When Villanova hosted the first women’s Big 5 Classic tripleheader last year, the Wildcats intended to cap it off by winning the title.
Instead, the Temple Owls spoiled the party plans and left the Main Line with the title in their hands.
This year, the Wildcats delivered. Led by Brynn McCurry’s 21 points, they topped St. Joseph’s, 76-70, Sunday in a title game that was close throughout. It marked ’Nova’s 22nd women’s Big 5 crown, the most of any City Series team.
For as much as rosters in college basketball change by season these days, coach Denise Dillon admitted she had kept last year’s loss in mind.
“That’s the responsibility of myself and our staff, to explain to our players, because of so many new players on the roster, and not recognizing what Philly basketball is,” she said. “Yeah, the taste stuck with me, and I think some of the others who were playing in that game. Denae Carter and Jasmine Bascoe last year, they knew they gave something up here on our home court, and wanted to make sure we took care of business here today against St. Joe’s.”
Villanova’s players celebrate with the Big 5 champions’ banner.
The Hawks were more than valiant. Rhian Stokes totaled 23 points and six assists, while Gabby Casey had 19 points and eight rebounds.
At the other end, St. Joe’s held Bascoe to 4-of-16 field-goal shooting, though she still had 13 points. McCurry, who missed all of last season with a knee injury, delivered her third straight 20-point outing.
“Kudos to [McCurry] and to her teammates for stepping up, because I thought we did a hell of a job on Bascoe,” Hawks coach Cindy Griffin said,
December obviously isn’t March, but Villanova is on some national bracketologists’ early NCAA Tournament bubbles. Though the Wildcats lost at Princeton last month, they made up for it with a win at then-No. 25 West Virginia last Monday, and followed it with a win at Georgetown on Thursday to open Big East play.
Villanova’s Jasmine Bascoe defending Rhian Stokes of St. Joe’s, who led all scorers with 23 points.
Their next game, following exams, should be another solid barometer: home vs. Seton Hall on Dec. 19. The Pirates were picked third in the preseason conference poll, with ’Nova fourth.
“We gave up a tough one to Seton Hall last year in this place,” Dillon said of a 56-55 defeat. “We’ll remind them [at practice] on Tuesday.”
The rest of the day
Drexel topped Temple in the third-place game, 59-52. With Dragons star guard Amaris Baker held to just seven points on 2-of-13 shooting, Deja Evans stepped up with 18 points on 8-of-14 shooting, plus seven rebounds and three assists.
“Things weren’t going our way, our scorers weren’t making shots, but they still found a way to lock in and stay focused on what we needed to do to win the game,” Drexel coach Amy Mallon said. “And to me, that’s what Drexel basketball is about, and how we find ways to win.”
New York Liberty star Jonquel Jones, the adopted daughter of Temple women’s coach Diane Richardson, sat courtside to watch the Owls. That was a reminder of how big women’s basketball is nationally these days, though the stardust hasn’t landed on the Big 5.
Jonquel Jones (second from left) sitting courtside during the Temple-Drexel game.
“Well, I’d love to have her on the court, but we have already exhausted that eligibility,” the always-charismatic Richardson said. “It’s great. She loves our kids and she’s got some time off because of her [ankle] injury, so she’s been spending a lot of time with me. We’re glad to have her here, and not only just for us, but for women’s basketball — and here at the Big 5, where we want to shine a light.”
Penn won the fifth-place game over La Salle, 65-52, led by Katie Collins’ 20 points and nine rebounds. The Quakers led by 21 points in the third quarter, but the Explorers rallied to within five at the end of the period before Penn pulled away in the fourth.
As The Inquirer confirmed a few days ago, the women’s tripleheader will change location next season. Sunday marked Villanova’s second straight year, and the second straight year of disappointingly small crowds on the Main Line: 1,242 fans over the three games.
Though it’s not official yet, the Palestra is the favorite right now to host as part of the arena’s 100th birthday celebration. Penn’s coach isn’t alone in hoping that moving the games to the city’s most famous college basketball venue will draw more fans to watch them.
“I know one thing: Penn would put on a first-class event, just like Villanova has done here,” said Mike McLaughlin, who has long championed having the women’s tripleheader at the city’s most famous venue. “This has been a great event for our athletes, and Penn will do the same if it’s at the Palestra.”
After winning its fourth consecutive national championship at what then was the Wells Fargo Center last March, No. 1 Penn State returned to Philadelphia to face Drexel in a dual meet Friday night at a sold-out Daskalakis Athletic Center.
While the Nittany Lions claimed a 43-3 win over the Dragons, both teams gained something else from the meet. It was an opportunity for Drexel to draw a crowd of 2,000-plus to the DAC. And it allowed Penn State to make an appearance in Philadelphia, where the Nittany Lions have a large alumni base. It also was an opportunity to play an in-state rival early in the schedule, which Penn State coach Cael Sanderson tries to do as frequently as he can.
“We don’t have a lot of open spots in our schedule with our conference, but you try to wrestle with as many schools in Pennsylvania as you can,” Sanderson said.
Jordan Soriano had the Dragons’ lone win in the 141-pound match. The senior claimed an 8-5 decision over Penn State’s Cael Nasdeo. The loss drops Drexel to 2-1 in duals this season, while Penn State improves to 2-0.
Friday night’s match marked the end of a home-and-home series between Drexel and Penn State. The top-ranked Nittany Lions hosted the Dragons in State College, Pa., last season. The Dragons lost that dual, 41-3, with their lone match win belonging to Soriano.
Friday’s dual meet was the first time Penn State has reappeared in Philadelphia since it won its 13th overall national title in March.
“I think it’s fun,” Sanderson said. “It’s a different experience. A lot of the national tournaments are in the city, and it’s a little different kind of feel as far as getting around … I think it was good for us. We’ve got a lot of alumni from the area.”
