach featured heavy losses. Last year the Wildcats lost to Penn and Drexel, and a year earlier, after the loss at Temple, they lost a road game to DePaul, the Big East's all-time bottom team. All of them were relatively easy to explain back then. A bad shooting night here, an injured player there. He is a new coach Here, That's not his squad yet There.

But this? A buying game against the non-Big 5 Ivy at home, with Eric Dixon making his season debut and the opponent, Columbia, entering as KenPom's 217th-best team in college basketball? Compare payslips. That's what rock bottom looks like, and if not, the apathy that permeated a lightly packed Finneran Pavilion on Wednesday night could only get worse.

Because it hardly felt like a surprise. Sure, Columbia was a 17-point dog, but the Lions seemed to have the better coach and the better plan and appeared to be the better team for much of the game. The Lions posted a 90-80 victory and the game was out of Villanova's reach in the final five minutes.

That's exactly what Neptune and Villanova couldn't do, losing a game like this in the first week of the season. Former athletic director Mark Jackson made the unpopular decision to bring back Neptune after two seasons produced the same result, a first-round exit from the NIT. A Final Four program had become a bubble program, and paying customers, both ticket buyers and those donating to the school's NIL collective, made their voices heard when they booed Neptune off the field in March.

Neptune went to work in the offseason, revamping a roster that was in desperate need of a facelift. The Wildcats welcomed Dixon back after he thought about making the jump to professional basketball. They brought in five transfers and a four-player 2024 recruiting class that ranked in the top 25 nationally. Some analysis sites, including KenPom, ranked Villanova among the top 25 teams. Others had the Wildcats at least in the top 50.

There was some optimism Monday night as the 2024-25 season reached its climax, and there was more to like than dislike in the season-opening win over Lafayette.

One small step forward, one big leap back.

“It is what it is,” Neptune said when asked how depressing Wednesday felt. “We are human beings. We don't want to come in and lose. Everyone wants to win. We need to think about it a little and accept the fact that it happened and now we need to move on with it. We have to prepare for the next game and get better.”

The next game is Friday night against NJIT, a quick turnaround before a big test Tuesday at St. Joseph's.

” READ MORE: Three reasons for optimism and pessimism as Villanova begins its 2024-25 season

Villanova turned the ball over 12 times on Wednesday after committing 17 turnovers on Monday. Neptune thought it had solved its point guard problem with La Salle transfer Jhamir Brickus, but Brickus had three turnovers and was fouled in 24 minutes. There's still a point guard problem because the Wildcats don't appear to have a reliable secondary ball handler, and asking senior forward Jordan Longino to put the ball on the floor as often as he did Wednesday night will there are more losses than victories.

For his part, Dixon was great. He scored 33 points on 16 shots, and Miami native Wooga Poplar followed his 20-point debut with another 16 points. Longino added 14 but needed 13 shots to get there. No other Villanova player scored more than five goals, and the Wildcats didn't get a contribution from a substitute until the final six minutes.

Columbia scored 21 points off turnovers. The Lions harassed the Wildcats inside with a 36-24 advantage in paint points. Getting the ball in, a problem for the last two years, was once again an adventure for Villanova at times.

“We need to be more solid,” Neptune said. “Our habits aren't what they should be at the moment and it seems like it's just simple things: getting the ball upfield, coming back strong with the ball, playing inbound passes. We just have to become a lot more solid and pay attention to details.”

In other words: the coach has to train better.

Colombia had an advantage in one key category: continuity. The Ivies don't experience the same back-and-forth that has affected every other conference in Division I basketball. The Lions got almost 80% of their minutes back from last season and it showed. Villanova seemed like a team that was still figuring things out, and that's exactly what the Wildcats are doing. But that's no excuse for Neptune; It's his job, this year and every year, until it's not. Because that’s exactly what college basketball is. Create a squad, train it quickly and play the games.

Neptune's seat was already warm before Wednesday. After bringing back the coach he hired to replace Jay Wright, Jackson left Villanova and is now the athletic director at Northwestern. The search for Villanova's next athletic director is underway at a critical time for the school and the Big East Conference. And while it already seemed unlikely that Neptune would be replaced during the season, it's even more unlikely until the next head of the department is named.

However, this is what this person inherits: a coach that the new AD didn't hire and a basketball program that meant so much to the university and is teetering on the edge of irrelevance.