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.
Even at age 99, the Palestra still sees rare moments.
Saturday’s Penn-La Salle game marked the first time since the 2001-02 season that two teams formally in the Big 5 faced off in a regular-season nonconference game that didn’t count in the city standings.
When the tournament format started, five teams finally grew to six with Drexel’s inclusion. They agreed that they could schedule matchups outside the tournament pods, as long as they were willing to potentially meet again in the Big 5 Classic triple-header.
It didn’t happen in the tournament’s first two seasons, but it made sense that it would happen at some point. Scheduling nonconference games only ever gets harder for teams outside the elite, and Penn had room to fill in its Cathedral Classic four-team event on Thanksgiving weekend.
La Salle answered the call this season, while Fran Dunphy was still in charge on Olney Ave., and his close friend Steve Donahue was still in charge on 33rd Street. Their successors, Darris Nichols and Fran McCaffery, didn’t mind keeping the matchup when they took the jobs in the spring.
So there they were, staying in town for the holiday weekend, with Merrimack and Hofstra joining the field. The stands were far from filled, but there was some life in them — and there was lots of life on the court in Penn’s 73-71 win.
La Salle gave a great effort, earning a 44-38 halftime lead as much by outhustling Penn as by outscoring them. Though the Quakers shot 53.8% from the field in the frame, the Explorers outrebounded them at both ends of the floor to produce a 21-14 margin on the glass.
“We were just getting destroyed on the glass in the first half,” McCaffery said. “You can’t win basketball games like that. Give them credit for the energy level that they played with.”
La Salle’s Josiah Harris beats Penn’s Ethan Roberts (center) and Augustus Gerhart to the rim during Saturday’s first half.
In the second half, the Explorers grew their lead to 55-41 with 15 minutes, 21 seconds remaining, and it was 60-47 with 12:26 to go. From there, star transfer TJ Power and freshman Jay Jones led the big comeback. The Quakers edged ahead 68-66 with 3:56 left, and held on despite missing enough free throws for the Explorers to stay within one possession through the final seconds.
At the buzzer, it felt every bit like a Big 5 game even though it wasn’t one.
“I think you could see the intensity level displayed by both teams and that’s a credit to the individuals but also the coaching staffs for both programs,” McCaffery said. “The crowd was into it and was really good, and I think from that standpoint it makes great sense to do it.”
Power made his latest big impression with a game-high 29 points, including five three-pointers in the second half. But he said he was “most proud of” the mental side of the comeback.
2H (10:49) | La Salle 60, Penn 53
Turnovers leading to triples. All five buckets this half are from distance and TJ has four of them. TIME OUT, EXPLORERS!!#FightOnPenn 🔴🔵🏀 pic.twitter.com/qJsk1Z22oQ
“We work really hard on building our identity to be a winning team,” he said. “When we went down 14, all we were saying in the huddle is, like, ‘We win basketball games — there’s no doubt about that.’ We just knew we had to get stops, we made some adjustments on defense and then we got some momentum on offense.”
Jones’ role came after he subbed in for starting point guard AJ Levine with 12:09 to go, with Levine out of gas. Jones did not leave the court for the rest of the night, tallying seven points, two rebounds, one assist, and two steals in that span.
McCaffery said Jones’ work in practices against the starters earned the opportunity, and praised him for seizing it.
“He’s just been really good,” McCaffery said. “His attitude is great. He’s just a freshman, so it takes time, but he was really special tonight and I’m not surprised.”
Jay Jones (right) celebrates with TJ Power (center) after the final buzzer.
Nichols was understandably in a less happy mood, having been on the receiving end of it all. But the Explorers are clearly making progress, no matter their record.
“I don’t know if things are on the up — I’m down right now,” he said. But he quickly added it was easy to be “a prisoner of the moment, especially after wins and losses, and I tell my guys all the time the season’s long.”
He will no doubt take his own advice as he teaches it to his players.
“You can be poisoned by accomplishment, you can be down in the valley of disappointment, and both of them are bad,” Nichols said. “Just trying to understand that we’ve got to continue to get better, we’ve got to get some guys healthy, we’ve got to get guys playing better, and we’re just going to continue to work.”
It’s been four years since college athletes have been able to legally profit from their name, image, and likeness.
It’s been less than 10 years since those athletes could enter the NCAA’s transfer portal without needing to redshirt. Yet, it feels like so much of what transpires is taking shape in real time, not just for the students who partake, but also for the coaches, officials, and administrators who navigate it.
