Villanova leaned on sixth man Devin Askew’s team-high 20 points to defeat Providence, 87-73, on Friday night at Finneran Pavilion.
Villanova (16-5, 7-3 Big East) shot 47% from three-point range in the first half to build a 17-point cushion. Askew went 4-for-5 from three and scored 17 first-half points. He now has four games with 20 or more points off the bench this season.
“[We are] trying to get [Devin] to play off his strengths ever since he’s now kind of back to strength,” said Villanova coach Kevin Willard. “He had a great week of practice. I think that was the big thing. I think everybody did. We had three really good days of practice, and that’s the way he played for the last three days.”
Askew, who suffered a major knee sprain over the summer, is averaging 15.8 points in his last six games. He missed about two months of practice as the team prepared to open the season.
Villanova coach Kevin Willard reacts in the second half against Providence on Friday.
“I feel really good out there,” Askew said when asked about his health. “But just like always, I still have some work to do. Still got to get better every day.”
Junior guard Tyler Perkins scored 19 points, marking his fifth consecutive game in double digits. He shot 6-for-11 from the field, including 3-for-6 from three-point range.
“I just [have] been in the gym,” Perkins said. “We have a great strength coach in [Justin McClelland], and he gets us better every day, especially in the summer. We do ‘Strong Man,’ and that’s a big part of just being in shape and getting your body right for the season. So it’s just a testament to the coaching staff that we have around us.”
Villanova shot 51% from the field and made a conference-high 13 three-pointers (45%).
Villanova scored 20 fast break points to Providence’s two. Askew and Perkins were a main reason why Villanova was successful on fast break opportunities.
“We’re a really good transition team,” Perkins said. “We got a bunch of good shooters like Devin, Bryce [Lindsay], so if we get out and run, we got a good opportunity to score.”
Villanova guard Tyler Perkins gathers teammates Bryce Lindsay, Duke Brennan, and Acaden Lewis against Providence on Jan. 30.
Villanova forced Providence (9-13, 2-9) into 10 first-half turnovers, including seven steals, three by freshman guard Acaden Lewis. Villanova scored 15 first-half points off those forced turnovers.
The Wildcats currently rank 36th in KenPom’s defensive ratings after the win over Providence.
Slow second half
Despite being a strong second-half team, Villanova came out flat. The Wildcats missed their first ten field goal attempts, allowing Providence to cut its deficit to eight points.
“I think the defensive end we kind of gave, [Stefan Vaaks], he’s good,” Willard said. “He’s a pro with his size and the way he shoots it. We left him [open] twice to start the second half, and kind of gave them nine points and let them right back into the game. So I thought we did a much better job of just sitting down, defending.”
Villanova forward Matt Hodge shoots a three-pointer against Providence guard Stefan Vaaks, who finished a game-high 25 points, on Friday.
Vaaks, a 6-foot-7 freshman guard, finished with a game-high 25 points
In the final 11 minutes of play, however, Villanova went 12-for-13 from the field, which included an 11-1 scoring run.
“They don’t fold,” said Providence coach Kim English. “They stick to that process. We guarded them [well] to start the second half. They didn’t score for a long time to start, think it was like 20% or something. But they stuck with their process. They’re a really good shot quality team, and that’s what it takes. Paint decisions was the game.”
Villanova will host Seton Hall (15-6, 5-5) on Wednesday (6:30 p.m., Peacock). In its last meeting, Villanova beat Seton Hall, 64-56, to pick up a Quad 1 win in the NCAA NET Rankings. This time, it would be a possible Quad 2 victory. This season, Villanova is 3-4 in Quad 1 wins and 2-1 in Quad 2.
We hear often that it’s good to run things in life like a business. It’s said especially loudly about women’s sports, in Philadelphia and elsewhere.
So let’s do that.
The 21,490 fans who packed Xfinity Mobile Arena for Friday’s Unrivaled basketball showcase clearly had business on their minds. It was the largest announced attendance in arena history, helped by Unrivaled’s three-on-three court being smaller than regulation, and it was full of wallets.
They were opened often, to buy T-shirts, hats, hoodies, hot dogs, and all the fancier food and drinks on offer these days.
The crowd roared for hometown heroes Natasha Cloud and Kahleah Copper, but not just for them. Paige Bueckers, Kelsey Plum, Chelsea Gray, and Marina Mabrey also drew big cheers.
Kahleah Copper during player introductions before the Rose game against the Lunar Owls in Game 2 of the Philly is Unrivaled doubleheader on Friday.
“I think it was awesome to see them come out and support us like that,” Mabrey said after scoring an Unrivaled game record 47 points in the Lunar Owls’ 85-75 win over Rose. “I don’t know what I expected, but I didn’t realize it was going to be so much hype around it and so much support.”
There was celebrity wattage from Wanda Sykes, Leslie Jones, Freeway, and Jason and Kylie Kelce. Dawn Staley was in the front row, of course. The 76ers’ Tyrese Maxey, Kyle Lowry, Andre Drummond, Trendon Watford, and Dominick Barlow had courtside seats too.
They all helped answer a question that’s been simmering in town for a while.
At any business school, they’ll teach you that the most fundamental rule of economics is supply and demand. But how can you prove there’s demand when there’s no supply in the first place?
