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.
“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.”
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.”
“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.
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.’”
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.
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.”