College sports, specifically revenue-generating college sports, have become a year-over-year proposition for coaches to find and retain talent. The latter has become even harder, given the trend of student-athletes initially recruited to big-time schools jumping ship after not receiving what they anticipated, often to mid-majors, and becoming big fish.
Conversely, student-athletes who have outkicked their scholarships at a mid-major can enter the portal for a fresh start at a power program — and potentially a substantial payday.
But it’s been fantastic the athlete. It’s why, according to Front Office Sports, nearly 4,000 players in men’s and women’s college basketball entered the most recent transfer portal, the highest number of players in a year in the history of the NCAA.
Truth Harris takes a few shots inside La Salle’s TruMark Financial Arena earlier this year. Harris joined the Explorers in the offseason, his fifth school in five years.
One of those players is Truth Harris, a graduate guard who followed new La Salle coach Darris Nichols after he succeeded Big 5 legend Fran Dunphy in March.
For Harris, 23, his fresh start with the Explorers was his third Division I program and his fifth school since 2020.
After his start at East Tennessee State, Harris, a Mt. Vernon, N.Y., native, who led Mount Vernon High School to a state title in 2017, spent two years at junior colleges, Pensacola State and Indian Hills Community College, where he starred. It afforded Harris a spot with Nichols at Radford ahead of the 2023 season — and he has been alongside him ever since.
While Harris sees these moves as opportunities, there are some within college sports who view them as exploitation and a lack of control by governing bodies.
Harris, who noted that his move to La Salle was paired with a five-figure sum through NIL opportunities, is why many students like him see the portal as a better way to navigate a college career.
“It was always going to get to this eventually,” Harris said in a sit-down with The Inquirer this summer. “I feel like students do deserve the recognition, do deserve the money. As student-athletes, we do go through a lot. We push our limits. We have to get paid for that. So, yeah, I think [the new reality of college sports is] right where it should be.”
This season’s top earners likely would agree. The highest paid hooper, BYU guard AJ Dybantsa, is earning $4.4 million this year, according to On3’s NIL valuations. The top 10 earners in men’s college basketball, according to that list, stand to make over $1 million this season.
It’s a far cry from the days in which the guarantee of a college scholarship was the allure.
These days, that comes standard.
Student-athletes are guided by the promise of a payday, with the masses who continue to jump into the transfer portal serving as proof.
BYU forward AJ Dybantsa (3) is the highest earner in college basketball, with a valuation of $4.4 million this season.
‘It’s not that hard, really’
Instructions on how to enter the NCAA’s transfer portal are available on the NCAA’s website. Once a player decides to go, though, there’s a bit of unknown. But if you’re a proven talent, it’s pretty straightforward, Harris says.
“When you enter the transfer portal, you don’t know what’s going to happen,” he said. “If we are saying if there’s stress [involved], I would say that’s the bad stress? But at the same time, when you start hearing from schools and hearing those schools out, it does ease you down a bit more.
“The hardest decision is picking the right school, picking the right option for you. And that all goes into [questions like], ‘Is the team good? What’s the coaching like? What’s their history, their culture?’ It’s about making sure they want you for the right things and you’ll be a good fit there. But once you do it once, it’s not that hard, really.”
Perhaps what causes little concern for student-athletes freely moving from school to school is that many are moving with general studies majors, or, in Harris’ case, chasing a master’s degree. He’s working on a master’s in communications, a degree he noted as “a well-known major that a lot of schools carry.”
La Salle’s Truth Harris is working on his master’s in communications, a popular degree he says has made it easier for him to change schools as much as he has.
In Step 1 of the NCAA’s guide to transferring schools, a line reads: “Your new school should help you satisfy both your academic and athletic goals.” However, graduation rates for athletes reflect the lack of emphasis on academics.
“I think we’ve opened up two different cans of worms. When we opened up the transfer portal and NIL at the same time, it became chaotic,” said Nichols, who added that fluctuating graduation rates and the impact it has on schools being treated like a revolving door isn’t being talked about enough.
“I think that if we’re about student-athletes graduating, we should be focused on retention and doing what’s best for both parties. Everybody’s talking about the money situation, but, to me, let’s clean up the situation of these student-athletes transferring so much but making sure they still graduate.”