One way, for sure, is to not try in the first place. That was the case with women’s basketball in Philadelphia for 28 years, the time between the end of the Philadelphia Rage in 1998 and now. It’s mostly been the case with women’s soccer since the Independence folded in 2011, though at least the U.S. national team visits every few years.
Yet Philadelphia has now set two women’s sports attendance records in recent years. In 2019, Lincoln Financial Field hosted 49,504 fans for a U.S. women’s soccer game, and that’s still the largest crowd for a standalone home friendly. On Friday, the arena across 11th Street hosted the largest crowd to watch a regular-season professional women’s basketball game.
Another path to travel invokes another rule of economics. In a free market, shouldn’t someone be able try something? If they fail, so be it, and if they succeed, they profit.
The people who brought Unrivaled here, and those who will bring a WNBA team here in 2030, chose the second road.
‘It wasn’t a charity event’
On the day in October when Unrivaled announced it would come here, Comcast Spectacor chief financial officer Blair Listino watched her phone light up with notifications of ticket sales.
A Phantom fan cheers the team during its game against Breeze.
“While we were sitting there waiting for the [announcement] event to happen,” she told The Inquirer, “7,000 tickets were sold within the first few hours of the event being on sale. So right then and there, I knew, ‘OK, there is demand.’”
Listino also is an alternate governor of the Flyers. She was the team’s CFO from 2019 to 2023 and has worked for Comcast in a range of finance-related capacities since 2011. So she has plenty of experience with measuring what Philadelphia sports fans want — and with making hard business deals.
“We worked with Unrivaled management, and we treated it like any other event,” she said. “It wasn’t a charity event; we didn’t give them a sweetheart deal. It was a true rental agreement where we said, ‘We believe in you, we think that you’ll be able to sell out this building, and we’ll all be profitable from it.’”
That made it, she said, “good business sense for both us and Unrivaled.”
Philadelphia welcomes Paige Bueckers to the floor:
It was not just based on Jen Leary, the founder of Watch Party PHL, holding events and selling out of “Philly Is A Women’s Sports Town” T-shirts for over a year. Or Chivonn Anderson opening Marsha’s, a women’s sports bar on South Street. Or any number of people on social media, or in this reporter’s inbox, or so on.
No, this was Philadelphia’s biggest company believing that women’s sports can be profitable in its city. And now there’s proof.
Along with that, an Unrivaled spokesperson told The Inquirer on Saturday that the night delivered $2 million in revenue to the league, including over $1 million in ticket sales and $400,000 in merchandise sales at the arena.
“I think when choosing a market that doesn’t necessarily have a team, but there’s demand, you take a leap of faith into your decision,” said Cloud, whose Phantom beat Breeze, 71-68. “And Unrivaled chose the right city, the right sports town, and the right fan base.”
The crowd returned the favor many times over Friday, bringing the Broomall native to tears in a postgame interview on court.
“You just give us the opportunity to actually do it,” North Philadelphia’s Copper said. She recalled playing a WNBA preseason game in Toronto with the Chicago Sky in 2023 in front of a sellout crowd at the city’s NBA arena. That moment lit a spark that led to the Toronto Tempo, an expansion team that will tip off this year.
“How they were able to kind of lead up and have that build up, I think it’s kind of the same,” she said. “And I think the city has been wanting it. So this is a good introduction, and we’ll give them something to look forward to.”
It’s not just the local products who’ve felt that. Players from elsewhere who are used to big crowds at their games were excited to be part of a first here.
“Kudos to Alex [Bazzell], our president, and the whole league having ‘Tash’ and ‘Kah’ be spokespersons for this amazing city,” said Breeze’s Cameron Brink, who played collegiately for Stanford and is now with the WNBA’s Los Angeles Sparks. “Kah has done so much for women’s basketball in this city and the resources that are now available. I’m just proud that we saw that this is a city that wants to cheer on women’s basketball — so hopefully there’s more of it in the future.”
Cameron Brink leaps past Natasha Cloud (right) during the first quarter of the Breeze-Phantom game.
Brink grew up in Princeton, N.J., and her parents played college basketball at Virginia Tech. She moved to the Portland, Ore., suburbs at age 8, but heard plenty of stories from her mother, Michelle, about the East Coast.
“I was talking with her the other day — she’s like, ‘I honestly can’t believe women’s basketball has gotten to this point,’” Brink said. “I mean, we’ve always believed, but it’s really special that we get to soak in this moment. So I just think back to the women before me, and I’m just thankful for how they paved the way.”
Kate Martin of Unrivaled’s Breeze has played for Iowa and the WNBA’s Golden State Valkyries, both of which draw huge crowds to every game. She knew Philadelphia doesn’t have that track record, so she was excited to be part of a first.
“I think it’s really important for young girls to be able to see people that they want to be like,” Martin said. “I think it’s important for them to be able to see if they want to be a women’s basketball player, to see that in their city, and be able to have access to going to a game.”
Kate Martin in action Friday.
Friday’s spectacle undoubtedly will push Unrivaled to take more of its games on the road next season, and they may well come back here. There might not be another full house with the novelty factor gone, and one night in 2026 doesn’t mean the future WNBA team will sell out all of its games years later.
Nor does it mean that what’s true today was true in past years, when Cloud and Copper weren’t yet big names.
