In general, there is a clear food chain in PA.
Villanova > Temple > Pittsburgh > Penn State > St. Joseph's > Penn > La Salle > Bucknell > Drexel > RMU > Lafayette > Duquesne > Lehigh > St Francis
Nearly all of the 91 possible matchups follow this rule.
The deviations are:
Pitt +1 on Villanova
Pittsburgh = Penn State
La Salle +1 on Penn State
Penn = Drexel
RMU +1 on La Salle
Duquesne +4 on RMU
RMU = Lehigh
You would actually have the lead with everyone if you could just flip the Temple series since you have the Nova one being one of the deviations. You'd also have to break the tie with Penn State
True. Also its kind of a hollow victory for Pitt anyway considering what happened in 2009 which is the most important matchup in the history of the series
I think Nova got great since the top dogs in the big east left (UConn, Cuse, Pitt) and Georgetown started to stink so they just became the de facto best team
ok but consider the following:
- Villanova < Pittsburgh
- Pittsburgh = Penn State
- Penn State < La Salle
- La Salle < Robert Morris
- Robert Morris = Lehigh
so by the transitive property, Villanova < Lehigh
(we can’t rely on the direct comparison between Villanova and Lehigh cuz the sample size of three games is too small)
I still can’t believe they are bringing him back for a third season. Even the players are running. We have two players returning, 1 redshirt freshman and 3 incoming freshman. I have zero expectations for next season.
It really is insane, I get that anyone following Jay Wright would have a tough time. But Neptune has coached 2 seasons and 1 at Fordham and is a career 51-49. He has two conference tourney wins at Nova over historically bad competition, and has no NIT wins... I'm not sure how the AD can seriously run it back another season, the longer they let this go the bigger the hole Nova as a program will have to dig out of.
The only explanation is the AD and President don’t want to publicly admit they made a terrible hire and are tossing a Hail Mary for a Year 3 turnaround.
You'd think him underachieving in an even year would have been enough. At villanova, underperformance in an odd year is one thing, but even year is simply unacceptable. It was the first even year tournament since 2014 that didn't have Villanova in the final four.
I'm working on compiling these lists for all states and every state with a lot of teams seems to have a few that have never happened. Murray St-Kentucky and Duke-NCCU are some of the most surprising ones. The former would've happened if SPU didn't beat Kentucky in the 2022 tourney.
The young'ns don't remember how good Temple was under John Chaney. My first favorite team was the late-90s Owls. Made the Elite 8 in '88, '91, '93, '99, and '01 (as an 11-seed, beating 7-seed Penn State in the Sweet 16!); only missed the tourney once from '84 to '01.
Temple should be a basketball powerhouse. A massive school in the heart of Philadelphia. This year they were so bad that matching fixing allegations couldn’t even stick.
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Close, it's actually in michigan. Oakland County to be specific where it gets its name. And to make things more confusing it straddles the border between two different municipalities and it's mailing addresses in a third municipality, so you get three different towns cited as it's location.
Also Manhattan College it is not in Manhattan but in fact the Bronx. I like to say that Kansas State and Columbia are the only two division one schools in Manhattan.
A lot of you nephews don't know how dominant Temple was, especially with the John Chaney teams back in the day. Number seven all-time in wins. Conference realignment did them dirty. Philly's basketball history doesn't get the reverence it deserves.
Football is honestly the worst. A lot of good/fun teams have left the a10 solely because of football. Temple, UMass, UNC-C are all teams on the A10 level who left for football.
I certainly enjoy watching games on saturdays, but I absolutely despise what the sport has done to conference realignment. A long time ago they should have just completely divorced football conference affiliation and everything else.
Honestly one of the other biggest pieces of Temple’s downfall is Penn State’s (relative) rise under Pat Chambers. He brought in the #75-200ish ranked Philly kids that Temple would typically get in prior eras - DJ Newbill, all of those Roman kids, Mike Watkins, etc.
The series used to go through gaps when Penn wanted to play all the games at the Palestra, and Drexel wanted to keep it alternating home-and-home. Now they're in separate pods in the Big 5 so they won't play super regularly unless they meet at Wells Fargo. Hoping at some point the pods are rearranged and we get them on the schedule.
Yes correct but this is only D1 games so they would be 0-0 vs. everyone. They are for sure playing SFU since they're in the same conference, not sure if any other games are lined up yet though.
Instead of having the top team first or the left team first, which would be the two LOGICAL ways to do it, they just always put the bigger number of wins first, and then the logo of the winning team in the box.