However, according to the NCAA Division I Academic Progress Rates, a metric that is supposed to hold institutions accountable for the academic performance of student-athletes, graduation rates for men’s basketball players hovered around 83% as of the 2025 season — though that did have a 4% decline since last year.
La Salle men’s basketball coach Darris Nichols says graduation rates aren’t being talked about enough in the era of the transfer portal and NIL.
“I think that there are just some challenges people don’t talk about,” Nichols said. “If you’re a player that’s transferring every year, are all your credits rolling over, so you’re actually eligible? Something as simple as uniforms, think about it: you bring in nine new players every year, you’ve got to get nine new uniforms. And for people who say, ‘Well, why don’t you just not put their names on the back,’ every one of them comes in different sizes, and [a player] can be number 0 to 99.
“So it’s not just about the cost of NIL for potential players, it’s about operating costs, budgets, revenue. Everybody’s talking about NIL, but there are the little things that go into all this change.”
Still, to Nichols, a former Division I star at West Virginia whose playing days preceded NIL, players should be compensated. That’s not the issue. The issue is the time coaches spend trying to field winning teams every season in what’s essentially a free-agent market.
“You’re constantly trying to get kids to buy in,” he said. “When I was playing, it was a buy-in for four years. And now it’s buy-in for a year. Look, we’re not in a position to try to hold anybody back. If you play here, you do well, and you want to go elsewhere, I get it. But as a staff, we do our utmost to just have honest conversations with [our players] about the new landscape of athletics and not try to hide behind it.”
Darris Nichols (right) says open communication about expectations is all a program can do when it comes to the the transfer portal process.
It’s impossible to hide when the data is so stark in that most schools, especially mid-majors, will see significant movement across their programs each year, especially in revenue-generating sports like football and basketball.
Across the NCAA’s 364 Division I programs, 1,156 undergraduate transfer portal entrants found new homes in men’s basketball alongside 384 graduate entrants this past offseason. In women’s basketball, 720 undergrads found new homes alongside 344 graduate students.
On the men’s side alone, that averages out to four players a coach would need to replace on their roster — solely from transfers — before entering the 2025-26 season.
Men’s basketball coaches needed to replace an average of four players after transfer portal movement last season.
For players like Harris, who stands to graduate from La Salle after his five-year journey, he’s happy to have benefited from this new reality.
“It’s just a better feeling,” Harris said. “You’re more relaxed. You can do more things for yourself without having to ask your mother and ask your parents for money all the time. I feel like it’s a relief off my parents to know they don’t worry about me [financially]. They’re not worried if I’m good or not because they know I am.
“So if you’re asking me? Yeah, I think it’s a reality that’s right where it should be.”
Growing up in Radford, Va., basketball games between Darris and Shane Nichols almost always ended in a fight.
Shane is two years older than Darris and was stronger and faster when they were kids. The brothers were ultracompetitive, but the tone shifted when they began to play organized basketball. The fights stopped, and they focused on pushing each other on the court.
Darris and Shane went on to play college basketball at West Virginia and Wofford, respectively, before shifting to the sidelines. They made multiple stops at different schools as assistant coaches but never overlapped in their first decade as coaches.
That was until Darris was named Radford’s head coach in 2021 and he brought Shane with him. The pair led the Highlanders to multiple 20-win seasons, before Darris earned a new opportunity at La Salle and was named its head coach in March. Shane followed again as the associate head coach. The brothers, now in the City of Brotherly Love, are ready to lead the Explorers back to success behind a culture built on toughness.
La Salle coach Darris Nichols conducts practice at John E. Glaser Arena on Nov. 14.
“We value toughness before anything,” Darris said. “I think that when you have a common [theme] in college basketball where guys just leave after every year or two years, it’s hard to build toughness. So you got to recruit to it. And I think we’ve done a pretty good job of that in Year 1. So that’s kind of in our philosophy of getting in the right direction.”
The brothers had similar coaching paths. Darris and Shane went overseas to play professionally following their college careers, but that time was short-lived.
Darris injured both knees and Shane also got banged up. Their post-playing days were unceremonious at first, with Darris working as a valet and Shane at a sales job.
Shane missed basketball and spent time coaching at Radford High School, his alma mater, before returning to Radford University in 2010 as an assistant coach. Darris turned to his West Virginia coach Bob Huggins and joined his staff as a graduate assistant in 2010.
