Best Villanova basketball players: Wildcats all-time starting 5 – From Ed Pinckney to Jalen Brunson

SF – Paul Arizin

Paul Arizin’s story is a tale that seems too good to be true at face value. Like many players of his era, Arizin only played three seasons with the varsity team at Villanova. However, unlike the others, his freshmen year wasn’t spent playing on the freshmen team.

Instead, he played recreation basketball through the Catholic Youth Organization in Philadelphia. He happened to get a shot at joining the Wildcats team when the varsity head coach attended the game and asked him after if he would like to go to Villanova, to which he replied that he already did.

From then on, he was a member of the Wildcats program. In his three years with the team, he averaged over 20 points for two of them (22 points per game as a Junior and 25.3 PPG as a senior). His abilities as a scorer made him a critical part of the team. He was consistent in his production and was capable of exploding for unthinkable totals at a moment’s notice.

Arizin once scored 85 points against Naval Air Materials Center and even topped 100 points in a game versus a junior college team — which was not recognized officially by the NCAA. These exploits came during his senior season in 1950. Yes, it happened 70 years ago and basketball was a very different sport at the time, but regardless it is a feat that should be highlighted and celebrated more often than it is nationally.

By the end of his time with the Wildcats, he had been selected as a consensus first-team All-American, he won the Helms Foundation Player of the Year and Sporting News Player of the Year awards and was the NCAA’s single-season scoring leader for 1950. His No. 11 jersey was retired by Villanova in 1994.