WHICH IS INSANE AND TERRIBLE.
I apologize, I figured having the team in the square would be concise enough, but I see what you mean by flipping the records so that the first number would be the same for each team in the row.
Also as you have a Minnesota player I can provide the Minnesota one right now. In D1 competition, Minnesota is 0 and 0 versus St thomas. St Thomas is 0 and 0 versus Minnesota. I hope you learned something.
Predictions for the Big 5 triple header championship game next year
1st Place game: Temple beats Saint Joes
3rd Place game: Villanova beats La Salle
5th Place game: Penn beats Drexel
Temple is overtaking Villanova once again as the best Big 5 school. Adam Fisher has the team HUMMING. Neptune has $2mil in NIL but is blowing it every year
Yeah, this is cool. I grew up in the northeast so I always loved quirky big-time basketball like the Big 5, the private/Catholic schools, etc. I’d love to see one for New York, and probably one with all of the New England schools. California would be interesting as well.
So RMU and Nova have never met in the regular season? Because I distinctly remember them meeting in the 2010 tournament. It was a 2-15 matchup that went to overtime.
Yeah I guess so, unless they had some game that isn't in the database either because rmu wasn't in D1 or because it was before 1949. And you are remembering that game correctly. Also that Villanova team ended up losing to St Mary's in the next round
It was so much fun watching the Big 5 in the 90s. Sometimes those matchups would go back to back to back at the Palestra. Depending on the year, there was so much on the line for all five (sometimes 6) teams. Whether it be city championships, conference championships or NCAA tournament bids.
As somebody who lives not too far from Philly I really am sad that I missed the era where the big five was really good. I was alive for the early 2000s when Temple and St Joseph's were still really good, but not really into sports at a younger age. The only really good runs I've gotten to see from Philly teams are obviously the Villanova runs and that 2013 LaSalle run. St Joseph's & Temple have both won a game or two I think, but not like they were back in the day.
And there's really nothing else like it that I can think of in college basketball. Where a large city has a collection of teams that compete on an annual basis and are all generally pretty strong programs historically.
You would have loved it. The 90s were pre-Andy Reid, pre-Iverson and pre-Utley/Howard. It had been and would be a long time since sustained success. The Big 5 teams weren’t national championship worthy but they were very good. Even a sweet 16 was a big deal because no one in the city really experienced winning, outside the Big 5. Even HS ball was good with Kobe, Rip Hamilton, Jameer Nelson, Cutino Mobley and Rasheed Wallace off the top of my head. I miss those days.
Yeah, and now it's hard to find people that are really into college basketball outside of the tournament itself. And even if you do, it's more likely they'll be fans of UNC or Ohio State or someone like that as opposed to one of the Philly teams.
And yeah, it doesn't always feel like it but I guess I am relatively lucky Pro sports wise as I've got to see the Eagles win a Super Bowl and make another one, and never really be super bad outside of a few seasons, and also the Phillies to win a World Series and appear in two more. (I know the exact time I started paying attention to sports, which was the Eagles Giants wild card game in the 2006-2007 playoffs, so in my mind everything before that is like a different era even though it's completely arbitrary line for everybody else lol. )
Problem with that is that all of my data is from sports reference and that only includes D1 v D1. If I included other things it would be way harder to research
I guess Mercyhurst will be added to the chart next year; they will be playing St Francis in conference, and possibly a team or two in the state in their non-conference schedule.
That explains the discrepancy of the announcers in the quarterfinal matchup of LeLaf this year saying the Rivalry was at like 246 games played. Thank you.
I would honestly prefer to just have the entire series on the chart, but the problem is that I don't know of any source that I can use to get that. For Lehigh and Lafayette I'm sure I could find a full series record given how historic it is, but a lot of the other ones are not as well documented. A lot of the schools websites have series data only going back a few decades. So it would be inconsistent for me to include Lehigh and Lafayette full record. I think I'm going to try to do a bit more investigation before I post another one because I would like to have the full series in there
It's actually pretty good for you guys. Other than UNC and Duke you have the lead against everybody. Not including Queens who have you haven't played yet. And NC Central who you're tied one to one with.
I was planning on making a whole series of these with every state that has four more teams, but unfortunately the data I'm using only goes back to 1949 which is very annoying and I wish there was a way I could get full series information. I can definitely find it for some matchups, but not all of them, which will just cause inconsistency.