But it does mean there’s demand for a product right now, and that it can make money right now. Philadelphia finally got an opportunity, and took it.
However, Mannion did serve as the offensive coordinator for the West team during the East-West Shrine Bowl game earlier this week. While the play-calling and offensive structure was largely simplistic due to the environment of college players trying to showcase their skills for NFL scouts, the game film provides some clues on what Mannion’s vision for an offense may look like.
Here’s a look at some of the influences Mannion may draw from ahead of his first NFL play-calling opportunity next season, and where Grizzard’s concepts could have an impact:
Under-center runs and play-action
The Mannion-led offense in the Shrine Bowl moved up and down the field in a 21-17 win over the East team, with the majority of the 72 offensive snaps coming from under-center. One frequent play call was play-action, specifically bootlegs where the quarterback would roll to the left or right after faking the handoff, effectively moving the pocket.
The play-action bootlegs are staples for Matt LaFleur, Kyle Shanahan, and Sean McVay-led offenses. They typically give the quarterback two or three options, with a flat route from the front or backside tight end and a crossing route from the backside receiver. The tight wide receiver alignments Mannion had his Shrine Bowl receivers in are a direct comparison to LaFleur’s offense, which utilizes a lot of tight wide receiver splits. Packers quarterback Jordan Love had the fifth-highest play-action rate in the NFL in 2025.
New #Eagles OC Sean Mannion has never called plays in an NFL game, but was the OC for the West team at the Shrine Bowl earlier this week. While most of the offensive install were fairly simple, there's some Matt LaFleur and Kyle Shanahan influences in the small sample size.… pic.twitter.com/At7YvzPNkI
Beyond play-action bootlegs, Mannion also dialed up more traditional play-action passes, and incorporated a concept similar to dagger, where a deep crossing vertical route occupies the safety and allows for a deep intermediate middle-of-the-field route to be run right behind it.
Several teams run the passing concept, but the 49ers and Vikings run it from under-center and on play-action throws more frequently than the Rams or Packers. Mannion spent two seasons of his playing career being coached by McVay and his final year playing quarterback was with the Vikings in 2023, under Kevin O’Connell.
Would like to see Sean Mannion bring some of this playcalling to the #Eagles as well. Big play-action here in 12 personnel during the Shrine Bowl and Mark Gronowski hits the deep dig route with the slot receiver clearing out on a crosser.
From a running game perspective, in the limited plays from the Shrine Bowl, Mannion seemed to draw on Shanahan’s run game philosophy. The first example was the inside toss play, which allows a running back to get downhill quickly. It’s also a play Mike McDaniel took with him to Miami and will likely now implement with Chargers.
Again, this is only observations from Sean Mannion's playcalling at the East-West Shrine Bowl since he doesn't have NFL playcalling experience, but the new #Eagles OC used a run scheme staple from Kyle Shanahan, utilizing the inside run toss a few times on Tuesday night. pic.twitter.com/cge0yBr1Sj
The other example was under-center power scheme runs, which pull the backside guard across the formation with the fullback kicking out the playside edge defender. Kyle Juszczyk had the most run blocking snaps among fullbacks in 2025, according to Pro Football Focus.
The Eagles tried to do more fullback runs last season, so Cameron Latu could be an option to fill a similar role as Juszczyk should Mannion decide to utilize more fullback run-blocking schemes.
Saw more run-game influence from Kyle Shanahan when new #Eagles OC Sean Mannion called plays for the West team during the Shrine Bowl. 49ers use a lot of FB run elements, and Mannion used that from under-center during the Shrine Bowl, primarily running power run schemes during… pic.twitter.com/zm3SFeVan6
During the Shrine Bowl game, Mannion also mixed in some outside zone run schemes from under-center to keep the defense honest. Outside zone runs are big staples of the McVay and Shanahan offenses.
Mannion and Grizzard employ similar concepts
The Packers last season threw out routes at one of the highest rates in the NFL last season. Could that become a staple for the Eagles in 2026?
During the Shrine Bowl game, Mannion called at least three passing concepts that required the outside receivers to run out-breaking routes toward the sideline, and two of them were completed for first downs. Throwing such routes require timing and accuracy, because mislocating the football gives defensive backs a chance to break on the football.
In the limited sample size from the Shrine Bowl game on Tuesday, new #Eagles OC Sean Mannion dialed up out routes at least three times in the game, and two the passes were completed along the sideline. Would imagine this could be a part of the offense next season. https://t.co/8sCT4wGWGFpic.twitter.com/DU7vv0aclL
During the Shrine Bowl game, Mannion also called mesh concepts twice, an approach that has two receivers running shallow crossing routes across the field going opposite directions, and a route sitting over the ball behind the two receivers. It could also include the running back releasing from the backfield on a wheel route.
Grizzard ran mesh quite a bit as the Buccaneers’ offensive coordinator in 2025. The passing concept can beat both man and zone coverages and is difficult to defend if defenders end up chasing the crossing routes.
