A Villanova rollout at the Pavilion on Nov. 29 reads 'Decades of Dominance' in reference to the Wildcats' mastery of St. Joe's. The Hawks would go on to beat Villanova that night. (Photo: Aaron Bracy)
By AARON BRACY
December 22, 2023
Big5Hoops.Com
So much happened in Villanova’s thrilling 68-66 overtime win at No. 12 Creighton late on Wednesday night.
Just as I was trying to digest it all – and we’ll get into it more down below – a TV talking head proclaimed that the victory over the Bluejays will boost the Wildcats’ NCAA chances after, and I’m paraphrasing, bad losses to Philadelphia teams.
Went to Twitter and saw a similar line from some very respectable national people.
So, let’s unpack this.
Yes, Villanova lost at Penn, at home to St. Joe’s and on a neutral court to Drexel.
For some, and Wildcats fans among them, those have been characterized as “bad” losses for Villanova.
But are they really?
First off, all three of those Philly teams are threats to win their leagues. Penn hung with Kentucky and has a backcourt, led by Clark Slajchert, that will give any opponent problems. Drexel has the CAA preseason player of the year in Amari Williams, who has similar muscle down low to the Wildcats’ Eric Dixon. That ain’t easy. And, in Erik Reynolds II, St. Joe’s has a sure-fire NBA draft pick who can hold his own with any guard in the country.
Penn, Drexel and St. Joe’s all should be factors in the Ivy, CAA and A-10, respectively. All are good – and the Hawks are especially good. I have closely followed all three teams this season, watched every minute of the Drexel and St. Joe games against Villanova from courtside and almost every minute of Penn’s win over the Wildcats on television.
Based on what I have seen, I do not consider losses to those three schools “bad” losses by Villanova. Not this year.
Now, fairly, the Wildcats’ pedigree suggests that they would be expected to defeat local rivals year in and year out — and, most years in the recent past, they have. So, maybe you can say those are “surprising” or “disappointing” or, even, “unexpected” losses.
But I don’t think it’s fair or gives respect to where Penn, Drexel and St. Joe’s are at this year to call them “bad” losses.
Another point people make when citing those three losses by Villanova is to throw computer rankings at a screen. The problem with the computer rankings is they are not fair.
Why aren’t they fair? It’s all about scheduling. The system in college basketball is rigged in favor of the power conferences. This is not a slap at the system, just an undeniable fact.
When the big dogs of the Power Six conferences lose to other big dogs, it does little to hurt their computer rankings. And a big dog win over another big dog is a huge boost to those same computer rankings.
Penn, Drexel and St. Joe’s can’t get games against the big dogs. The only reason Villanova is on their schedule is because of the tradition of the Big 5. That’s it. If not for the Big 5, Villanova likely wouldn’t go anywhere close to those three — at least not regularly.
Why? Because of exactly what’s happening with people saying they are bad losses. That’s why I give so much credit to Villanova for sticking with the Big 5 and think, as a sign of goodwill, St. Joe’s, Drexel and La Salle should host all Big 5 home games versus the Wildcats at the Palestra. But I digress.
Anyway, the fact is that the cards are stacked against the Penn’s and Drexel’s and St. Joe’s of the college basketball world. And, frankly, with so much money at stake, it is totally understandable why the big dogs of the power conferences won’t schedule the Quakers, Dragons or Hawks.
St. Joe’s coach Billy Lange has gone so far as to offer elite programs a 2-for-1 package, where the Hawks would play two road games for the opponent’s one game in Philadelphia. And, get this, Lange even stipulated that St. Joe’s “home” game could be played on a neutral court at the Wells Fargo Center.
To this point, Lange has gotten zero takers.
“The reality is teams in the Atlantic 10 and great, elite Ivy League teams, they can’t get games,” Lange said after St. Joe’s recent win over Princeton. “No one wants to play them. We can’t get anyone to come here.”
This Hawks team is good enough to be a Top 25 team. So is Princeton, which went to the NCAA Sweet 16 last season and opened with nine straight wins to start this season. In reality, picking the best 25 teams in the country is an impossible task. I give credit to people like the Inquirer‘s Jeff Neiburg, who works hard to try to get it just right. No matter how hard they work, though, AP voters will be looking at a stacked deck because computer rankings that help to quantify teams do not tell a equitable story. That’s because schools outside of the Power Six conferences cannot earn important power points through their schedules.