Penn State has fewer local connections on its roster, though. Of the 10 wrestlers who took to the mat on Friday for the Nittany Lions, none were from within 50 miles of Philadelphia. 11 of the athletes on Penn State’s roster are from the state, and a few hail from the collar counties, like Doylestown’s Tyler Kasak or Harleysville’s Sam Beckett.
Sanderson said he does not usually recruit athletes within Philadelphia’s city limits, but that the Lehigh Valley and South Jersey typically are fertile recruiting grounds.
“Usually, the wrestling isn’t huge in the city areas as much,” Sanderson said. “Wherever the best wrestlers are, that’s where we’re recruiting from. But when you can get kids from Pennsylvania, that’s obviously No. 1, just because we’re Penn State.”
The opportunity to play an in-state rival in Philadelphia is one of the reasons the Nittany Lions made the trip to University City, but it also helps that Sanderson and Drexel coach Matt Azevedo are former teammates who overlapped for two seasons at Iowa State.
Sanderson, who was undefeated in four seasons at Iowa State was on the 2000-01 and 2001-02 teams with Azevedo, who was a three-time NCAA qualifier two seasons at Arizona State and two with the Cyclones. Azevedo also was teammates with Sanderson’s older brother Cody, who is an associate head coach for the Nittany Lions.
Drexel coach Matt Azevedo (left) and Penn State coach Cael Sanderson were teammates in college.
Azevedo said that even though he’s the older of the two head coaches, he looks up to Sanderson and what he’s accomplished in 16 seasons at Penn State.
“Cael has always set a great example as a teammate and as a competitor,” Azevedo said. “We all marveled at what he could do, and now as a coach, he’s doing incredible things. Honestly, I watch from a distance, you know, try and learn and try to pick up things. They do an amazing job, and I’m happy for them.”
Sanderson shared a mutual respect for his former college teammate, saying he’s cheering Azevedo’s squad on when they are not matching up head-to-head.
“They’re in really good shape, and they’re tough,” Sanderson said. “They fought the whole time. They were challenging us in every position, so that’s kind of what we were expecting. We’d like to see them doing well moving forward. They were tough.”
Drexel announced Wednesday that its meet vs. Penn State was sold out. There appeared to be a few empty seats Friday night, but the crowd neared the DAC’s 2,509-seat capacity. It was a relatively split crowd, too; Penn State fans appeared to have a slight majority. The Nittany Lions are among the biggest draws in college wrestling, thanks to a run of success that includes 12 national titles since Sanderson took over in 2010.
Azevedo said the opportunity to host Penn State was an opportunity to shine a spotlight on his own program. The Dragons are coming off their best Eastern Intercollegiate Wrestling Association finish in Azevedo’s tenure at the school, finishing the season 11-10 and second in the conference. Drexel sent three wrestlers to the NCAA championship as individual qualifiers last season.
“When we can host a dual meet here at Drexel, and sell it out as a mid-major wrestling program, I think it says a lot,” Azevedo “It says a lot about our fan base, that our fans are excited to come out and watch us wrestle. Right, there’s a lot of Penn State fans here, but there were just as many Drexel fans.”
Azevedo said while he knew putting Penn State on the schedule likely wouldn’t result in a nonconference dual win for the Dragons, he could not refuse an opportunity to host the Nittany Lions.
“I feel fortunate to be able to create an environment like this for our guys to compete in,” Azevedo said. “It gets a lot of attention and eyeballs on our program. For me, it’s like, I can’t pass that up. You know it’s going to be tough, but this was an incredible event.”
The Villanova women’s basketball team had vengeance in mind as it beat Temple to open Big 5 play on Nov. 22.
While the teams’ history spans decades, anticipation of the annual Big 5 Classic tripleheader has added a new layer to the competition.
And for some Villanova players, the 30-point win was personal. Temple beat Villanova by 14 to win last year’s inaugural women’s Big 5 Classic championship.
“[The Big 5 championship] was a tough loss last year,” Villanova senior guard Ryanne Allen, a Bucks County native and Archbishop Wood graduate said. “That was a huge impetus for us, especially losing on our home floor. We didn’t want it to happen again, so it was nice to get that win back for us.”
Three days after the Wildcats’ 88-58 win, they secured a return to the Big 5 championship game with a win over La Salle. In the other “pod,” St. Joseph’s (6-2, 0-1 Atlantic 10) came out on top with wins over Penn and Drexel. The Wildcats (7-2, 1-0 Big East) will face the Hawks on Sunday at Finneran Pavilion (4:30 p.m., NBCSP).
After back-to-back years at Finneran Pavilion, the Big 5 Classic will change locations next season, Villanova confirmed. The Palestra, a focal point of Philadelphia basketball history, would be a fitting host as the venue prepares for its its 100th birthday.
Villanova’s Jasmine Bascoe goes up for a layup as Temple’s Tristen Taylor defends on Nov. 22.
“It’s a great rivalry,” said Cindy Griffin, who is in her 25th season coaching the Hawks. “We’ve been battling [with Villanova] for the last couple of years, and we’re ready to come on top of this battle … I think our players are hungry to not only compete, but to win. It’s going to be a great game.”
Villanova will install the Big 5 logo on its court at the Finneran Pavilion as it prepares to host the tripleheader for the second consecutive year.
“I’m hoping this young crew recognizes how [the home court] can work in your favor, and just feed off that energy,” Villanova coach Denise Dillon said. “Our atmosphere here at the Finn is tremendous. We’ve got to feel it and know that it can give us a little bit of an edge in a tough battle against our city rival.”
The Wildcats will ride the high of a five-game winning streak — including wins over No. 25 West Virginia and Georgetown in their Big East opener — into the championship game.
Since 2004, Villanova has a 15-4 record against the Hawks.