With Josh Grizzard as the new #Eagles PGC, I wonder if they run mesh passing concepts like he did as the #Bucs OC. During the Shrine Bowl game, Sean Mannion called Mesh twice, including mesh rail, which is shown on the Bucs TD attached to this. https://t.co/RyX6jsz8mVpic.twitter.com/Fop4oRsRff
Grizzard also utilized a lot of screens in the passing game in Tampa, getting the ball in the hands of Bucky Irving, Emeka Egbuka and others behind the line of scrimmage. The first offensive play that Mannion called in the Shrine Bowl was a tight end screen. The screen game is also a staple in LaFleur’s offense, though the Green Bay coach is far more creative in presenting them.
Tackling Bucky, never easy.
Bucs love this escort screen, having a lot of success running it for Bucky with Cade doing the dirty work pic.twitter.com/MBCbY6NgI7
While the Shrine Bowl gave a glimpse into Mannion’s influences from LaFleur, McVay, and Shanahan, how the Eagles’ offense looks in their season-opener is a mystery. Leaning into more under-center play-action and moving the pocket with Jalen Hurts seem like logical additions to an Eagles offense that struggled with their identity in 2025.
Adding in an experienced playcaller like Grizzard into the fold can help give the Eagles some formational advantages and add less predictability to the offense. More pre-snap motion seems to be in the cards too. The Packers ranked eighth in motion rate and the Buccaneers ranked ninth, according to Sharp Football Analysis.
One thing is likely: the Eagles offense will be modernized and look vastly different from the previous iterations under Nick Sirianni.
The crowd inside Xfinity Mobile Arena for Philly is Unrivaled already was high-energy. Then Marina Mabrey brought the house down with an Unrivaled-record 47 points in the second game of the doubleheader.
The Belmar, N.J., native plays in Connecticut and has no real connection to Philadelphia, but the crowd went crazy for every three-pointer like she was one of their own.
“I brought my Jersey to Philly, and I hope that you guys enjoyed it,” Mabrey said. “Thank you for welcoming me with open arms.”
Friday’s Unrivaled doubleheader at Xfinity Mobile Arena was the first time the three-on-three league had left its Miami-area home. Unlike the WNBA or NBA, the teams are not tied to a specific city or region. That makes the league a fascinating “social experiment,” TV analyst Renee Montgomery said.
Unrivaled is driven by fans’ love for players and for the game, Rose BC’s Lexie Hull said. A number of the 21,490 fans in the building came in repping their favorite players across the women’s basketball world, with plenty of love for superstar Paige Bueckers and Philly locals Natasha Cloud and Kahleah Copper, or in T-shirts declaring that “Everyone Watches Women’s Sports” or that “Philly is a Women’s Sports Town.”
“Philly is a basketball city,” Montgomery said. “… I think there’s certain cities that lean in and they don’t just halfway do anything, and I feel like Philly is that type of city. They see that Unrivaled chose this place to be the first one, and Philly’s like, ‘Bet, let’s show out.’ That’s what it felt like to me.”
The neutral crowds make Unrivaled a different environment in the pro sports landscape, but neutral didn’t mean there was any less passion.
“One thing I know about Philly is, it’s really passionate about its sports, good and bad, through and through, the City of Brotherly Love,” Bueckers said. “You feel that, and we felt that tonight, just how passionate they were and are about women’s basketball.”
Philadelphia has never been home to a WNBA franchise, and was home to an American Basketball League franchise for just two years before the team folded in 1998. But with an expansion franchise set to come to Philadelphia in 2030, Unrivaled’s sold-out crowd at Xfinity Mobile Arena was just a taste of Philly’s appetite for women’s professional basketball.
Hull said she hoped to see Unrivaled continue to thrive in that niche, serving markets like Philadelphia that don’t have WNBA franchises yet. Unrivaled’s Philly tour stop set the record for most fans at a regular-season professional women’s basketball game, and a building record for Xfinity Mobile Arena.
“With the growth of the sport, there’s just so many people that want to see it live and don’t have the opportunity to fly to a [WNBA] city and watch a game during the season,” Hull said. “This gives them the opportunity to get to watch and grow the game, so it’s awesome.”
Sixers Kyle Lowry, Andre Drummond, Trendon Watford, and Dominick Barlow, and New York Liberty guard Sabrina Ionescu were among the basketball stars in the building.
But of course, one of the most excited fans in the building was South Carolina head coach and local basketball legend Dawn Staley. For Phantom BC’s Aliyah Boston, who played for Staley in college, it was an amazing surprise to see Staley courtside again.
“I was shocked, when I came out, one of our assistants was like, ‘See Coach Staley?’” And I was like, ‘What? What?’ Saw her right over there, gave her a hug.”
Boston said that the two still have a “special relationship,” and she had to go up to Staley at halftime to ask for feedback on her game.
After playing for Staley, Boston said she had an idea of what to expect of playing in Philly, and the intensity and toughness needed for the tight game matched her expectations.
“The biggest thing for her was just that mindset,” Boston said. “She talked about her upbringing and that grind in Philly, and that’s the approach that she wants us to take on the court. Just have that dog mentality. Being able to hear that for four years just continued to shape me into who I am as a player today.”
Friday’s event was a huge head start in showing the players just how good of a women’s basketball market Philly can be. With the record-setting, energetic crowd, the conversation now turns to how to keep the momentum going until the WNBA franchise establishes itself in 2030.
Unrivaled players were excited about the prospect of adding new tour stops and continuing to travel in the seasons to come, and Unrivaled president Alex Bazzell confirmed Friday that the league plans to do more road trips next year.