The brothers spent the next 10 years building their profiles as assistant coaches at multiple schools. They made sure to consistently stay in touch during the season and would bounce ideas off each other and learn more about players the other may have faced.
La Salle head coach Darris Nichols had multiple 20-win seasons in his four years at Radford University.
“We talked every day,” Darris said. “Most of the time it was about, ‘Have you seen this player? What do you know about this? Can you send me this guy’s contact info?’ It was a lot of that going on.”
Darris also jokingly tried his luck with poaching future NBA All-Star Ja Morant from Shane when his older brother was at Murray State, and he was at Florida.
“When he was at Murray State, they had Ja Morant, and I called him and I said, ‘Hey, man, I’m trying to get Ja Morant to transfer.’ He said he wasn’t going to do a transfer.”
Darris earned the head coaching job at Radford after six seasons as an assistant at Florida. Shane was coaching at Murray State at the time, and the Racers had won three straight regular-season conference championships with him on staff. Still, the decision to join forces with his brother back home was a no-brainer.
“I wanted to come help my brother be successful, and I felt like there was nobody else in the profession that could help him do that more than me,” Shane said. “That’s just because I got his back. He can trust me, and I’m going to work hard to make sure he is successful.”
The brothers spent the next four seasons building the Radford program together.
Radford won 21 games in 2022-23 and 20 games in 2024-25. Darris and Shane won 68 games in their four years with the Highlanders, but a new opportunity presented itself this past offseason.
The Nichols brothers replaced La Salle and Big 5 legendary coach Fran Dunphy, who retired after returning to coach his alma mater in 2022.
La Salle’s head coaching job was open following the retirement of Fran Dunphy, and Darris got the offer to fill the role. The move offered a change and new challenge in his eyes, so he made the move up to 20th and Olney. Shane followed suit.
“It was cool opportunity because most of the college jobs that I’ve been at have been in college towns or small towns,” Darris said. “So I wanted something different. Let’s coach in the college city.”
The brothers are taking over an Explorers program that has not won more than 20 games or the Big 5 title since the 2012-13 season. Darris and Shane crafted a natural family feel at Radford and are looking to do the same at La Salle.
“Throughout the years with the teams we’ve had is just being able to mold and really build them, and they take on our mentality to the game,” Shane said. “You see it toward the middle and end of the year where they buy into the toughness piece. They buy into the togetherness piece. Right now, our guys are doing that. We just got to keep molding that, building that, and making it stronger.”
Bernadette McGlade is retiring from her role as commissioner of the Atlantic 10 conference, which includes Big 5 programs St. Joseph’s and La Salle, at the end of the 2025-26 school year.
McGlade, the longest-serving commissioner in conference history, oversaw the A-10’s growth into one of the premier mid-major basketball conferences, bolstered by the additions of George Mason, Virginia Commonwealth, Davidson, and Loyola-Chicago.
After 45 years as a college sports administrator, McGlade said the changes in the college athletics landscape motivated her to retire, to pave the way for a new figure to lead the conference through the next stage of evolution.
Atlantic 10 Commissioner Bernadette V. McGlade to Retire Following the 2025-26 Academic Year
As a basketball-centric conference, A-10 institutions are adapting to the name, image, and likeness era, but McGlade said Thursday that the conference’s outlook and approach toward NIL is “tremendously positive.”
“In basketball, I think we’re set up well because we’ve had the commitment from all of our institutions that they are going to step up at whatever level it takes for them to be able to remain nationally relevant,” McGlade said.
“That’s what it takes. You have to have the commitment institutionally, not only from a staffing standpoint, but the ability to have the infrastructure, the financial backing, the ability to schedule nationally, to recruit, and then to be able to provide your student athletes with the opportunities through NIL that every student athlete, quite frankly, is looking for today.”
Scheduling Power Four opponents is becoming increasingly difficult for the conference, harming its ability to remain a multi-bid league in March Madness, another obstacle the new commissioner will need to tackle.
On both the men’s and women’s side, McGlade says a new commissioner will need to contend with having its schools play others in Power 4 conferences.
McGlade is confident that given the member schools’ willingness to play “any time, anywhere,” that the conference will still find success in the future, but expressed interest in maintaining incentives for schools to schedule challenging mid-major opponents.
The NCAA has repeatedly considered expanding the tournament beyond its current 68 teams, but has not yet made the decision to do so. Just one men’s team from the A-10 made the tournament in 2025, the tournament champion VCU, who received an automatic bid.