“We had a couple disappointing losses to start the season, but you can just see this group figuring out who they are and what they’re doing. … Getting that tough La Salle win at their place to put ourselves in position was the first step,” Dillon said. “We’ll focus all of our attention on Saint Joe’s, hopefully redeeming ourselves and getting that win on Sunday in front of our fans.”
The Hawks are led by homegrown talent in returning junior guards Gabby Casey and Aleah Snead.
Casey, who attended Lansdale Catholic, and Snead, a graduate of Penn Charter, will bring an extra level of intensity to the Big 5 matchup. Casey currently leads St. Joe’s with 15.9 points and 6.9 rebounds per game.
“Gabby [Casey] and Aleah [Snead] are the ultimate competitors and Philadelphia kids,” Griffin said. “ … they understand what [the Big 5] is. They understand the pride and the value of playing in Philadelphia and representing St. Joe’s.”
St. Joseph’s guard Aleah Snead (left) celebrates with teammates Talya Brugler and Gabby Casey after a game last season.
As dynamics between Big 5 schools shift entering the 2025 Classic, the tripleheader will serve as a platform for each school to promote its program.
“There’s a lot of different brands of basketball in the Big 5,” Griffin said. “I think just with the growth of women’s basketball, the more we promote women’s basketball in our area, the better off all these young women are going to be.”
In March of 2013, La Salle pulled off the improbable. The Explorers hadn’t been to the NCAA Tournament since 1992. They hadn’t advanced past the Round of 64 since 1990.
But here they were, on a chilly night in Kansas City, edging out Kansas State, 63-61, to earn a spot in the Round of 32.
As players danced in the middle of the locker room, with the music blaring, an unlikely figure emerged.
Donning a black suit with a blue dress shirt, the visitor walked through the chaos, straight to La Salle’s head coach, John Giannini.
It was Jay Wright.
His team had a game in a few hours, against North Carolina, but the Villanova head coach wanted to congratulate his dear friend.
Former La Salle head coach John Giannini during a game against Butler on Jan. 23, 2013.
“Once we got to the tournament, we were always rooting for each other,” Wright said of the Big 5 programs. “It was always about Philadelphia basketball.”
This was the way he and his Big 5 counterparts had been taught. When Wright was an assistant at Villanova in the late 1980s and early 1990s, he watched as head coach Rollie Massimino battled with Temple’s John Chaney.
The games were intense, and often heated, but they always showed each other respect. Sometimes, Big 5 coaches would go to dinner afterwards. It wasn’t uncommon for them to get together during the offseason.
The coaches would celebrate each other’s wins, even though they were technically competitors. Every time Wright advanced in the NCAA Tournament, he’d get a call from Chaney.
When Martelli reached the Elite Eight in 2004, he heard from Wright and longtime La Salle coach Speedy Morris.
The men who preceded them practiced the same habits, from Temple’s Harry Litwack, to Villanova’s Al Severance, to St. Joseph’s Dr. Jack Ramsay.
“The initial [Big 5] group was so together, and so tight, that when the rest of us joined, it was just the way it was done,” said Fran Dunphy, who spent a combined 33 seasons at the helm of Penn, Temple, and La Salle. “The culture was already set.”
Former Big 5 coaches Phil Martelli, Steve Lappas, John Griffin, Speedy Morris, and Fran Dunphy.
For former Big 5 coaches in the area, that culture is still intact. Martelli, Dunphy, and Wright remain good friends. They visit with Morris, and are in regular contact with other former colleagues, like Giannini, Steve Lappas, and John Griffin.
The coaches believe this brotherhood is unique to Philadelphia, a city rich with basketball lore.
“On the court, you wanted to kill each other,” Wright said, “and off the court you were like brothers.”
A ‘different’ kind of bond
Dunphy was born and raised in Drexel Hill, only a few years before the founding of the Big 5 in 1955.
Back then, it was an association of five Division I schools: Villanova, Penn, St. Joe’s, Temple, and La Salle (Drexel was added in 2023).
The future coach rooted for them all, without prejudice. He’d often spend his Wednesdays, Fridays, and Saturdays at the Palestra, watching Big 5 teams square off.
“There were three nights of doubleheaders,” Dunphy said. “It was an amazing experience.”
When he was hired as the head coach of Penn in 1989, Dunphy felt a deep sense of pride. He also felt respect for his peers, many of whom had toiled through the same high school and assistant coaching ranks.
Their connections went far back. In 1976, when Wright was in the ninth grade, he attended a basketball camp in the Poconos. His camp counselor was a young Martelli.
A few years later, Martelli coached his first high school game for Bishop Kenrick in Norristown, which closed in 2010. His opponent was Dunphy, who was leading Malvern Prep at the time.
Morris and Chaney were introduced during their tenures at Roman Catholic and Simon Gratz in the late 1960s and 1970s. Lappas was an assistant at Villanova when Martelli assisted at St. Joe’s in the 1980s.
All of this only fortified the “brotherhood.”
Fran Dunphy spent a combined 33 seasons at the helm of Penn, Temple, and La Salle.
“It was different than going to an ACC school or a Big Ten school or whatever the major conferences are,” Dunphy said. “Let’s say we went to Orlando for an AAU tournament. There might be three or four of us sitting together as Philly coaches, because that’s what we did. And we might be recruiting the same guy.
“And there would be coaches from other leagues, and they’d say, ‘What are you guys doing?’ Well, that was just the way it was.”
Added Martelli: “You never said, ‘I’m going to talk bad about this guy or that guy, just so we can get a recruit.’ Because you knew [the other coaches] weren’t doing it. So we were not going to do it.
“People from the outside marveled at it. They’d say, ‘Seriously, this is what you guys do?’ And I’m like, ‘Yeah.’”
