Meet the St. Viator grad who manages the Villanova Wildcats
What goes around, comes around for Matt O'Neill of Tower Lakes.
Four years after his basketball team from St. Viator High School was eliminated from the playoffs by Stevenson and its star point guard Jalen Brunson, the two are celebrating together now.
Earlier this month, both O'Neill and Brunson wrapped up a second national championship with the Villanova Wildcats. While Brunson's role as college basketball's player of the year is well documented, O'Neill's is lesser known.
He was the head manager for Villanova's basketball team, a position he worked up to during his four years at the school, and even Head Coach Jay Wright acknowledged his role in the team's victorious year.
“One of the traditions we value at Villanova is the role played by our student managers,” Wright said through an email. “Matt is the latest in a long line of outstanding young men and women who have served this program with great distinction.
“This past season, Matt's leadership played a key role in insuring that things ran smoothly every day,” Wright added, “whether we were practicing or on our way to a game.”
That's high praise from Wright, who recently was presented with the John R. Wooden Legends of Coaching award. Turns out, O'Neill's coaches at St. Viator knew that all along.
“Matt was an excellent teammate and the hardest worker on the team,” says Quin Hayes, head coach of the Lions, who was an assistant at the time. “He was so dedicated to making the team better in any way possible that he took it upon himself one day to create a playbook of our plays to give to his teammates and coaches. It was a fantastic resource for the team.”
O'Neill played baseball and basketball at St. Viator, but he concedes he realized he didn't have what it took to play in college. He became a basketball manager his freshman year, he says, to stay involved with the sport he loves.
Now, he has experienced two national championships with the team, where he had a front-row seat.
“It truly was an incredible run for our team — and the perfect way to close out my senior year at Villanova,” O'Neill says. “Some are even saying our program has had the best four-year run in college basketball history, which is pretty incredible.”
O'Neill describes the role of being head manager as being demanding — and time consuming, but he never minded. Literally, he would spend five to six hours each day in the basketball offices, not to mention the extensive traveling with the team during the season.
Each year, he saw his responsibility increase. Literally, he has gone from helping with team laundry to this year serving as day-to-day equipment manager, while also directing and scheduling the other 14 managers and serving as liaison between Wright and his staff and the rest of the student managers.
His dedication did not go unnoticed. O'Neill was the recipient of the Christopher M. Dincuff Memorial Scholarship, which is awarded annually to a senior manager who offers exceptional service to the program.
“The scholarship was very meaningful to me, as it is in honor of Chris Dincuff, a former Villanova student manager who lost his life in the 9/11 attacks,” O'Neill says.
As for Brunson, he and O'Neill are friends and now will be leaving Villanova the same year, with Brunson's announcement last week that he will be entering the NBA draft.
“We still joke about those games all the time,” O'Neill says of their high school confrontations, “but he has the upper hand since I never beat him.”
O'Neill graduates this year from Villanova with his major in computer science, but he already has a job lined up. This summer, he will begin working as a financial services technology consultant at Ernst & Young in New York.
His boss at Villanova, Wright, knows they're getting a valuable employee.
“He performed his tasks flawlessly,” Wright said, “and has an extremely bright future in whatever career path he chooses.”