Could Philly be on that list a second time?
Breeze BC’s Kate Martin, who played for the Golden State Valkyries in their inaugural season last year, shared the advice she’d give to anyone playing for a Philly expansion franchise, after the Valkyries quickly became the most-attended team in the WNBA in their first year.
“When you start to build that sense of community, that people feel more like they have a relationship with you, they want to come, they want to support,” Martin said. “Making the atmosphere fun, making people feel welcome, making people feel excited about basketball.”
Kate Martin, who plays for the Breeze and the WNBA’s Golden State Valkyries, knows a thing or two about building a fan base.
Xfinity Mobile Arena became the home of Unrivaled on Friday night. Fans flooded the arena in their favorite WNBA gear as Philadelphia made history, bringing the world’s top WNBA players to the city for the women’s basketball three-on-three league’s first — and only — tour stop.
The doubleheader, featuring the Breeze, Phantom, Rose, and Lunar Owls, gave Philadelphia an early glimpse of what’s to come in 2030, when the city gets its own WNBA team.
From fans discussing the importance of the night at Stateside Live! to different activations at Xfinity Mobile Arena, here’s everything you missed from the historic night:
‘We’re in the middle of history right now’
To celebrate the landmark event, The Stoop Pigeon by Watch Party PHL partnered with the Philadelphia Sisters and Unrivaled to host a pregame party and watch party across the street from the arena at Stateside Live!
“We’re in the middle of history right now,” said Jen Leary, the founder of Watch Party PHL. “Unrivaled is sold out, and this will be the most-attended women’s basketball game in history, and it’s happening here in Philly. It’s just so important for the city. It shows that not only did Unrivaled make the right decision coming here, but that the WNBA made the right decision giving us a team in 2030.”
The event, which was thrown to build up excitement entering the doubleheader, was free and open to the public. Fans traveled far and wide to witness history in the making, including 35-year old Connecticut native Corrine Sisk.
“Women’s basketball is so important in Connecticut,” Sisk said. “It has been since I was a teenager. I’ve been watching games like this since I was a little kid, and I’m so excited to see it happening countrywide. I think it’s important that we support these women, and they need to know that this is where everybody wants them to be.”
Kiley Gelston, a 25-year-old New Jersey native, has been playing basketball ever since she could walk. As soon as she found out Unrivaled would make its way to Philly, she knew she had to had to be in the arena.
During Friday’s pregame party, Gelston, who is a high school basketball coach, recognized the impact the doubleheader would have on the younger generation.
“It’s important for the younger girls because they can see where they can get to,” Gelston said. “They can have somebody to look up to, especially now with the women’s basketball boom.”
One of those younger girls in attendance was 16-year-old Baylee Rubeck. As a big fan of the WNBA, and a major fan of Paige Bueckers, the Pennsylvania native was excited to see some of her idols take the court at the Xfinity Mobile Arena.
“I’m so excited to see everybody that I’ve been following on social media,” Rubeck said. “I’m so excited to finally get to watch all my role models. I look up to them so much because they’re just amazing human beings. So I’m just so excited to see that in person.”
Another Bueckers superfan in attendance was 15-year-old Laila Perez. Wearing her “Everyone Watches Women’s Sports” T-shirt, she took the train from New Jersey to attend.
An avid women’s basketball fan who started her own basketball YouTube channel called LP’s Bucket List, she was excited to attend her first women’s professional basketball game.
“It’s so cool. It’s kind of crazy,” Perez said. “I’m not used to seeing the players in person. … It’s important for women’s sports to be promoted in Philly because the more people see it and are around it, they’ll be more curious and want to to come and see what it’s all about.”
Although Philadelphia doesn’t have a WNBA team yet, this could be a glimpse of what the city will see in 2030.
“This is just the beginning,” Gelston said. “This is going to continue on for many years to come, hopefully. This is just a taste. It sucks that we have to wait until 2030 now. So it’s almost like a tease. But we can enjoy it now.”
Keeping the energy high
If Friday’s pregame party at Stateside Live! wasn’t enough to get fans excited for the doubleheader, there were activations aplenty. The Sephora tunnel offered fans an opportunity to channel their inner WNBA star with their own tunnel walk.
There were plenty of surprises throughout the night. Fans received a number of chances to win a Sephora goody bag through music trivia, fashion competitions, and parachutes from the rafters.
Time for a little surprise Sephora parachute drop at Unrivaled’s doubleheader pic.twitter.com/UT3SBZRK2Y
And in between games, Philly-born hip-hop artist Lay Bankz performed several songs in front of the sold-out crowd, including her hit single “Tell Ur Girlfriend.”
After both games concluded, smiling fans crowded the main concourse. For 29-year-old Maryland native Brandi McLeain, the night was the perfect birthday present.
“First game was great,” McLeain said. “A real nail-biter. Then we got to see the point god in action in Kahleah Copper. And of course, Marina Mabrey broke a record tonight. So that was amazing.”
Mabrey finished with an Unrivaled single-game record 47 points, and it was clear McLeain wasn’t the only one was impressed by the Belmar, N.J., native’s performance.