Despite this unspoken pact, the coaches were not thrilled when a Big 5 rival would scoop up a promising player. Martelli, for example, was very frustrated when Dunphy earned local star Lavoy Allen’s commitment in late 2006.
“I would say that in a complimentary way,” Martelli said. “I was like, ‘I can’t believe we didn’t get him. And to make matters worse, Temple got him. We’ve got to deal with him for four years?’”
Even at the height of their competitive prowess, the coaches would band together for the betterment of the sport and the world around them. In 1996, Martelli and Dunphy started the Philadelphia chapter of Coaches Vs. Cancer, a nonprofit that raises awareness and funds for cancer research.
They looped in their fellow Big 5 coaches: Lappas, Morris, Chaney and Bill Herrion (who was at Drexel). Not long after Wright was hired as head coach of Villanova in 2001, he accompanied Martelli and Dunphy to meet the CEO of Blue Cross/Blue Shield, Fred DiBona, for lunch in Center City.
Former Big 5 coaches Phil Martelli and Fran Dunphy with their wives at a Coaches Vs. Cancer event.
The insurance company offered them $50,000, and became the group’s first corporate sponsor. That donation helped lift the chapter off the ground.
“The three of us were really competing against each other, right then,” Wright said. “And we all went together during basketball season, up to his office, and got that thing spearheaded.”
Wright, Martelli, and Dunphy are still very involved with Coaches vs. Cancer. The Philly chapter has since become the most successful in the country, raising over $22 million.
It is not the only legacy they’ve left behind. Over recurring breakfasts at Overbrook Golf Club, the coaches would talk about everything from scheduling to the format of the Big 5 round-robin.
Some of those ideas will be implemented on Saturday, in the third-annual Big 5 classic. Wright said that the triple-header format was discussed as far back as “15-20 years ago.”
He and peers wanted to put on a big event, one that didn’t cause scheduling conflicts.
“It was healthy, because we were from different leagues,” Martelli said. “Fran was in the Ivy League, I was in the Atlantic 10, and Jay was in the Big East.
“It was always for the greater good. It wasn’t about, ‘What’s best for St Joe’s? It was, ‘What’s best for college basketball?’”
‘The elder statesmen’
Wright, Dunphy, and Martelli have a reverence for Morris and the late Chaney, “the elder statesmen” of the group.
Chaney took special interest in Dunphy, who replaced him at Temple in 2006. The former head coach liked to share his thoughts after games. This was especially true if Temple had too many turnovers.
The next day, Dunphy’s phone would ring. He always knew who was calling.
“The conversation would go, ‘Franny, what the hell is going on out there?’” he recalled. “‘Why are we turning the ball over?’
“‘I know, Coach. We’re working on it. We’ve gotta get better.’”
Speedy Morris and John Chaney developed a friendship while serving as Big 5 coaches.
Like their younger counterparts, Morris and Chaney were contemporaries. They both grew up in the city; Morris in Roxborough and Chaney in North Philly.
The coaches also shared a flair for the dramatic. Neither man was above throwing his coat, or screaming at a referee, or stomping up and down the court.
They found kindred spirits in each other.
“He was tough,” Morris said of Chaney. “But I enjoyed him, very much.”
One day, in the late 1990s, the La Salle coach came up with an idea. The Temple coach was known for his expensive clothes, especially his ties. He’d often give them away as gifts.
So, Morris decided to pay it forward. He grabbed a few dozen of the ugliest 70s-era ties he could find, and asked his wife, Mimi, to wrap them up in a box. She sent it to Temple, with a note.
“It read, ‘You’ve been so kind to share some of your beautiful ties with me,’” Morris’s son, Keith, recalled. “‘I’d like to share a few of mine with you.’
“Chaney opened it up, and he was like, ‘What is this [expletive]?’”
After Chaney retired from coaching in March of 2006, he became an occasional attendee at Morris’ practices and games at St. Joe’s Prep. There was one, in particular, that stuck out in Morris’s mind.
It was 2006, and the two coaches had just paid a visit to Tom Gola, who was dealing with a health scare. They headed back to the Prep, where they’d parked their cars. As Morris said goodbye, Chaney made an impromptu announcement.
He would be coming to practice, too.
John Chaney, Speedy Morris, and Fran Dunphy.
Morris was thrilled. The high school coach asked his friend if he wanted to take the lead. Chaney insisted he didn’t. But once Morris started running a defensive drill, that quickly changed.
It was a 2-3 matchup zone, and a Prep player missed a weak-side box-out. Chaney jumped out of his chair, as if he was still at Temple.
He ran from midcourt to the paint.
“He said, ‘No!’” Morris recalled. “‘That’s not how we do it!’”
Chaney proceeded to give the student a 10-minute, expletive-laden lesson on rebounding and positioning. Keith Morris, an assistant coach at the time, nervously looked around to make sure there weren’t any Jesuit priests in the gym.
The two coaches stayed close until Chaney died in 2021. They’d talk on the phone at least once a week. They’d get lunch together in Manayunk, discussing basketball and life.
“They called each other brothers,” Keith said.
‘The caretakers’
This level of camaraderie is more challenging in today’s game. When Wright, Dunphy, and Martelli were coaching, the idea of having a player transfer from one Big 5 school to another was unfathomable.
Now, it is commonplace, with much more relaxed rules. The advent of NIL has pushed programs to generate more revenue, so they can remain competitive and pay their players. It has led to a corporate, less familial environment.
But despite these challenges, the coaches still believe that upholding the Big 5 brotherhood is worth the effort.
“Because the guys who are coaching now, they didn’t create the Big 5,” Martelli said. “They don’t own the Big 5. But they are the caretakers. And the same goes for all of us.”
The banner made its way to the bottom of the student section, and a crew of security guards soon was hovering. Everyone had to go, they said.
