The Big 5 announced on Thursday that the women were switching to the pod system in 2024-25.
By AARON BRACY and MEL GREENBERG
June 6, 2024
Big5Hoops.com
VILLANOVA, Pa. — The Big 5 Classic is both expanding and here to stay.
Beginning in 2024-25, Drexel will join the women’s Big 5, with the women ditching the round-robin format and following the three-team pod system implemented by the Big 5 men last season, new Big 5 ambassador Dan Hilferty announced at a press conference at Villanova on Thursday morning. The winners of each pod will meet in the first-ever women’s Big 5 Classic title game that will be the culmination of a tripleheader at Villanova’s Pavilion on Friday, December 6.
The new format for the women was first reported at womhoops.blogspot.com on Tuesday.
The move by the women’s Big 5 follows a successful first season for the men with the format in 2023-24, ending with Saint Joseph’s defeating Temple to cap a thrilling tripleheader at the Wells Fargo Center last December 2. Hilferty also said on Thursday that the Big 5 men’s tripleheader would be returning to the WFC on Dec. 7, 2024, which will be the first of a three-year deal to play the men’s Classic at the WFC.
In addition to announcing the new format for the women and the three-year deal at the Wells Fargo Center for the men, Hilferty became lead ambassador to the Big 5 on Thursday. A Saint Joseph’s alum, Hilferty is the chairman and chief executive officer of Comcast Spectacor.
“After a great response from the inaugural year of the new men’s format, I am thrilled to see that the success of the reinvigorated Big 5 is extending to women’s basketball,” Hilferty said in a press release. “As a lifelong basketball fan and Big 5 alumna, I am really excited to be working with the six universities to keep traditions alive and champion the future of the Big 5.”
The switch to the new format brought needed buzz back to the Big 5 men last season.
“The overall opinion from everyone involved was there was more discussion around Big 5 basketball than there has been in a long time,” Ash Puri, La Salle’s athletic director, told Big5Hoops.com for a story last Dec. 8. “There was more excitement from our fan bases across the board. I just think it was awesome.”
Both the women’s and men’s pods will be the same this season, with Penn, Saint Joseph’s and Villanova in one pod, and Drexel, La Salle and Temple in another. The winners of each pod will meet in the Big 5 Classic championship game.
Beginning in 2025-26, the pods for the men and women will remain synchronized and rotate every two years. The women’s Classic will rotate sites yearly, with the exact sites to be announced at a later date.
In its first season joining the Big 5, which was formed in 1954, the Drexel men made immediate noise, upsetting then-No. 18 Villanova in the fifth-place game at the Wells Fargo Center and ending with coach Zach Spiker being named Big 5 Coach of the Year after leading the Dragons to a 20-12 overall record and 13-5 mark in the Coastal Athletic Association.
The Drexel women likely will make some noise in their first-ever season in the Big 5 in 2024-25, as well. They began getting street cred in the city winning their first CAA title in 2009 and winning the WNIT in 2013. There was even a season under now-Villanova coach Denise Dillon playing all but Temple in a week’s time when Drexel went 4-0 against the rest of the Big 5.
With no players lost to the portal off a record-breaking season, Saint Joseph’s will likely be the women’s favorite after sweeping the prior four-game round-robin last season. This is the 45th anniversary of formal Big 5 women City Series competition begun in 1979-80 although schedule cancellations prevented a winner determined in the COVID-19 season of 2020-21. Postseason awards were still presented that season. Drexel has played Saint Joseph’s and La Salle regularly and had in the past a neighborhood run down the street playing Penn in alternating seasons at the Dragons’ Daskalakis Athletic Center and at The Palestra.
Other than La Salle, which struggled on a young roster, Drexel is coming off a Coastal Athletic Conference tournament title and NCAA appearance; Villanova advanced to the new Women’s Basketball Invitational Tournament title game, beating Saint Joseph’s in the Elite Eight; Temple tied for the regular-season American Athletic Conference crown, and Penn rallied to qualify for the four-team Ivy Tournament.
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Editor’s Note: This is the first collaborative story of Bracy and Greenberg, who announced a content partnership agreement last month that will bring coverage of Big 5 women to Big5Hoops.com in 2024-25.
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Aaron Bracy has been covering Philadelphia sports since 1996. His byline regularly appears on Associated Press stories. Follow Bracy on X: @Aaron_Bracy and like his Facebook and Instagram pages. He currently is writing a book on the 2003-04 Saint Joseph’s men’s basketball team.
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Mel Greenberg is a Hall of Fame women’s basketball writer and creator of the women’s basketball poll. Follow Greenberg on X @womhoopsguru and read his work at womhoops.blogspot.com.