Dalilah Haden, 28, and Samantha Woods, 29, made the trip from Brooklyn to watch the doubleheader and said Mabrey was the most impressive player of the night. And this wasn’t Woods’ first Unrivaled game of the week. She also attended Sunday’s game in Medley, Fla., near Miami. But, according to Woods, the 1,000-seat Sephora Arena doesn’t compare to Philly.
“Getting to be here with 21,000 other fans is so cool,” Woods said. “Sephora Arena is dope. But, this is like a treat. The women deserve this kind of love. And you can see it in the way they played tonight.”
Haden added: “Here you had everyone from different backgrounds, different ages, different races, genders, sexualities. This was so cool. And the energy was also crazy.”
In a move to create depth at multiple positions, the Phillies signed one of the most versatile players in baseball to a minor league contract.
Dylan Moore, who has played everywhere on the field except catcher in seven major league seasons and won a Gold Glove in 2024, will come to spring training as a nonroster invitee, a league source confirmed Friday night, after agreeing to a minor league deal that would pay him a $1.85 million base salary in the majors. He could make as much as $3.25 million with escalators based on plate appearances.
Moore, 33, is a .206 career hitter with 63 homers and a .693 OPS in 689 major league games, mostly with the Mariners. He was released by Seattle last August and finished the season with the Rangers.
In 2024, Moore played in a career-high 135 games, including 108 starts, while filling in for injured Mariners shortstop J.P. Crawford, and was slightly better than a league-average hitter with a 103 OPS+. He has started games at seven positions, but most often at second base (139 starts), shortstop (93), left field (99), and right field (67).
Edmundo Sosa is ticketed as the Phillies’ primary utility man. He often started at second base last season against left-handed pitching. Sosa, who turns 30 in March, batted .318 with an .895 OPS against lefties, .276 with a .777 OPS in 89 games overall. He’s due to make $4.4 million in his final year of salary arbitration.
Dylan Moore has spent most of his career as a utilityman with the Seattle Mariners.
Moore has spent the majority of the last seven seasons in the majors and made $3.7 million last season.
Additionally, former Phillies reliever David Robertson announced his retirement Friday after a 17-year major league career. Robertson, who had three stints with the Phillies, including the final two months of last season at age 40, finished with a 2.93 ERA and 179 saves. He also pitched for the Yankees, White Sox, Rays, Cubs, Marlins, and Rangers.
Jeffrey Epstein and Sixers co-owner Josh Harris had an ongoing business relationship that included numerous phone calls and at least one visit to Epstein’s home in Manhattan, according to emails released Friday by the U.S. Department of Justice.
The emails do not contain any indication that Harris was involved with sexual misconduct. The records — buried within the three million documents made public Friday as part of the congressionally ordered release of the Epstein files — shed light on a yearslong correspondence that occurred after Epstein’s 2008 guilty plea for solicitation of prostitution with a minor, but before his 2019 arrest on child sex trafficking charges.
Harris and Epstein moved in similar circles among Wall Street financial brokers. Harris, cofounder of the investment firm Apollo Global Management, exchanged multiple emails and phone calls with Epstein between 2013 and 2016.
Jonathan Rosen, a spokesperson for Harris, noted that many of Epstein’s entreaties over the years went nowhere. He said the Sixers owner “never had an independent relationship with Jeffrey Epstein.”
“Harris sought to prevent Epstein’s attempts to develop a corporate relationship with Apollo,” he said. “As these emails indicate, Harris sought to avoid meeting with Epstein, canceling meetings and having others return his calls.”
Evidence of one meeting between Epstein and Harris was detailed in earlier records released by the DOJ, and first reported by the Daily Pennsylvanian, the student newspaper at the University of Pennsylvania. Harris is an alumnus of Penn’s Wharton School.
Exchanges about this meeting, which have not been previously reported, began with a series of emails between Epstein’s and Harris’ schedulers on plans to meet at Epstein’s home in 2013, along with former Apollo CEO Leon Black and billionaire Marc Rowan, apparently to discuss financial affairs and investments.
“Just reconfirming Leon, Josh and Marc will all go see Jeffrey at his home, 9 East 71st Street between 5th and Madison tomorrow, Tues. Oct. 22nd at 7am for a breakfast meeting,” a scheduler for Epstein wrote in an email from October 2013.
Rowan, a major University of Pennsylvania donor who also chairs the Wharton School’s advisory board, declined to comment.
It is unclear if the 2013 meeting took place. Harris later apologized to Epstein for having “rescheduled on you a few times.”
Correspondence between Harris and Epstein carried on.
Emails from January 2014 then show Epstein’s assistant following up on a request for Harris to pull together a series of organizational documents at Epstein’s request.
A June 2014 email features Epstein describing a proposed $2.4 million payment apparently from Harris to Black’s former executive assistant, Melanie Spinella.
Details surrounding the payment, or if it ever occurred, were not clear.
Later in 2014, Harris’ and Epstein’s schedulers e-mailed yet again to arrange a different visit to Epstein’s home.
This time, Epstein proposed another breakfast, involving Black, Microsoft founder Bill Gates, tech investor Reid Hoffman, and Ron Baron, the founder of Baron Capital.
“Jeffrey Epstein would like to invite Josh to breakfast on Dec. 5th at Jeffrey’s home in NY… Bill Gates will be in attendance. The breakfast will be intimate…less than 6 people,” one email invitation read.