“We were like ‘What?,’” said Luke Butler, who led the crew of Temple students that night at La Salle.
The fans — the Cherry Crusade — spent a few days crafting one-liners to paint onto 30-foot banners that would be rolled out during the Temple-La Salle basketball game. The “rollouts” have been a Big 5 tradition since the 1950s, even surviving a brief ban when the schools thought the messages had become too racy.
The rollouts often are a play on words or innuendoes that make light of the opposing school. You roll out your banner and then hold your breath while the other school shows theirs. Each student body takes turns dissing each other like kids in a schoolyard. The best rollouts, Butler said, are the ones that “twist the knife” just a little.
St. Joe’s students unveil a banner referring to Villanova finishing last in the Big 5 Classic last year.
But this one, Butler learned, twisted a little too much.
The Explorers entered that game in February 2010 on a seven-game losing streak, and Ash Wednesday had been two weeks earlier. Temple, down a point at halftime, raced away in the second half. And here came the rollout: “LA SALLE GAVE UP WINNING FOR LENT.”
The Temple students — the same crew who held a “funeral” a year later for the St. Joe’s Hawk — thought it was good banter. But a priest was offended, and security had instructions.
“They were like ‘Father is pissed. You basically affronted their faith, and they don’t want you in the building,’” Butler said. “That was a good example of a rollout where we said ‘This will get a good reaction.’ It did. It just wasn’t the reaction we were thinking of.”
70 years of rollouts
The rollouts trace back to the Palestra, when the building was the home of the Big 5 and basketball doubleheaders. The bleachers were filled, the basketball was good, and the crowds were lively. Philly was the center of the college basketball universe, and the Palestra was a scene.
The “rooters” who sat behind the baskets would roll out banners during the games about opposing schools. The messages were a chance for a student body to take a shot at their rivals from across the court. When La Salle students hung a dummy of their coach in the early 1960s from a campus flagpole, St. Joe’s rolled out a banner a week later that said “We Fly Flags on our Flagpole.”
The messages became more pointed, as the Daily News wrote in January 1966 that “the rollouts wandered from the realm of good taste.” The Big 5 athletic directors agreed to ban them, saying that “certain rollout subject matter has been offensive and detrimental to the best interests and continued success of the Palestra program.”
The president of the St. Joe’s student section protested the decision at the Big 5’s weekly luncheon, telling the athletic directors that they were ruining “the greatest spectator participation event in sports” and the rollouts were part of the “spectacular” that was basketball at the Palestra.
“It’s not a spectacular,” said Jack Ramsay, then the coach and athletic director for St. Joe’s. “We’re down there to play basketball. If the students want to join in, that’s fine.”
No longer allowed to roll out their messages, students at the Palestra began to shout what they would have written. Banner Ball gave way to Chorus Ball, the Daily News wrote. A year later, the students won, and rollouts were welcomed back to the Palestra as long as messaging was preapproved by the school’s athletic office.
The banners became as integral to a Big 5 game as a soft pretzel from the Palestra concession stand. You didn’t miss a basket during a doubleheader, but you also made sure you caught the dig the opposing students made during a timeout about your school.
The banners were the game within the game as the student sections planned their rollouts like a comedian preparing a stand-up skit. The jokes had to be fresh. How many times can you call the other coach ugly before it’s no longer funny? They had to be timely and tap into current events. That scandal involving a prominent alumni from the other school? Fair game. The football team stinks? That’ll work. A basketball player got arrested? There’s a rollout to be made.
And they had to be timed just right. You can’t come out swinging with your best bit. You have to build up the crowd with a few decent banners and then roll out the one you know will hit.
“You could tell from the other alumni if they were like, ‘Whatever,’ or if it really pissed them off,” Butler said. “Ultimately, that’s what you’re looking for. From brainstorming, to the making of them, to rolling them out, you’re looking for that reaction of them saying ‘Ugh.’”
A fading tradition
The rollouts, just like the Big 5, seem to be waning. Student attendance at local games is no longer what it was. The basketball programs have been down, the transfer portal has made players hard to identify, and conference realignment has introduced games with unfamiliar opponents.
Villanova — the lone Big 5 school to make an NCAA Tournament in the last five years — is the only team that regularly draws a large swath of students. Most schools fill up a student section for the marquee games but attract just a small group on most nights. Attracting students to a once-integral aspect of campus life has become a challenge.
Each school is trying to confront the decline of student participation, and Temple decided last year to revamp its student section. The Cherry Crusade does not have a student president, and the rollouts are made by athletic department staffers.
A banner made by the Olney Outlaw’s La Salle Student Section on Thursday.
They sold out their tickets two years ago when they reached the final of the Big 5 Classic and still fill the student section for a big game. The challenge has been to build a consistent presence.
“We want to find those passionate fans to bring back what the Cherry Crusade was,” said Katie Colbridge Ganzelli, Temple athletics’ marketing coordinator for on-campus initiatives. “They’re still there. We’re just trying to find those passionate students who want to be in charge of the student section like it used to be.”
Villanova’s rollouts earlier this week vs. Temple — “Rocky would’ve gone to Villanova,” one said — didn’t twist the knife. Penn’s student section is dormant, forcing the band to provide rollouts. The tradition seems to be fading across the Big 5, but credit La Salle for trying to keep the edge.
The school revived its student section this season, and the Olney Outlaws took aim at a Big 5 coach for being follically challenged and used another rollout to dunk on Villanova and St. Joe’s. They’re twisting the knife in Olney.
“We had noticed a lack of student engagement and thought this would be a fun way to get kids involved,” said Paige Mitchell, a senior marketing major who founded the Olney Outlaws. “I was working in the athletic department, and my boss at the time gave me a project to come up with something that would get everyone more engaged. It’s grown from there.”
Get your rollouts ready.