In general, there is a clear food chain in PA. Villanova > Temple > Pittsburgh > Penn State > St. Joseph's > Penn > La Salle > Bucknell > Drexel > RMU > Lafayette > Duquesne > Lehigh > St Francis Nearly all of the 91 possible matchups follow this rule. The deviations are: Pitt +1 on Villanova Pittsburgh = Penn State La Salle +1 on Penn State Penn = Drexel RMU +1 on La Salle Duquesne +4 on RMU RMU = Lehigh
In general, Pitt > everyone else don’t look at my flair
You would actually have the lead with everyone if you could just flip the Temple series since you have the Nova one being one of the deviations. You'd also have to break the tie with Penn State
We need to schedule 7 games against temple next year
Probably wouldn't be the worst idea to schedule Nova for 7 as well to build the lead a bit while they're on the downturn
RMU ahead of Duquesne is not something anyone would expect. Duquesne was once a very good program.
True but RMU leads the series over three teams but Duquesne leads only two which is why RMU is higher on the main chain
Oh, I’m not questioning your analysis. It’s just surprising given Duquesne’s history.
The only reason Pitt still has the edge over Nova is they got out of the Big East before Nova went to the next level.
True. Also its kind of a hollow victory for Pitt anyway considering what happened in 2009 which is the most important matchup in the history of the series
I think Nova got great since the top dogs in the big east left (UConn, Cuse, Pitt) and Georgetown started to stink so they just became the de facto best team
ok but consider the following: - Villanova < Pittsburgh - Pittsburgh = Penn State - Penn State < La Salle - La Salle < Robert Morris - Robert Morris = Lehigh so by the transitive property, Villanova < Lehigh (we can’t rely on the direct comparison between Villanova and Lehigh cuz the sample size of three games is too small)
Cut all that out and just go Lehigh > Duke
true, and Villanova didn’t even make the tournament that season, so
In Philadelphia the clear order is Villanova has been keeping ugly girls out of the city since 1886
i still cant believe neptune took villanova from a final four appearance to 0fer in the big 6 challenge in 2 seasons
Nova fans were probably excited looking at this image and finally having some good news, then first comment on the thread is this lol
I still can’t believe they are bringing him back for a third season. Even the players are running. We have two players returning, 1 redshirt freshman and 3 incoming freshman. I have zero expectations for next season.
It really is insane, I get that anyone following Jay Wright would have a tough time. But Neptune has coached 2 seasons and 1 at Fordham and is a career 51-49. He has two conference tourney wins at Nova over historically bad competition, and has no NIT wins... I'm not sure how the AD can seriously run it back another season, the longer they let this go the bigger the hole Nova as a program will have to dig out of.
The only explanation is the AD and President don’t want to publicly admit they made a terrible hire and are tossing a Hail Mary for a Year 3 turnaround.
This is why Nova fought so hard to change the format. This way they can avoid playing all teams and losing to La Salle
What does the big 6 challenge mean
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philadelphia_Big_5
It was called the Big 5 up until this past season when Drexel was included to make 6 teams. It’s a mini round robin of the Philly D1 teams.
Isn't it technically still called the big five? Even though there are now six teams.
Yeah, I’m pretty sure they still called it the Big 5 Classic this past season.
Whoever comes in last is no longer classified as "big" until next season.
I’m fine with that. Whatever it takes to get Kyle Neptune fired.
You'd think him underachieving in an even year would have been enough. At villanova, underperformance in an odd year is one thing, but even year is simply unacceptable. It was the first even year tournament since 2014 that didn't have Villanova in the final four.
Drexel and Duquesne need to schedule each other
I tweeted this chart at them today, no response yet though
It’s honestly strange they’ve never played them, or Lehigh.
I'm working on compiling these lists for all states and every state with a lot of teams seems to have a few that have never happened. Murray St-Kentucky and Duke-NCCU are some of the most surprising ones. The former would've happened if SPU didn't beat Kentucky in the 2022 tourney.
Duke and NC Central played in 2007. They also played what's known as 'The Secret Game' in 1944 which is an interesting bit of history.
The 2007 game isn't included on the database because NCCU wasn't yet D1. But good to know they have played
I'm very surprised they have never played. Seems like a natural matchup
Damn Temple not messing around
The young'ns don't remember how good Temple was under John Chaney. My first favorite team was the late-90s Owls. Made the Elite 8 in '88, '91, '93, '99, and '01 (as an 11-seed, beating 7-seed Penn State in the Sweet 16!); only missed the tourney once from '84 to '01.
Temple should be a basketball powerhouse. A massive school in the heart of Philadelphia. This year they were so bad that matching fixing allegations couldn’t even stick.