The entire system is imperfect. It’s been that way for as long as I’ve followed college basketball. With huge money and TV rights at stake, it’s unlikely to change. It is what it is. I’d say 1) to just recognize this and 2) to please look beyond the stats, the talking heads, the computer modules, the net rankings and anything else that is telling you something that isn’t true.
Villanova’s losses to Penn, St. Joe’s and Drexel are not “bad” losses.
The Quakers, Hawks and Dragons are good basketball teams. By the end of the season, they might be good enough to hear their names called on Selection Sunday. Maybe then, in the NCAA tournament, others will find out what Villanova already knows.
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Former St. Joe’s radio voice Krsolovic loved calling the games
Broadcast partners Joe Lunardi (left) and Ken Krsolovic call a game at Harford Community College, where Krsolovic worked as the school’s athletic director. The duo were longtime partners for St. Joe’s radio broadcasts. (Photo provided)
The excitement.
The high-pitched voice.
The feeling of listening and being right there in the arena.
Those, for me, are the signatures of Ken Krsolovic’s radio calls.
Before Tom McCarthy, Matt Martucci and Pat McCarthy, Krsolovic was the radio voice of Saint Joseph’s.
“I put that headset on, and I loved describing the game,” Krsolovic told Big5Hoops.
Krsolovic came to Saint Joseph’s for a Sports Information position in the mid-’80’s from John Carroll University in Ohio, where he worked in a similar role, in addition to broadcasting its basketball games on radio and television.
At the time, Dan Baker contracted many Hawks games as part of his radio package of the Big 5. Krsolovic sometimes helped Baker with those broadcasts. But there were some games that Baker did not do, so Krosolvic began calling a half-dozen or so contests.
Soon after, the Saint Joseph’s Sports Network (SJSN) was born and the Hawks could be heard on several area radio signals. In 1995, WPEN (950-AM) became the sole, flagship station of the Hawks. Eventually, that station would become a sports-talk format full-time and today has morphed into 97.5 The Fanatic.
“It was great,” Krsolovic said of the deal with WPEN. “It was a pretty good signal, and it worked.”
Besides the various radio stations, the innovative Krsolovic also was calling St. Joe’s games on over-the-Internet broadcasts in the infancy of the worldwide web. He also got Hawks women’s games on the airwaves.
When he first started as St. Joe’s radio voice, Krsolovic would rotate between broadcast partners that included media members and former players. Then, a conversation with Joe Lunardi, who worked in a similar public relations role but for the university rather than athletics, resulted in Lunardi becoming Krsolovic’s full-time partner. It’s a position that the ESPN Bracketologist still maintains today.
There was a strong chemistry between Krsolovic and Lunardi.
“It was pretty much instantaneous,” Krosolovic said.
Besides describing the action, they had fun on the air. Krsolovic joked about Lunardi’s height, and Lunardi ribbed the play-by-play man about his baldness.
“People loved it,” Krsolovic said.
When he left St. Joe’s to become an AD at Lake Erie College and then Harford Community College, Krsolovic would reunite with Lunardi for a few broadcasts.
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Shortly after starting version 2.0 of this venture, I reached out to Krsolovic to ask if he had radio calls from his St. Joe’s days. He did and you can listen below!
I wanted to share his story because I know there are Hawks fans who would like to hear from him again. Also, I wanted to publicly thank Krsolovic for what he did for me. As a St. Joe’s undergraduate working in the Sports Information office, he took me under his wing. Not only did he bring me on board to keep stats for the home broadcasts, Krsolovic also invited me to several road games, including a trip to St. Bonaventure, where I discovered the best little milkshake stand in the United States. True story.
He also often would take lunch breaks with me, and we would grab a hoagie, or a cheesesteak or a burger at a local restaurant. There, Krsolovic would teach me more about journalism and broadcasting. Looking back, you remember people like this who took an interest in you and helped mold you into the professional and person you have become. As I shared with Krsolovic on the phone this week, besides telling him personally, the way to pay him thanks is for me to pay that mentorship forward whenever I have the chance to be a positive role model or influence on anyone.
