Wright led the Villanova Wildcats to six Big East Conference championships and 16 NCAA tournament appearances in 21 seasons as head coach.

In 1987, Wright returned to the institution he grew up rooting for as an assistant at Villanova under Hall of Fame coach Rollie Massimino.

[4] He graduated from Bucknell University, in Lewisburg, Pennsylvania, in 1983, where he played on the basketball team and became a member of the Sigma Chi fraternity.

[6] In 1994, Wright was named head coach at Hofstra University,[6] which had struggled through most of the 1980s and early '90s, with only one season of 20 or more wins since 1980, and no NCAA tournament appearances since 1977.

[23] Handed a 14th-seed, the Dutchmen were matched up against the 3rd-seed Oklahoma State Cowboys,[24] who were ranked 14th in the nation in the AP Poll,[25] but were unable to provide an upset, losing 86–66.

Claxton won his second conference Player of the Year award, having finished fourth in the nation in scoring, with 23.2 points per game.

In 2002, Wright was able to secure one of the top-rated recruiting classes in the country, led by McDonald's All-American center Jason Fraser.

However, the Wildcats had a mediocre 2002–03 season, which was marred by a phone card abuse scandal that eventually resulted in suspensions to over half the roster.

[31] In the 2004–05 season, Wright's Wildcats enjoyed a breakout campaign thanks to the emergence of forward Curtis Sumpter and guards Allan Ray and Randy Foye.

The 2008–09 team, led by senior Dante Cunningham, junior Scottie Reynolds and breakout sixth man Corey Fisher, streaked to a fourth-place finish in the Big East, and a double bye in the conference tournament.

The third-seeded Wildcats overcame a double-digit halftime deficit to underdog American to avoid a first-round upset in the NCAA tournament.

The team then defeated sixth-seeded UCLA by twenty points to make the program's fourth Sweet Sixteen in five years.

In its Sweet Sixteen matchup against Duke, the Wildcats used timely perimeter defense to score a 23-point victory and a trip to the Elite Eight.

In a back-and-forth Elite Eight game with then-conference rival Pitt, Reynolds came up big with a game-winning shot to put Villanova back in the Final Four for the first time since their national championship run in 1985.

Villanova then fell to North Carolina, the eventual champions, in the National Semifinals at Ford Field in Detroit, Michigan by a score of 83–69.

They did manage a victory in the opening round of the Big East tournament, defeating Rutgers 70–49, before falling to South Florida for the second consecutive season.

Though they fell to North Carolina in the Round of 64, the Wildcats picked up some signature wins, defeating #5 Louisville and #3 Syracuse in the span of a week.

Villanova earned a #2 seed in the South Region of the 2016 NCAA tournament, defeating UNC Asheville, Iowa, Miami and Kansas to advance to the Final Four for the first time since 2009.

The Wildcats then proceeded to defeat North Carolina in the national title game, 77–74, on a 3-point shot by Kris Jenkins as time expired, earning Wright his first championship.

In addition to the record shattering 44-point defeat of Oklahoma in the Final Four, the 2016 championship run included numerous other notable achievements.

Villanova's performance included two of the most offensively efficient games ever recorded since the analytics era began in 2002, tallying 1.56 and 1.51 points per possession against 3-seed Miami and 2-seed Oklahoma, respectively.

[36] Villanova earned a #1 seed in the East Region, defeating Radford, Alabama, West Virginia, and Texas Tech to advance to the Final Four for the second time in three years.

Last year's departures included Mikal Bridges, Donte DiVincenzo, Omari Spellman, and Jalen Brunson, who were each taken in the 2018 NBA draft.

Villanova's 13–5 record in Big East play allowed them to clinch a share of the conference's regular season title, tying with Creighton and Seton Hall.

[37] Despite losing sophomore Saddiq Bey to the first round of the NBA draft, Wright and the Wildcats were ranked third in the opening AP poll to start the season.

However, Villanova was ousted in the quarterfinal round of the conference tournament in an upset loss to eventual champion Georgetown after losing co-Big East Player of the Year Collin Gillespie (sharing with teammate Jeremiah Robinson-Earl and Sandro Mamukelashvili of Seton Hall) to an injury.

Wright earned his fifth Big East tournament title and second-seeded Villanova's sixth overall as they topped Creighton in the championship round.

2 seed in the NCAA Tournament, where they topped #15 Delaware, #7 Ohio State, #11 Michigan, and #5 Houston to advance to the Final Four, before losing 81–65 to eventual champion Kansas.

[4] Wright is a two-time winner of The Runway to the Fashionable Four, an award given by Tim Capstraw to the best-dressed coach in college basketball from 1998 until 2002.