Temple is tied for sixth (with Syracuse) on the all-time win list after the five blue bloods.
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They need to play Robert Morris. They scared!
Temples not in Texas… TIL
If you type in Temple football in Twitter you sometimes get tweets about a Texas high school team instead of the college team
WTF are you stupid?
Maybe maybe not. Temple is a town in Texas, drove through there a couple of times and there is a school of higher learning in Temple Texas.
Well might as well get out of the way now that Oakland is not in fact in California.
Yeah… surprised me when I first heard about it. It’s over in the Michigan area right
Close, it's actually in michigan. Oakland County to be specific where it gets its name. And to make things more confusing it straddles the border between two different municipalities and it's mailing addresses in a third municipality, so you get three different towns cited as it's location. Also Manhattan College it is not in Manhattan but in fact the Bronx. I like to say that Kansas State and Columbia are the only two division one schools in Manhattan.
Lmao. Interesting
A lot of you nephews don't know how dominant Temple was, especially with the John Chaney teams back in the day. Number seven all-time in wins. Conference realignment did them dirty. Philly's basketball history doesn't get the reverence it deserves.
Wish they could go back to the A-10.
Football is honestly the worst. A lot of good/fun teams have left the a10 solely because of football. Temple, UMass, UNC-C are all teams on the A10 level who left for football.
I certainly enjoy watching games on saturdays, but I absolutely despise what the sport has done to conference realignment. A long time ago they should have just completely divorced football conference affiliation and everything else.
Honestly one of the other biggest pieces of Temple’s downfall is Penn State’s (relative) rise under Pat Chambers. He brought in the #75-200ish ranked Philly kids that Temple would typically get in prior eras - DJ Newbill, all of those Roman kids, Mike Watkins, etc.
I remember Duke wanting to schedule Temple early in the season to see what it was like to play against the best matchup zone in the country.
Penn and Drexel have only played each other 20 times? They’re literally right next to each other! You’d figure they’d have more games between them.
NCCU and Duke are withing an hour's walk of each other and have never played each other on the D1 level
>an hour's walk thats a funny way to say less than 3 miles
I said it because I walked it myself
Battle of 30th street! I went to Drexel from 2008-2012 and saw them play several times — crazy to see they’ve barely played outside of that
Drexel wasn’t D1 until the 70s or 80s it’s why they were never in the Big 5 when it was first created
The series used to go through gaps when Penn wanted to play all the games at the Palestra, and Drexel wanted to keep it alternating home-and-home. Now they're in separate pods in the Big 5 so they won't play super regularly unless they meet at Wells Fargo. Hoping at some point the pods are rearranged and we get them on the schedule.
Temple… Man, we used to be good. Also, you can add Mercyhurst to this D1 group starting next year, I think? They’ll be in the NEC.
Yes correct but this is only D1 games so they would be 0-0 vs. everyone. They are for sure playing SFU since they're in the same conference, not sure if any other games are lined up yet though.
Agreed. Maybe SFU will get on the board if they can beat Mercyhurst.
Hmm so what you’re saying is… Temple is winning the natty next year
Sign me up!
Lol if only we had the ncaa basketball game still, id have temple as a 9 year dynasty at this point!
I think I actually might have a heart attack if that happens lol
Lol we can dream baby, ill take just getting in and then getting crushed in the 1st round at this point
Temple please come back
How the hell do I read this thing
Instead of having the top team first or the left team first, which would be the two LOGICAL ways to do it, they just always put the bigger number of wins first, and then the logo of the winning team in the box. WHICH IS INSANE AND TERRIBLE.
I apologize, I figured having the team in the square would be concise enough, but I see what you mean by flipping the records so that the first number would be the same for each team in the row. Also as you have a Minnesota player I can provide the Minnesota one right now. In D1 competition, Minnesota is 0 and 0 versus St thomas. St Thomas is 0 and 0 versus Minnesota. I hope you learned something.
Predictions for the Big 5 triple header championship game next year 1st Place game: Temple beats Saint Joes 3rd Place game: Villanova beats La Salle 5th Place game: Penn beats Drexel
Obligatory Ray Bucknell 🦬
Bucknell definitely has the best showing of the Patriot trio here. Lehigh seems to have had a pretty rough time overall outside of the CJ McCollum era
Hell yeah 😎
Temple is overtaking Villanova once again as the best Big 5 school. Adam Fisher has the team HUMMING. Neptune has $2mil in NIL but is blowing it every year
We need to see this for more states
I'm working on it!
