This was not the biggest stage Jalen Brunson had entered in his basketball career. This is someone who played on a court constructed on a raised platform in the center of a football field in front of nearly 75,000 people. Twice. And when he left that court for the final time, he walked over piles of spent confetti as an NCAA champion.

A late February game against a conference rival – even an opponent as fierce as Xavier, with another Big East title potentially at stake, on the road – was not the Final Four. But it was a huge game representing a fantastic opportunity for a player firmly established as a candidate for national player of the year. There was national television, a terrific opponent, a big moment.

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It was the kind of game in which an eye-catching performance can cement a player as Naismith (or Wooden or Robertson or Rupp) material.

Brunson scored 11 points. Because that’s all he needed to score for Villanova to win by double figures.

“He distributed the ball to everyone else, because that’s the way the game came to him,” Villanova coach Jay Wright told Sporting News. “We do this thing called ‘Attitude Club.’ You chart all the little things a guy does to help a team win: the extra pass, deflections, passes into the paint, charges, screens. We’re on national TV against the No. 3 team in the country, and he goes out and he wins Attitude Club. The last two possessions of the game, we’re up like 13, he has a wide-open shot and he passes both times to a teammate to get an easy basket.

“My assistants are saying, because the game was kind of over, ‘Get Jalen some points.’ So we ran two plays for him. He could have added four points to his total, going for player of the year, and he is wide open and still passed it. He got his teammates buckets.”

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There’s no way to know what will happen with all those other POY awards. There are a lot of them. But the one presented by Sporting News has the longest and richest history. It goes back to DePaul’s George Mikan (1945) and Oklahoma State’s Bob Kurland (1946) and Villanova’s own Paul Arizin (1950). And this year it belongs to Jalen Brunson, a point guard as complete and dynamic as any college basketball has seen in the past decade.

“I just think he’s everything college basketball is about,” Wright said. “He’s not flashy, but his efficiency is incredible.”

Efficiency can be a cover in basketball for a player who lacks daring, who is unwilling to put his game on the line when it’s necessary. This is not Brunson. When Villanova was sagging in a road game at Butler because the Bulldogs went on an astonishing 3-point shooting streak, he surged forward with 31 points to nearly erase a 20-point second-half deficit. When the Wildcats defense was struggling against Marquette’s potent attack in a late January road game, Brunson answered with another 31 to assure a 3-pont victory.

When the Wildcats were in trouble, Brunson would unleash his inner Scottie Reynolds and ring up buckets to try to ignite an escape. When things were operating according to plan, he was content to mimic Ryan Arcidiacono and distribute the ball.

“I think he would rather be on a team that needed him to carry the team,” Wright said. “And he is more comfortable in that role. But that’s the beauty of this. He was willing to give that up and just do it when this team needed it.”

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In that game against Xavier, which the Wildcats let by 17 at halftime, he passed for eight assists. It matched his season high. That’s what the game required of him.

“I definitely want what’s best for the team. I definitely want to win,” Brunson told Sporting News. “I think that’s the most important thing. I couldn't care less what I do stat-wise or anything. I just want my team to be successful.”

It was obvious he was pleased, though, to learn that in the past decade the only first-team All-America point guard to shoot a better percentage than his .528 from the field was UCLA’s Lonzo Ball, last season. That number is about effectiveness, not volume.

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If you need more numbers, though, he averaged 19 points, 4.8 assists and .405 3-point shooting. He scored in double figures in every game the Wildcats played. And he led them to a 27-4 record and a No. 2 national ranking entering this weekend’s Big East Tournament.

“It’s not like I don’t look at the stats,” he said. “It’s not what’s important. My mindset and my mentality and how I approach things, that’s what’s really important.”

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Brunson is not the first great Philadelphia point guard from his family. His father, Rick, ran the Temple attack for three seasons as the team’s starting point guard, the first of those concluding in the Elite Eight in 1993. Rick later battled his way into the NBA and spent eight years in the league.

He has been Jalen’s personal coach all along. Even now, with a future Hall of Famer in charge of his team, Jalen looks at his father that way.

Rick apparently thinks more of his coaching than his playing, because if you ask Jalen in what departments his father says the student has exceeded the teacher, the answer is, “Everything. He’ll tell me I’m just a complete better player than him. At the same time, he still wants me to get better, have that mindset that I’m not that good.

“Knowing when he’s a father and knowing when he’s a coach — I rarely now take things personally when he’s yelling at me or telling me to do something. I feel like deciphering that really made it a lot easier.”

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Jalen has spent the past two years in charge of the Villanova offense, after sharing the backcourt and occasionally the playmaking duties with Arcidiacono on the Wildcats’ 2016 championship team. Jalen was a unanimous All-Big East selection as a sophomore, but even with that accomplishment and the championship ring from the year before he chose to continue his college career.

Brunson is on course to graduate this summer with a degree in Communications, after three years on campus, something Wright said he has not previously had a player do. In fact, he never has heard of anyone at Villanova accomplishing that.

It’s possible Brunson is achieving this in the same time frame as he is proclaimed the nation’s best basketball player because he doesn’t seem to do a whole lot beyond basketball and books. Asked what he does for fun outside of the two, he mentions hanging with his teammates and a dalliance with videogames.

“If he has time, he’s with his family,” Wright said. “He’s got perfect priorities for a college basketball player. It’s really too good to be true. But it’s true, and we lived it. And we’re going to miss it.

“The impact he’s had on all of our players watching a guy that’s so serious about his craft, and his education, I think is going to pay off for years to come here.”