So, if you are a young, aspiring journalist out there and think I can help, please hit me up. DM’s are open.
Thanks to people like Krsolovic, I might be able to pass on some good advice. At the very least, I know a few great lunch spots near St. Joe’s campus that we can hit.
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Villanova-Creighton game rewind
–Villanova 68, Creighton 66, OT: If you didn’t stay up on Wednesday night – and it’s understandable if you went to bed – you missed one of the best games of the season. It was also one of the weirdest in several ways.
Let’s work our way backward.
Eric Dixon came out of a Villanova timeout and hit a 3 with 28.3 seconds left in overtime to put the Wildcats up 68-66. The teams then combined to go 0-for-3 from the foul line, with Villanova missing the front end of two one-and-ones and Creighton another. The Bluejays’ last-ditch 3-pointer fell short.
Dixon finished with 32 points on 12 of 21 shooting, including 4 of 10 from 3-point range. The Wildcats held Creighton, which entered leading the Big East in 3-point shooting at 38.7 percent, to 20.8 from long range.
“I thought that was the key,” Villanova coach Kyle Neptune said of the Wildcats’ defense after they improved to 8-4 by winning their Big East opener. “They’re great offensively. We just wanted to stay in front of them as much as we can. I thought our guys did a great job.”
Before OT, it looked like Villanova was going to get the ball back after a Creighton miss. But then things got weird.
Creighton’s Baylor Scheierman missed a jumper with 6.5 seconds left, Mason Miller dove for the rebound and got it to Scheierman with 3.1 seconds to play and Scheirman drained a corner 3.
But wait, the official ruled that either Miller or the ball was out of bounds before his diving save.
Replays, however, showed that neither Miller nor the ball were out of bounds. But the replay also showed that Scheirman did not get the shot off before the shot clock expired.
It should have been Villanova ball with 6.5 seconds left and the game tied. That would’ve been plenty of time for the Wildcats to go the length of the court and get off a game-winning attempt.
But officials gave the ball back to the Bluejays with 3.3 seconds left. The television announcers didn’t get an explanation, so viewers were confused. My guess is the officials saw that neither the ball nor Miller were out of bounds. But what about the shot clock?
According to Villanova radio announcer Whitey Rigsby, the lack of a shot clock violation is not reviewable. This seems strange in the video review era. If true, this rule should be changed. Why wouldn’t something like a shot clock violation not be reviewable?
It would have been a shame for Villanova to lose that way. Hopefully, the powers that be in the NCAA take a look at that end-of-game sequence and, if it’s not currently part of the review process, ensure that shot-clock violations are reviewable going forward.
Before all of that weirdness, the first half was a struggle for the Wildcats. However, if you follow my Twitter feed, you will see that I was saying Villanova was playing well with the exception of its shooting. Dixon was 5-for-9 from the field in the opening 20 minutes, and the rest of the Wildcats were 4-for-23. Villanova missed nine of 10 3-pointers in the opening half.
Villanova fans have been critical of Neptune and, quite fairly in some respects, but Neptune deserves a ton of credit for the way he coached the game. With the Wildcats struggling from the outside, he made an obvious effort early for the shots to come from the paint. Though Villanova still was missing there in the first half, it turned around after halftime. Unlike their loss to Drexel, where they waited too long to adjust in a similar situation, Villanova made the switch early. Also, the unusual lineup of Hakim Hart, Dixon, Jordan Longino, Mark Armstrong and Tyler Burton did great work after halftime. Neptune, for the most part, stuck with the hot hands. More kudos for that.
And we didn’t even mention that Villanova did all of this without on-court leader Justin Moore, who sat for the second straight game with a knee injury.
Bottom line: The Wildcats deserved to win and they did. Great start to conference play for Villanova.
Next for Villanova: At DePaul, 4 p.m. on Saturday
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TIP-INS: Charleston snaps St. Joe’s six-game winning streak
Thursday Roundup
–Charleston 89, St. Joe’s 82: Charleston snapped Saint Joseph’s six-game winning streak in South Carolina. St. Joe’s fell behind early and trailed by as many as 15 points in the first half. The Hawks’ margin was 14 early in the second half before they started clawing back. A Cameron Brown 3-pointer pulled St. Joe’s within 84-82 with 37 seconds left. After Charleston’s Ante Brzovic made one of two free throws, Erik Reynolds II had a chance to tie it, but his 3-point try missed with 11 ticks to play. Charleston sealed it at the free-throw line.