The road to the Toyota Big 5 Classic starts Saturday and ends at Xfinity Mobile Arena on December 6! 🏀 #Big5IsPhilly
The group of students — “I have a couple guys in the group who are pretty clever,” Mitchell said — brainstorm ideas for the rollout before they meet to paint their signs. They’re ready for Saturday, when La Salle plays Drexel in the Big 5 Classic.
“It’s stressful making sure they get rolled out at the right time,” said Mitchell, who’s also a center forward on the Explorers’ water polo team. “But I love seeing the way the students react. I have a couple friends who were sitting behind the rollout, and they’re blowing up my phone like, ‘What did it say?’ It’s just exciting.”
Perfectly Philly
Butler asked the La Salle security guard if he could talk to the priest, hoping he could ask for absolution. The priest was still steaming as Butler told him it was a misunderstanding. It was just some college kids making a joke, he said. The priest offered Butler penance: the Temple students could stay, but they had to hand over the rest of their banners.
But the Owls were going to clinch the Big 5 title that night, and the Cherry Crusade brought a rollout to celebrate it. Butler pleaded with the priest to allow them to keep that sign. He rolled it out to show the priest and security guard what it said. “Fine,” said the priest. The rollouts, once again, would not be banned. A perfectly Philly tradition lived on.
“There’s something in the Philly culture that rollouts hit a perfect vein,” Butler said. “The thing about people from here is that there is respect if you can dish it and you can take it. People love to twist that knife. When people did good rollouts against us, you were angry, but there was respect there.
“It’s making fun of people who appreciate it, but also hate it, and it gives you an opportunity to be a little bit of an a—. At the end of day, it’s all love. We all love Philly basketball, even though I’ll never root for St. Joe’s and I’ll never root for Villanova. But I still want them around. I want everyone to do well, so then the hate means something.”
In 1991, a Villanova coach whose team had risen to national prominence was vilified for killing the Big 5 when the association of Philadelphia’s Division I hoops programs moved away from its round-robin format to a scaled-down version.
Thirty-five years later, new Villanova coach Kevin Willard may soon face his Rollie Massimino moment.
“It’s not going to go away,” Willard said of the Big 5 in an interview over the summer. “I think there’s ways to make things better.
“I want to go through it and figure out what’s best for it.”
On Saturday, Villanova will play for a Big 5 Classic championship vs. Penn. But what’s best for Villanova probably isn’t what’s best for the other five schools, and what’s best for Penn, St. Joseph’s, or Temple might not be what’s best for La Salle or Drexel.
To be sure, the sport has changed greatly since 1991. The gap between Villanova and the other local programs has not just grown, it’s never been greater — with Jay Wright’s run of dominance and, more relevantly, the implementation of a payment structure in college sports. Villanova is the only Big 5 school in a power conference with a major television deal and probably can afford to spend more money on its men’s basketball roster than the other five Big 5 programs combined. It probably will be a 15-point favorite over Penn on Saturday in the title game.
The money is at the heart of all of this. Forget your grandfather’s Big 5; this isn’t even your older brother’s Big 5. There are myriad reasons why the rivalries themselves aren’t the same, and they have been covered ad nauseam over the years: Young people don’t attend college basketball games the way they used to, the teams haven’t been very good, the transfer portal era has created a culture of mercenaries who travel from school to school year after year, and so on.
Fran Dunphy, the man they call “Mr. Big 5,″ who still watches plenty of basketball in his retirement, had an entire row to himself at Glaser Arena for a large part of the La Salle home game vs. Villanova last month. The Palestra has been removed from the equation almost entirely. The Villanova-St. Joe’s rivalry won’t happen this season for the first time in nearly 30 years. All of that is to say things change and nothing lasts forever.
But the financial component of it is why the current format of the Big 5 in its nascent stages — in which the six teams are divided into two rotating pods before playing two pool games to determine which teams match up in first-, third-, and fifth-place games during the Big 5 Classic tripleheader — seems unlikely to last very long.
The House v. NCAA settlement that resulted in schools directly paying players has only increased the need for financial diligence.
Players warm up before the start of the Big 5 Classic games on Dec. 7, 2024.
Villanova has to be considering the merits of keeping together an aging tradition vs. the cost of doing so, and it shouldn’t be alone in its considerations.
Instead of taking a bus ride to Olney to play at La Salle and winning by 15 in a sleepy building, wouldn’t Villanova have been better off having a home game, even if that means spending something like $100,000 to have a lesser opponent come to Finneran Pavilion? Maybe it’s not a buy-game and is instead another opportunity to host a team like Pittsburgh, which Villanova will do on Dec. 13.
Regardless of the replacement opponent, the current format means Villanova could be missing out on essentially two home games. One is the automatic road game from the two pod-play contests, the other is the Big 5 Classic itself, which divvies the pot from ticket sales seven ways between the six schools and the building.
That’s hundreds of thousands of dollars in revenue Villanova isn’t bringing in. Sure, your reaction to that can be “boo-hoo,” but that could be the salary of a rotational player floating away for the sake of nostalgia.
“When you play 20 conference games, playing an [Atlantic 10] road game every year is really difficult,” Willard said in June. “You’re also taking away a home game when revenue has become extremely important.”
Which brings us to the other element of this, and why Villanova isn’t alone, even if the Main Line school again will be vilified publicly for whatever happens next to the Big 5 (if its competition, for example, ends up being something like a one-day-only event with rotating matchups).
Let’s take Drexel or La Salle, for example. What if instead of playing two of these three Big 5 games, those schools got $100,000 to fly to a high-major program? A few hundred thousand may be a rotational player at Villanova, but that’s a starter or two at either of the aforementioned schools.
It may be reductive to view all of this through that lens, but that’s the reality for these schools. Money is all that matters, and the toothpaste is out of the tube in that regard. There will be no going back, which means traditions, even new takes on them, can’t last forever.