The pair also discussed the meeting directly.
“Sorry i missed you. Crazy week,” Harris wrote to Epstein in November 2014. “U around any time from now to sunday? Whats this Bill Gates thing about? Tks for thinking about me.”
“I thought you might like to schmooze,” wrote Epstein in response, asking Harris to call him. “nothing but fun friday 5th breakfast.”
That meeting does appear to have taken place, based on subsequent emails, with Harris in attendance.
“Did you have fun at breakfast?” Epstein wrote to Harris, about a week after the meeting was scheduled to take place.
“Yes very much,” he responded. “Thank you for inviting me.”
In another typo-laden email, Epstein later bragged to Bank of America president Paul Morris about the breakfast meeting.
“as you might know I had a recent breadkfst at the hosue with ron baron. josh harris, and billgates,” he wrote in January 2015.
In September of that year, Epstein e-mailed Harris again directly asking him to call him about an unspecified issue.
“Any conversation that you prefer to stay between just us. will. its my financial confessional booth for jews,” Epstein wrote.
“Will do Jeff,” Harris responded. “Happy to catch up. Thx.”
Days later, Robert Bodian, managing partner at the Mintz law firm, reached out to Epstein, indicating he was contacting him at “Josh’s request,” apparently regarding a tax issue.
Staff writer Gina Mizell contributed to this article.
The Sixers (26-21) can’t brush this off as just an isolated incident. Over the last 11 games, they’ve ranked last in the league in rebounding at 39.5 per game.
So what is the biggest issue? Effort? Or being undersized?
The Sixers went with a starting lineup centered on Joel Embiid and four perimeter players in four of their last five games, with Kelly Oubre Jr., Paul George, VJ Edgecombe, and Tyrese Maxey alongside the big man.
Embiid is a towering center at 7-foot-2. Oubre and George are both 6-8 forwards who have played shooting guard in previous seasons. Edgecombe is a 6-5 shooting guard, while Maxey, an All-Star starter, is a 6-2 point guard.
The Sixers only have two other rotation players — reserve center Andre Drummond (6-11) and reserve power forward Dominick Barlow (6-9) — taller than Oubre and George.
Sixers forward Paul George (left) and Sixers guard VJ Edgecombe double team Sacramento Kings forward Domantas Sabonis during the third quarter on Thursday.
“Well, I think that it’s a few things,” coach Nick Nurse said of the rebounding issue. “Sometimes it’s size and athleticism, whether it’s playing against bigger guys, more athletic, stronger, or whatever. Sometimes it’s just not paying attention to details and getting a body on people.
“And sometimes, I think it’s defense in general. You give a few [rebounds] and the blood’s in the water. Those guys just seem to get cracked up after they get a couple. And they’re just like, ‘Man, this is an easy way to live tonight. I’m going to really focus on that.’”
When that happens, the Sixers must put in more effort, and Nurse must devise a strategy to secure more rebounds.
Against a player like Sacramento’s Domantas Sabonis, who is a rebounding machine, the Sixers assigned two players to try to slow him down.
“Those guys were blocking him out in front of them,” Nurse said. “The balls were coming over the head, and got to be somebody else’s.”
The Sixers might also benefit from giving Drummond more playing time.
Despite averaging 8.7 rebounds in 19.6 minutes and leading the Sixers in the category, Drummond didn’t enter Thursday’s game until the start of the fourth quarter. At that point, the Kings (12-37) had a commanding 37-18 rebounding advantage.
Drummond did not play in six of the previous nine games. The Sixers felt 6-8center Adem Bona, an undersized but athletic rim protector, was better suited to back up Embiid in those games.
Sixers coach Nick Nurse looks to solve his team’s rebounding issue.
But due to the growing rebounding disparity, Nurse said he might look at Drummond coming off the bench more moving forward.
“I think that the smaller lineup that we are playing is obviously something to look at as well,” Nurse said. “I think Drummond with big, really big centers like that. [The Kings] played big all night, but they’re also pretty physical. All four of their bigs that they play are physical. And I think that probably called for a Joel, Bona lineup or Drummond, [Jabari] Walker. Just maybe different than what we did [Thursday] because it was difficult to rebound.”
Honoring the 2000-01 team
The Sixers will look to extend their home winning streak to three games on Saturday against the New Orleans Pelicans. The game will also be recognized as the 25th anniversary reunion game, celebrating the 2000-01 Eastern Conference championship team.
Members of the team, which lost to the Los Angeles Lakers in the NBA Finals, will be on hand for several celebrations in their honor.
Sixers star Allen Iverson led his team to the NBA Finals in the 2000-01 season.
“It’ll be great,” George said of the festivities. “Obviously, it’s a tradition here. Being a part of the Sixers family, organization, that group means a lot to the city. It’ll be awesome to kind of share the space, the moment, and play in front of them. We want to represent them the same way that they represented the city.”
After missing out on the original NFC roster, Jalen Hurts was named to the Pro Bowl as an alternate on Friday, replacing Los Angeles Rams quarterback Matthew Stafford.
Hurts, the 27-year-old Eagles quarterback, has earned Pro Bowl honors twice before, in 2022 and 2023. He had been listed as a fifth alternate when the original Pro Bowl rosters were released in December.
