Zion Stanford no longer with Wildcats, sources say

Villanova forward Zion Stanford is no longer with the team, sources told The Inquirer.

Stanford, a junior Temple transfer who went to West Catholic, did not travel with the team to Chicago for its Wednesday night game at DePaul, sources said, a day after practicing with the team. He again was listed as out ahead of Saturday’s season finale vs. Xavier and was not with the team while it went through warmups.

Stanford suffered an ankle injury before the season started and later dealt with knee soreness, but he had fallen out of head coach Kevin Willard’s rotation and had not appeared in a game since Feb. 4. It’s unclear if Stanford plans to try to pursue a medical redshirt. That typically requires an athlete to have played in fewer than 30% of their team’s games. Stanford appeared in 10 contests, which is 32.25% of Villanova’s 31 regular season games.

Stanford’s agent, Ken Jackson of Sky Limit Sports, said “Zion and the program mutually agreed that he’ll step away from the team for the remainder of the season while focusing on his health.”

Earlier in the week, Jackson said that Stanford was waiting to be cleared from an injury before returning to game action. But Villanova is required by the Big East to submit player availability reports before each conference game and had not recently been listing Stanford as out with any injury, and he has been in uniform on the bench.

Stanford was listed as out with “left knee soreness” for a Jan. 21 game vs. Georgetown and was out Wednesday and again on Saturday for an undisclosed reason. He played two minutes during a 72-60 win over Seton Hall on Feb. 4.

After a recent injury to forward Matt Hodge, Stanford potentially was in line to get back into the rotation.

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Stanford scored 13.1 points in 27.6 minutes per contest last season at Temple but was hampered by injury out of the gate at Villanova and struggled to carve out a significant role when he was healthy. He finishes the season with 1.3 points in 5.1 minutes per game.

Stanford is the second player to leave the Wildcats this season. The other, senior forward Tafara Gapare, left in December after playing in nine games. Gapare, in a social media post in early January, disputed that he had chosen to depart the basketball team, as Villanova worded in its announcement, and said he had stepped away for “a short period” to focus on his mental health.

With both players gone, Villanova has limited depth in its frontcourt and, without Stanford, will be forced to go the rest of the way with a shorthanded rotation.