The new Big 5 format breathed some life into one that was getting stale, but it was agreed upon before the House settlement. The six athletic directors soon will have to put their heads together and figure out the best path forward.
“Scheduling is as important as anything in college sports,” Willard said. “Scheduling is everything.”
Massimino felt something similar in the early ’90s, too. That much hasn’t changed, but the financial implications certainly have.
The third annual men’s Big 5 Classic returns to Xfinity Mobile Arena on Saturday. The event will feature the teams from the Division I Philadelphia schools, a tradition that has been around for more than 70 years.
The Villanova women are in the championship for the second consecutive year on Sunday at Finneran Pavilion in the women’s Big 5 Classic.
Here’s a look at the men’s and women’s Big 5 brackets:
Men’s bracket
Fifth place: Drexel vs. La Salle, 2 p.m. Saturday
Third place: St. Joseph’s vs. Temple, 4:30 p.m.
Championship: Penn vs. Villanova, 7:30 p.m.
All games will be broadcast on NBC Sports Philadelphia. The championship features two teams that are seeking their first Big 5 crown in the new format. This also is the teams’ first appearance in the championship game.
Both teams have first-year coaches, with Kevin Willard at Villanova and Fran McCaffery at Penn, and both won pod games by double digits to earn a spot in the final.
The men’s side tips off on Saturday for the third straight year, but there is one change in the matchups. For the first time since the format debuted, St. Joe’s will not be in the championship to defend its crown.
St. Joe’s will play Temple in a rematch of the 2023 title game for third place. St. Joe’s beat Drexel on Nov. 8 to begin pod play, setting up a showdown with Penn. The Quakers’ 83-74 upset win sent them to their first Big 5 championship game.
Temple returns to the third-place game for the second consecutive season. Coach Adam Fisher’s team defeated La Salle, 90-63, but was unable to beat Villanova in what essentially was a semifinal game. The Wildcats outscored the Owls by 17 in the second half for a 74-56 victory.
La Salle will take on Drexel in the fifth-place game . The Explorers lost to St. Joe’s in the championship last season but lost both of their pod games, to Temple (90-63 on Nov. 11) and Villanova (70-55 on Nov. 19) this season.
Drexel coach Zach Spiker uses a timeout to draw up some plays for his team against St. Joe’s on Nov. 8.
Drexel is in the fifth-place game for the third consecutive year after being added to the Big 5. The Dragons lost to St. Joe’s (76-65 on Nov. 8) and Penn (84-68 on Nov. 21) in pod play.
Women’s bracket
Fifth place: Penn vs. La Salle, noon Sunday
Third place: Drexel vs. Temple, 2:15 p.m.
Championship: St. Joe’s vs. Villanova, 4:30 p.m.
Temple entered the season on a mission to defend its Big 5 championship. Those aspirations were dashed after the Owls’ 88-58 loss to Villanova on Nov. 22 in a rematch of last year’s final.
Now the Wildcats will be playing in the main event on Sunday (all games on NBC Sports Philadelphia+ and the NBC Sports app) after losing a year ago. They will play St. Joe’s, which is a year removed from a third-place finish. The Hawks earned their way to the championship game after defeating Penn, 74-53, on Nov. 24 and beating Drexel, 57-55, five days later.
Temple’s loss to Villanova sends it to the third-place game against Drexel. The last time the teams played was Nov. 23, 2024, and the Owls won, 52-43.
Temple’s Tristen Taylor drives against Villanova’s MD Ntambue on Nov. 22.
The Dragons beat Penn, 72-55, on Nov. 3 and had the two-point loss to St. Joe’s on Saturday.
The first game of the day will feature La Salle and Penn. The Explorers are 5-2 but have yet to win a Big 5 pod game in the two seasons of the new format for the women. La Salle has lost its four pod games by an average of 17.8 points, and both of its losses this season are by double digits.
After finishing last in Big 5 play the previous two seasons, Penn men’s basketball is set to compete for a Big 5 Classic Championship inside Xfinity Mobile Arena on Dec. 6, following the Quakers’ 84-68 victory over Drexel on Friday.
Penn (3-2) was led by Ethan Roberts (30 points and 8 rebounds) and TJ Power (18 points). While Drexel (2-4) countered with its bench mob, outscoring the Quakers 40 to 10 at the substitutions table — led by Josh Reed’s 21 points on 9 of 14 shooting, a career high.
“It’s just exciting,” Roberts said. “We are just excited about the team in general, but even more so, having Coach Fran McCaffery here.”
Next, Penn will host Merrimack on Nov. 28 (4:30 p.m./ESPN) and Drexel faces Old Dominion on Sunday at home (2 p.m.).
Roberts set the tone, notching his second straight 30-point performance. He had a 31-point outburst in Penn’s victory over St Joe’s on Monday.
Roberts scored 11 of Penn’s first 19 points and finished the half with 19, with an efficient 8 of 12 shooting.
Penn forward Ethan Roberts dribbles the basketball against Drexel on Friday.
“It’s just a natural fit in coach McCaffery’s system,” Roberts said in reference to his hot start this year. “I work really hard, so there is an expectation that I get a little bit better each season.”
Bought in
Penn dominated the second half. The Quakers made 13 of 25 attempts (52%) and contained the Dragons to 30 points, as they made 10 of 26 shots from the field.
Drexel guard Kevon Vanderhorst shoots the ball against Penn forward TJ Power on Friday.
“These guys want to be coached,” McCaffery said. “They’re listening and they’re making appropriate changes, both individually and collectively.”
The Dragons’ starters scored only 28 of the team’s 68 points, with Eli Beard, Kevon Vanderhorst, and Shane Blakeney scoring 24 combined.
