'V' for vulnerability: Big Five struggles could spell doom for Villanova's season
For the better part of 20 years, the Villanova Wildcats were the standard of excellence for men's college basketball in Philadelphia.
Between 2001 and 2022, head coach Jay Wright led Villanova to 16 NCAA tournaments and four Final Four appearances. The Wildcats won two national championships in three seasons, a nearly impossible feat given the volatility of March Madness.
Locally, Villanova turned into the class of Philadelphia's "Big Five," an informal union now comprised of six teams: the Wildcats, Temple Owls, Pennsylvania Quakers, La Salle Explorers, St. Joseph's Hawks and Drexel Dragons. Drexel has no national success to speak of, while Penn and La Salle each haven't been ranked in the Associated Press Top 25 since the 1990s. Temple's national prominence in the 1980s and 90s declined at the turn of the millennium, and aside from a number-one seed in the 2004 tournament, St. Joseph's has seldom been heard from. This allowed Villanova to dominate the Big Five for the 21st century.
Since Wright's 2022 retirement, however, the Wildcats have found themselves in the unfamiliar territories of mediocrity and uncertainty.
After settling for an NIT berth last season, second-year head coach Kyle Neptune led Villanova to a tournament championship in the "Battle 4 Atlantis" over Thanksgiving week. The showcase was highlighted by an upset win over North Carolina. But upon their return from the Bahamas Wednesday night, the 18th-ranked Wildcats were stunned at home by St. Joseph's, 78-65. It was the Hawks' first win since 2011 in a rivalry known as the "Holy War," and their first victory at Villanova since 2004.
This was two weeks after the Wildcats suffered another Big Five upset loss at the hands of Penn, 76-72.
Beginning this year, the Big Five teams will take part in a three-game showcase at Philadelphia's Wells Fargo Center to officially determine the association championship. The teams have been seeded based on their records against common opponents. Thus, Villanova will face Drexel in the fifth-place game Saturday while Penn plays La Salle for third place. The championship game features Temple and St. Joseph's.
This was a tournament in which Wright's Villanova teams would have excelled. Now, Neptune has the Wildcats settling for fifth place at best. If they can't get past Penn or St. Joe's, what's going to happen when Big East conference play starts? Fellow Big East foes Marquette and Connecticut are ranked third and fourth respectively in the Nov. 27 AP poll. With two Big Five losses before the calendar has even hit December, Villanova is quickly digging a hole that could be difficult to overcome.
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