McGlade is hopeful in the years to come that the NCAA will reach a position of greater stability with the structure of NIL and player payments, which will put the schools on closer financial footing.
The A-10 Presidents’ Council will begin the search for a new commissioner in January. When asked about the most important trait for the conference’s next leader, McGlade said it’s important for the new commissioner to have a clear idea of what the direction of the A-10 should be.
“You have to be resilient,” McGlade said. “In this business, there are a lot of great things … Being able to see those opportunities and take advantage of them when you have the chance to advance your membership, and the goals and the values that you have set for the league is really important.”
There was a small sequence midway through the second half of Villanova’s 70-55 victory over La Salle in John Glaser Arena on Wednesday night that showed the allure of Kevin Willard’s small-ball lineup.
Matt Hodge was being guarded by La Salle’s 7-foot backup center, Bowyn Beatty. After a La Salle turnover, Hodge caught a pass on the wing as Villanova looked to quickly set up its offense. Hodge, a redshirt freshman, was 3-for-5 from three-point range at that point. So when he pumped, Beatty bit.
Hodge then drove past the big man in no time, en route to a two-handed slam that extended Villanova’s lead to 16.
Hodge, in his fifth college basketball game, scored a game-high 17 points and led the Wildcats with 35 minutes in their victory. He went 7-for-9 from the floor and is up to 12.6 points per game. More important, though, for Villanova’s long-term development, a healthy Tafara Gapare, who has missed time with a foot injury, allowed Willard to go to his small-ball lineup with Hodge and Gapare in the frontcourt.
Willard raved before the season about the different styles of play his personnel afforded him. It’s most apparent in Hodge, who starts at power forward, and senior Duke Brennan, the starting center. Brennan continued his gritty start to the season with eight points and 13 rebounds, five on the offensive glass, in just 22 minutes. He leads the nation with 14.4 rebounds per game.
“A shot goes up and you think you got a one-shot stop and he comes up with it,” La Salle coach Darris Nichols said of Brennan.
“They’re a hard guard.”
Especially given the versatility. Much has been made about this new-look Villanova team’s guard play. Redshirt-sophomore Bryce Lindsay entered the game averaging 23 points in Villanova’s first four games, but La Salle held him to just 10; freshman Acaden Lewis is starting to assert himself more; Devin Askew has shown flashes; and Tyler Perkins has been as steady as it gets.
But it was Villanova’s forwards and its ability to play smaller at times that had a major impact.
“When you have five guys out that can shoot the basketball and drive it, it opens up a lot of opportunities,” Willard said.
Villanova forward Duke Brennan, shown against Duquesne on Saturday, leads the NCAA in rebounding average.
Aside from Beatty, La Salle (2-3) is a relatively smaller team, and Willard said his small-ball unit — Hodge is 6-8, and Gapare is 6-9 — gives his team “opportunities to match up” with smaller teams that do more switching.
Bigger teams and bigger games are on the horizon for the 4-1 Wildcats. Willard pointed at future Top 25 opponents like Michigan, Wisconsin, Connecticut, and St. John’s having much bigger lineups. His frontcourt’s versatility will enable him to “maybe throw a curveball at them offensively or defensively. … I think it really helps.”
Hodge playing at this level makes it all easier, too. He was forced to sit out last season after being ruled academically ineligible, but through five games he is showing why he was a four-star prospect out of St. Rose High School in Belmar, N.J.
“It felt good, a good win for the team,” Hodge said.
Hodge, Willard said, has “been as solid as anybody.”
“I think he’s getting a little bit more comfortable with how we’re trying to play, and also being back, it’s much different from practice,” Willard said. “He’s worked really hard to put himself in this position.”
Villanova guard Bryce Lindsay, shown against Duquesne on Saturday, is the team’s leading scorer though five games.
Still, there’s more to be desired apparently. Hodge was the topic of conversation in the media room postgame, so it was worth asking how his defense was coming along.
“Oh, it’s horrible,” Willard said.
Matt?
“Work to do,” Hodge said before his coach replied: “Good answer.”
Where do you need the work most?
“Never give that answer,” Willard interjected. “Never give the weakness.”
Hodge might be a redshirt-freshman, but he finished this sequence like a senior: “No comment.”
Like everything else in November in this sport, it’s a work in progress.
