The birth of the Nova Knicks - ESPN

ON THEIR FIRST day at Villanova, Jalen Brunson and Donte DiVincenzo shook hands and unpacked all of their belongings. Then they sat down on their beds 5 feet apart from each other and started talking. This would be their new life for the next year.

In the fall of 2015, Villanova's two biggest recruits would be living together as freshmen, in one dorm room, a short jump shot apart. Right away, DiVincenzo had a realization that so many young adults feel when they move away from home for the first time: Oh crap, I've never lived with anybody before.

Brunson was in the same boat. Sleeping in the same room, sharing the remote, not taking up too much space in the mini-fridge — this was roommate boot camp for both of them. They didn't really know each other much before that day. But they hit it off right away. Brunson has a straight-faced, tough exterior that hides a good sense of humor, and DiVincenzo is a loose, talkative and positive vibes guy with a feistiness underneath. In many ways, Brunson's interior is DiVincenzo's exterior, and vice versa.

«Within a week, boom, we were on the same schedule,» DiVincenzo says. «If he stayed up late, I stayed up late. If we had a late-night pizza, we ate it together and got rid of it before the morning.»

On their own, they came up with one rule they built their roommate life around: If you're not dirty, I'm not dirty. Neither one of them considers himself a traditional clean freak. But out of respect for the other, they worked as a team to make sure their room was as clean as 18-year-olds are capable of. «The room never got dirty,» DiVincenzo says.

By the time preseason practice began, the two newcomers were already fast friends. Villanova had veterans at every position and Final