Brown scored all 21 of his points after the break, Reynolds scored 16, Rasheer Fleming had 16 points and nine boards and Lynn Greer III had 14 points, eight rebounds and eight assists.
Next for St. Joe’s: Hosts Loyola at 7 p.m. on Friday, Dec. 29.
–Nevada 80, Temple 56: The Owls dropped their opening game in the Diamond Head Classic in Hawaii. They were without third-leading scorer Jordan Riley (illness). Hysier Miller scored 18 points to lead Temple, which shots 27.7 percent (18 for 65) from the field.
Next for Temple: Plays Old Dominion at 7:30 tonight.
–La Salle 107, Rosemont 41: The Explorers padded their offensive stats against Division III Rosemont, racking up a school record-tying 35 assists. Khalil Brantley had eight points and 12 assists for La Salle, which shot 59.7 percent (43 of 72) from the field and 39.3 percent (11 of 28) from the arc.
Next for La Salle: Hosts Howard at 2 p.m. on Saturday, Dec. 30.
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Drexel gets back on the court today at 11 a.m. against Phil Martelli, Jr.-coached Bryant. Penn returns from 11-day final exams layoff to play at Rider at 1 p.m. on Saturday.
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Penn’s Slajchert tops Big 5 scoring leaders
Big 5 Scoring Leaders (Through Games 12/21)
1. Clark Slajchert, Penn, 19.2
2. Hysier Miller, Temple, 18.2
3. Erik Reynolds II, St. Joe’s, 17.4
4. Khalil Brantley, La Salle, 16.0
5. Tyler Perkins, Penn, 15.4
6. Eric Dixon, Villanova, 15.2
7. Jhamir Brickus, La Salle, 14.3
8. Jahlil White, Temple, 13.8
9. Justin Moore, Villanova, 13.3
T10. Sam Brown, Penn, 11.8
T10. Jordan Riley, Temple, 11.8
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Villanova’s Burton tops Big 5 rebounding leaders
Big 5 Rebounding Leaders (Through Games 12/21)
1. Tyler Burton, Villanova, 8.0
2. Amari Williams, Drexel, 7.9
3. Jahlil White, Temple, 7.8
4. Nick Spinoso, Penn, 7.2
5. Rasheer Fleming, St. Joe’s, 7.0
6. Eric Dixon, Villanova, 6.9
T7. Christ Essandoko, St. Joe’s, 6.6
T7. Sam Hofman, Temple, 6.6
9. Tyler Perkins, Penn, 6.3
10. Lamar Oden, Jr., Drexel, 6.1
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Villanova moves atop Big 5 rankings
Big 5 Rankings (Through Games 12/21)
1. Villanova (8-4)
2. Saint Joseph’s (9-3)
3. La Salle (9-3)
4. Penn (7-5)
5. Temple (6-5)
6. Drexel (7-5)
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Last Week’s Results
Saturday, Dec. 16
VCU 87, Temple 78
Miami 84, La Salle 77
Drexel 71, Albany 52
Saint Joseph’s 83, Iona 58
Monday, Dec. 18
Drexel 117, Penn State Greater Allegheny 49
Wednesday, Dec. 20
Villanova 68, Creighton 66, OT
Thursday, Dec. 21
La Salle 107, Rosemont 41
Nevada 80, Temple 56
Charleston 89, Saint Joseph’s 82
Upcoming Schedule
Friday, Dec. 22
11 am, Drexel at Bryant
7:30 p.m., Temple vs. Old Dominion, Honolulu, HI
Saturday, Dec. 23
1 pm, Penn at Rider
4 pm, Villanova at DePaul
Sunday, Dec. 24
TBA, Temple vs. TBA, Honolulu, HI
Friday, Dec. 29
7 pm, Loyola (Md.) at Saint Joseph’s
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Aaron Bracy has been covering Philadelphia sports since 1996. His byline regularly appears on Associated Press stories. Big5Hoops.com is his second website dedicated to Philadelphia college basketball. Follow Bracy on X: @Aaron_Bracy and like his Facebook and Instagram pages.