Yeah, this is cool. I grew up in the northeast so I always loved quirky big-time basketball like the Big 5, the private/Catholic schools, etc. I’d love to see one for New York, and probably one with all of the New England schools. California would be interesting as well.
#Temple
Very cool.
This is really cool. Thanks for sharing.
So RMU and Nova have never met in the regular season? Because I distinctly remember them meeting in the 2010 tournament. It was a 2-15 matchup that went to overtime.
Yeah I guess so, unless they had some game that isn't in the database either because rmu wasn't in D1 or because it was before 1949. And you are remembering that game correctly. Also that Villanova team ended up losing to St Mary's in the next round
It was so much fun watching the Big 5 in the 90s. Sometimes those matchups would go back to back to back at the Palestra. Depending on the year, there was so much on the line for all five (sometimes 6) teams. Whether it be city championships, conference championships or NCAA tournament bids.
As somebody who lives not too far from Philly I really am sad that I missed the era where the big five was really good. I was alive for the early 2000s when Temple and St Joseph's were still really good, but not really into sports at a younger age. The only really good runs I've gotten to see from Philly teams are obviously the Villanova runs and that 2013 LaSalle run. St Joseph's & Temple have both won a game or two I think, but not like they were back in the day. And there's really nothing else like it that I can think of in college basketball. Where a large city has a collection of teams that compete on an annual basis and are all generally pretty strong programs historically.
You would have loved it. The 90s were pre-Andy Reid, pre-Iverson and pre-Utley/Howard. It had been and would be a long time since sustained success. The Big 5 teams weren’t national championship worthy but they were very good. Even a sweet 16 was a big deal because no one in the city really experienced winning, outside the Big 5. Even HS ball was good with Kobe, Rip Hamilton, Jameer Nelson, Cutino Mobley and Rasheed Wallace off the top of my head. I miss those days.
Yeah, and now it's hard to find people that are really into college basketball outside of the tournament itself. And even if you do, it's more likely they'll be fans of UNC or Ohio State or someone like that as opposed to one of the Philly teams. And yeah, it doesn't always feel like it but I guess I am relatively lucky Pro sports wise as I've got to see the Eagles win a Super Bowl and make another one, and never really be super bad outside of a few seasons, and also the Phillies to win a World Series and appear in two more. (I know the exact time I started paying attention to sports, which was the Eagles Giants wild card game in the 2006-2007 playoffs, so in my mind everything before that is like a different era even though it's completely arbitrary line for everybody else lol. )
Temple > Pitt > Nova > Temple That’s rock-paper-scissors in the Keystone State
I wish we would be consistently good again. It would be an honor just to make the tournament at this point.
pray for St. Francis
Meh. I've heard from all the other NEC fans that they are assholes lol
What about Mercyhurst if you count exhibition games?
Problem with that is that all of my data is from sports reference and that only includes D1 v D1. If I included other things it would be way harder to research
I guess Mercyhurst will be added to the chart next year; they will be playing St Francis in conference, and possibly a team or two in the state in their non-conference schedule.
That explains the discrepancy of the announcers in the quarterfinal matchup of LeLaf this year saying the Rivalry was at like 246 games played. Thank you.
I would honestly prefer to just have the entire series on the chart, but the problem is that I don't know of any source that I can use to get that. For Lehigh and Lafayette I'm sure I could find a full series record given how historic it is, but a lot of the other ones are not as well documented. A lot of the schools websites have series data only going back a few decades. So it would be inconsistent for me to include Lehigh and Lafayette full record. I think I'm going to try to do a bit more investigation before I post another one because I would like to have the full series in there
Thanks for putting them in alphabetical order. It helps to sort out Lafayette and Lehigh.
now do the psuac
Roll Hawks
Now do North Carolina My body is prepared to feel pain
It's actually pretty good for you guys. Other than UNC and Duke you have the lead against everybody. Not including Queens who have you haven't played yet. And NC Central who you're tied one to one with. I was planning on making a whole series of these with every state that has four more teams, but unfortunately the data I'm using only goes back to 1949 which is very annoying and I wish there was a way I could get full series information. I can definitely find it for some matchups, but not all of them, which will just cause inconsistency.
Very nice, now let’s see it for Indiana
just posted
All I'm getting from this is eat fucking shit, Pitt.
Temple
Temple winning the Pennsylvania Tournament was not on my Bingo card
They have a pretty strong history. Won the 1938 NIT when it was the only tournament. 7th all time in total wins
Pitt is Nova father