By: Josh Silverman 
Follow @JoshMSilverman

While the homecoming leading up to the game might have been nice for Quinnipiac head coach Baker Dunleavy, the game was anything but for him and his team. Quinnipiac fell to the defending NCAA champions Villanova Wildcats 86-53.

Villanova jumped out to a 16-3 lead and never relented. Coaching in the place where he served as the associate head coach for four years, Dunleavy and his Bobcats couldn’t handle the Wildcats size and athleticism.

Villanova totaled a ridiculous 20 offensive rebounds. Quinnipiac only recorded 29 rebounds.

However, it is important to put the game into perspective. In only his second year coaching Quinnipiac, Dunleavy’s team is one with an extremely bright future.

Even without starting point guard Rich Kelly, who sat out with an injury, Quinnipiac is full of talented players who will lead them through the Metro Atlantic Athletic Conference.

Unfortunately, Villanova doesn’t play in the MAAC.

So, perspective is important. As is the Bobcats playing to their brand of basketball and being the best they can be.

“I don’t think we have our version of what that is right now,” Dunleavy said about whether or not his team played Bobcat basketball. “That’ll change over the course of the year just like it did last year. Just talking to our guys, we have a brand new group again. What we’ll talk about a lot all season is about growing and being the best version of ourselves at the end. Hopefully we can do it again.”

And while Quinnipiac will start the season with a loss, the game wasn’t full of bad moments. Quinnipiac had flashes of showing why it was picked to finish tied for third in its conference.

“I mean we showed some potential during the game,” Quinnipiac senior forward Abdulai Bundu said. “We definitely showed spurts in our defending. We played a couple good possessions. It’s there. What we want to do is there. It’s just trying to put it together for a long period of time.”

This is only the first game of the season and the opponent is the best it will face all season. For the coach, the positives come from looking at the future.

“I don’t think we had any moral victories,” Dunleavy said. “I think we had stretches where we played well. I think we had a lot of stretches where we didn’t play well. Kind of the moral victory is in how you respond not within the game. So if we can come back and practice really well and get ready for our next game and use this, that would be a victory for us.”

Quinnipiac will come back to Hamden and have its home opener Thursday, Nov. 15 at 7 p.m. But before that, it will have to grow from the mistakes it made against the defending NCAA champs.

“To be honest with you, for us it’s just defense and finishing off possessions,” Bundu said. “Personally, we had some good possessions on defense where we couldn’t finish with a rebound. That’s probably going to be one of our primary focuses.”

As much as the game will help Quinnipiac grow on the court, it should help them grow of it as well.

“For us, at the end of the day, it’s just keeping our heads up and staying together no matter what the team does,” he continued. “We just have to learn to stick together and keep our heads up and tell ourselves come on next play let’s pick it up.”