The Eagles now have five players expected to compete in the revamped, flag football-centric event on Feb. 3 at the Moscone Center in San Francisco, including Zack Baun, Jalen Carter, Cam Jurgens, and Cooper DeJean. Quinyon Mitchell was named to the original roster, but the Chicago Bears’ Nashon Wright was announced as his replacement on Monday.
Hurts is coming off an inconsistent season, just one year removed from earning Super Bowl MVP honors. His 64.8% completion percentage ranked 16th in the NFL among 33 qualified passers, while his +.01 expected points added per drop back ranked 12th, according to Next Gen Stats. Expected points added per drop back measures the average amount of expected points added on drop backs by a quarterback.
Still, Hurts threw a career-high 25 touchdowns while tossing just six interceptions. His 1.3% interception rate tied a single-season career low achieved in 2022. Hurts also became the third Eagles quarterback in franchise history to register a perfect passer rating in a game, when he went 19-for-23 for 326 yards and three passing touchdowns in the Week 7 win over the Minnesota Vikings.
In his fifth season as the full-time starter, Hurts also rushed less frequently. According to Next Gen Stats, he averaged a career-low 1.7 designed rush attempts per game in 2025 after notching at least 2.3 per game in each of the last five seasons.
Hurts is set to join the Dallas Cowboys’ Dak Prescott and the Detroit Lions’ Jared Goff to form the trio of quarterbacks on the NFC roster.
Sean Mannion, the Eagles’ new offensive coordinator, is 33 years old, has been a coach — not just an NFL coach, but a coach of any kind — for only two years, and reportedly will call plays next season even though he has never called plays before. If it sounds like the Eagles have entered uncharted territory here, if it seems they’ve brought on board a neophyte who’s too green to succeed in such an important role at such an important moment for the team, rest easy. Mannion’s youth and inexperience are nothing compared to the first OC the Eagles hired during Jeffrey Lurie’s ownership tenure.
Because that guy, in his first week in town, tried to buy a beer one night at a hotel bar. And got carded.
“I said, ‘Huh?’” Jon Gruden told the Daily News in February 1995. “I know I look young, but that young?”
Gruden was 31 when Ray Rhodes picked him to oversee and orchestrate the Eagles’ offense. The two of them had worked together in Green Bay, and though Gruden had coached in the NFL for four years — twice as long as Mannion has — he had never been a coordinator or called any plays with the Packers. Plus, Gruden was right. With his boyish face and while wearing his ever-present backward visor at practice, he looked like he might still be in college. He was younger than some of the Eagles’ offensive players, including two starting linemen — center Raleigh McKenzie and guard Guy McIntyre — and quarterback Randall Cunningham.
— Mike Lipinski | @SportsTalkPHL (@themikelipinski) January 30, 2026
“Age is not the issue,” Gruden said back in ‘95. “The issue is, ‘Can you do the job?’ … I’m not one of these guru kinds of guys who thinks he has all the answers. I’m just a guy who tried to learn as much football as he could in hopes that someday I’d get a chance to use it. And this is my shot.”
Mannion is in a similar situation — a better one, in fact. The notion that he is stepping out from under the safe cover of being the Packers’ quarterbacks coach into the tropical storm of serving as the Eagles’ OC has some truth to it, sure. The pressure that Mannion will feel from Lurie and Howie Roseman will equal or exceed any that the Eagles’ fan base might apply. But he is still accepting a plum job with an organization that won a Super Bowl last year and is coming off a season that was a disappointment by the standard that the Eagles have established for themselves.
They won 11 games. They finished first in their division. They have talent to spare on offense. “If I’m an offensive play-caller,” Fox analyst and former Pro Bowl tight end Greg Olsen said recently on the New Heights podcast, “I’m doing everything in my power to get that job.” This ain’t a bad gig.
Gruden’s was, or at least it wasn’t as good as Mannion’s. And it’s worthwhile to remind those Eagles fans and observers who either have forgotten or never bothered to familiarize themselves with the team’s history that yes, a relatively lengthy search for a new coordinator is not exactly a new low point for the franchise.
New owner Jeffrey Lurie (left) and coach Ray Rhodes were viewed with skepticism, and not just in their OC hire.
When Gruden was hired, Lurie had assumed control of the Eagles just eight months earlier. Rhodes not only had never been a head coach before, but he was the team’s first Black head coach, a distinction that in 1995 presented its own fierce set of pressures, expectations, and obstacles. The Eagles had not reached the Super Bowl in 14 years and had not yet won one. Veterans Stadium was decrepit, a dangerous place to play for its treacherous artificial turf, a horrible work environment for any coaching staff.
Cunningham’s skill set was not a fit for Gruden’s version of the West Coast Offense — a system based on three-step drops, perfect timing, and precision accuracy on short and intermediate passes — so backup Rodney Peete eventually replaced him as the starter. And still the Eagles went 10-6 in each of Gruden’s first two seasons as their OC, and in ‘96, they ranked fourth in the league in total offense and in passing yards, with Ty Detmer and Peete as their QBs. If Mannion can come close to matching that measure of productivity — even with Jalen Hurts, with Saquon Barkley, with DeVonta Smith, with (presumably) A.J. Brown — he’ll be doing just fine.