Drexel coach Zach Spiker believes his team wasn’t aggressive enough in response to the Quakers’ run-and-gun offense, commenting on the free-throw disparity. The Quakers made 22 of 28 attempts at the free-throw line, while Drexel went 7-for-17.
“We’ve got to do a better job of defending without fouling and then find a way to put that pressure on the other end,” Spiker said.
The scene Friday at Drexel was one that wasn’t supposed to happen, at least for some people.
When the Big 5’s organizers rearranged the pods for this season, they knew they were taking a risk. Splitting St. Joseph’s and Villanova took away a guaranteed contest of the city’s most famous rivalry for the first time since the 1997-98 season, but opened the door for an even bigger matchup in the title game.
At the time the decision was made — and that time was before last season’s Big 5 Classic, when the word first got out — there were enough reasons to believe the title game clash would happen.
Sure, Villanova was down, but not far enough down to not be favored against Temple and La Salle. Steve Donahue wasn’t gone from Penn yet, Billy Lange was far from gone from St. Joe’s, TJ Power was still at Virginia, and Xzayvier Brown was still on Hawk Hill.
Shuffling the pods really felt like two things at the time. A St. Joe’s-Penn-Drexel pod made the Hawks clear favorites on paper, while a Villanova-Temple-La Salle pod guaranteed the schools with the two biggest fan bases would face off. As long as the Hawks made the final, a matchup with Villanova or Temple would be intriguing — and good for the box office, too.
By the time the season tipped off, the scene looked totally different. And when the Hawks walked out of the Palestra on Monday on the losing end, the dream final was halfway to going up in smoke.
St. Joe’s needed a Drexel win, which would have left all three teams at 1-1. The tiebreaker is the NCAA’s NET rating, the first edition of which lands on Dec. 1 — the day Villanova hosts Temple in the last pod game of the season — and the Hawks would presumably have taken it. At Friday’s tipoff, they were No. 151 in Ken Pomeroy’s rankings to Drexel’s 249 and Penn’s 265.
Now the die is officially cast. Led by Power and Ethan Roberts, Penn never trailed against Drexel and ended up rolling to an 84-68 win at the Daskalakis Athletic Center. Roberts scored 30 points for his third 20-plus game of the year, and his second straight with 30; and Power continued to show his talents with 18.
Penn’s TJ Power shoots over Drexel’s Villiam Garcia Adsten during the first half.
The crowd on Market Street was lively and bipartisan, announced as 1,984 — a few hundred short of a full house, and not far from the lowly 2,384 crowd at St. Joe’s-Penn on Monday. Drexel’s student section turned out well, and at one point unfurled an old-fashioned rollout mocking Penn’s students for not showing up at the Palestra.
They had a point, and would have in many past years, too. But for this night, the atmosphere felt real.
“I think coming in as a transfer, you don’t completely understand the Big 5 hype until you play in those games,” said Power, whose former Duke teammate Jared McCain was in the stands with the Sixers off. “These past two games have been some of the most intense games I’ve played in, and for us to get to that championship [final] in coach’s first year, it’s a real feeling, I think. I’m looking forward to playing in that championship game.”
The action was not just intense, but good quality for two teams still getting to know themselves. Penn shot 50% from the floor and Drexel shot 42.2%. That doesn’t always happen in the City Series, a fact some long-timers might not want to admit while reminiscing about the old days.
(This writer, for example, has been scarred for 21 years by the 2004 Temple-Villanova game at the Palestra: a 53-52 Owls win where the teams missed a combined 80 of 120 shots.)
“Jared’s my best friend since my freshman year at Duke, and to have him in the city has been really cool,” Penn’s TJ Power (right) said of the Sixers’ Jared McCain (left).
The big picture
Does missing out on a St. Joe’s-Villanova final mean the risk wasn’t worth taking? The ticket sales for the Big 5 Classic on Dec. 6 will offer one verdict, and fans can decide if they want to offer another.
If there isn’t going to be a full round-robin, there shouldn’t be anything wrong with the principle of changing up the pods from time to time. This season was the first time that happened, and it’s expected that the new groups will run for two years as the first set did.
Was there a way to keep St. Joe’s and Villanova together in the first change? There weren’t many moves to make, since St. Joe’s and La Salle have to stay separate being in the same conference.
A St. Joe’s-Temple-Villanova pod obviously would not make sense. So the only other option besides the move they settled on — swapping Villanova and Drexel — would have put Villanova, St. Joe’s, and Drexel together. That would have sent the Wildcats to the city’s smallest gym in one of the two years, which felt unlikely this early in the pod system.
Drexel’s Ralph Akuta (right) dove for a loose ball in front of the Dragons’ student section as they held up a banner mocking Penn students for not showing up to their team’s games.
So it was understandable that the people in charge tried. A little uncertainty is no bad thing anyway, as it livens up the early-season slate. And though the Big 5 still feels stratified, the pod format also heightens the stakes of each game. One loss can tip the whole thing, as just happened to the Hawks.
It could happen again if Temple upsets Villanova on the Main Line. That would give us a ‘Nova-St. Joe’s game after all, just in the third-place game.
What the final will look like is a different question, but that’s not Penn’s problem for now. Coach Fran McCaffery, Power, and the rest can celebrate just getting there — and laying down a strong marker to start McCaffery’s tenure at his alma mater.
“When you come into a season, there are certain things that you hope to be able to accomplish collectively, and that clearly is one,” he said. “I think everybody knows the respect I have for the Big 5 and its history, and also for the level of talent and coaching in all the teams. We just beat two really good teams, two really well-coached teams, and then we’ll get to play another one.”
This time, it will be on the city’s biggest stage.
What Big 5 pods work? Reality limits the answer.
St. Joe's and La Salle can't be in the same pod since they're in the same conference.
It doesn't make sense to have Villanova, St. Joe's and Temple all on the same side.
